Canadian Frenchman named Louis. He was to
the last degree polite to the ladies, but subject to attacks of Indian
rage at mere trifles, when he would go aside, swear, and destroy
something like a lunatic in a fury, and then return quite happy and
serene. I was in the second waggon with three ladies, a man being wanted
in every vehicle. Our driver was named George, and he was altogether
like Brigham, minus the Mexican-Spanish element. George had, however,
also lived a great deal among Indians, and been at the great battle of
the Chippeways and Sioux, and was full of interesting and naive
discourse.

Of course, we of the two leading waggons all talked to Louis in French,
who gave himself great airs on it. One morning George asked me in
confidence, "Mr. Leland, you're not all French, are you?" "Certainly
not," I replied; "we're from Philadelphia." "Well," replied George, "so
I told Louis, but he says you _are_ French, like him, and shut me up by
askin' me if I hadn't heard you talkin' it. Now what I want to know is,
if you're _not_ French, how came the _whole_ of you to know it?" I
explained to George, to his astonishment, that in the East it was usual
for all well-educated persons, especially ladies, to learn it. I soon
became as intimate with George as I had been with Brigham, and began to
learn Chippeway of him, and greet the Indians whom we met. One day
George said--

"Of course you have no Indian blood in you, Mr. Leland; but weren't you a
great deal among 'em when you were young?"

"Why?"

"Because you've got queer little old Injun ways. Whenever you stop by
the roadside to talk to anybody and sit down, you always rake the small
bits of wood together and pull out a match and make a _smudge_" (a very
smoky fire made by casting dust on it), "just like an Indian in an Injun
kind of way." (In after years I found this same habit of making fires of
small bits of wood peculiar to old English gypsies.)

The smudge is the great summer institution of Minnesota. It is the
safeguard against mosquitos. They are all over the State in such numbers
that they constitute a plague. We all wore all the time over our faces
and necks a kind of guard or veil, shaped exactly like an Egyptian
_fanous_ or folding lantern. It is cylindrical, made of _tulle_ or
coarse lace, with rings. At every house people sat in the porticos over
a tin bucket, in which there was a smudge--that is to say, in smoke. In
the evening some o