horrible
details. They crept, like noxious vapors, into the moral atmosphere of
the pure and good; tainting the weak, and annoying the strong.

There were other sorrows in my country that were more deplorable still.
It was the fate of those who sought to relieve the sufferings of the
many by an enforced government reform. Misguided, imprudent and
fanatical they might be, but their aim at least was noble. The wrongs
and sufferings of the helpless and oppressed had goaded them to action
for their relief.

But, alas! The pale and haggard faces of thousands of those patriot
souls faded and wasted in torturing slowness in dungeons of rayless
gloom. Or their emaciated and rheumatic frames toiled in speechless
agony amid the horrors of Siberia's mines.

In _this_ land they would have been recognized as aspiring natures,
spreading their wings for a nobler flight, seeking a higher and grander
life. The smile of beauty would have urged them on. Hands innumerable
would have given them a cordial and encouraging grasp. But in the land
they had sought to benefit and failed, they suffered in silence and
darkness, and died forgotten or cursed.

My heart and my brain ached with memory, and the thought again occurred:
"_Could_ the Preceptress ever have known such a race of people?"

I looked at her fair, calm brow, where not a wrinkle marred the serene
expression of intellect, although I had been told that more than a
hundred years had touched with increasing wisdom its broad surface. The
smile that dwelt in her eyes, like the mystic sprite in the fountain,
had not a suspicion of sadness in them. A nature so lofty as hers, where
every feeling had a generous and noble existence and aim, could not have
known without anguish the race of people _I_ knew so well. Their sorrows
would have tinged her life with a continual sadness.

The words of Wauna had awakened a new thought. I knew that their mental
life was far above mine, and that in all the relations of life, both
business and social, they exhibited a refinement never attained by my
people. I had supposed these qualities to be an endowment of nature, and
not a development sought and labored for by themselves. But my
conversation with Wauna had given me a different impression, and the
thought of a future for my own country took possession of me.

"Could it ever emerge from its horrors, and rise through gradual but
earnest endeavor to such perfection? Could a higher civilization cro