pation of her personal influence. The gentleness
and delicacy of her character received the tenderest respect. None who
looked upon that face or met the glance of the dark soft eyes ever
doubted that the nature that animated them was pure and beautiful. Yet
it was the respect felt for a character so exceptionably superior that
imitation and emulation would be impossible.

"She is too far above the common run of human nature," said one
observer. "I should not be surprised if her spirit were already pluming
its wings for a heavenly flight. Such natures never stay long among us."

The remark struck my heart with a chill of depression. I looked at Wauna
and wondered why I had noticed sooner the shrinking outlines of the once
round cheek. Too gentle to show disgust, too noble to ill-treat, the
spirit of Wauna was chafing under the trying associations. Men and women
alike regarded her as an impossible character, and I began to realize
with a sickening regret that I had made a mistake. In my own country, in
France and England, her beauty was her sole attraction to men. The lofty
ideal of humanity that she represented was smiled at or gently ignored.

"The world would be a paradise," said one philosopher, "if such
characters were common. But one is like a seed in the ocean; it cannot
do much good."

When we arrived in the United States, its activity and evident progress
impressed Wauna with a feeling more nearly akin to companionship. Her
own character received a juster appreciation.

"The time is near," she said, "when the New World will be the teacher of
the Old in the great lesson of Humanity. You will live to see it
demonstrate to the world the justice and policy of giving to every child
born under its flag the highest mental, moral and physical training
known to the present age. You can hardly realize what twenty-five years
of free education will bring to it. They are already on the right path,
but they are still many centuries behind my own country in civilization,
in their government and modes of dispensing justice. Yet their free
schools, as yet imperfect, are, nevertheless, fruitful seeds of
progress."

Yet here the nature of Wauna grew restless and homesick, and she at last
gave expression to her longing for home.

"I am not suited to your world," she said, with a look of deep sorrow in
her lovely eyes. "None of my people are. We are too finely organized. I
cannot look with any degree of calmness upon the pract