There was now an attempt to open the door , succeeded by a voice uttering some strange , unintelligible gibberish which my companions mistook for Greek and I suspected to be thieves ' Latin . However , the showman stepped forward and gave admittance to a figure which made me imagine either that our wagon had rolled back two hundred years into past ages or that the forest and its old inhabitants had sprung up around us by enchantment . It was a red Indian armed with his bow and arrow . His dress was a sort of cap adorned with a single feather of some wild bird , and a frock of blue cotton girded tight about him ; on his breast , like orders of knighthood , hung a crescent and a circle and other ornaments of silver , while a small crucifix betokened that our father the pope had interposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit whom he had worshipped in his simplicity . This son of the wilderness and pilgrim of the storm took his place silently in the midst of us . When the first surprise was over , I rightly conjectured him to be one of the Penobscot tribe , parties of which I had often seen in their summer excursions down our Eastern rivers . There they paddle their birch canoes among the coasting-schooners , and build their wigwam beside some roaring mill-dam , and drive a little trade in basket-work where their fathers hunted deer . Our new visitor was probably wandering through the country toward Boston , subsisting on the careless charity of the people while he turned his archery to profitable account by shooting at cents which were to be the prize of his successful aim . The Indian had not long been seated ere our merry damsel sought to draw him into conversation . She , indeed , seemed all made up of sunshine in the month of May , for there was nothing so dark and dismal that her pleasant mind could not cast a glow over it ; and the wild man , like a fir tree in his native forest , soon began to brighten into a sort of sombre cheerfulness . At length she inquired whether his journey had any particular end or purpose . `` I go shoot at the camp-meeting at Stamford , '' replied the Indian . `` And here are five more , '' said the girl , `` all aiming at the camp-meeting too . You shall be one of us , for we travel with light hearts ; and , as for me , I sing merry songs and tell merry tales and am full of merry thoughts , and I dance merrily along the road , so that there is never any sadness among them that keep me company . But oh , you would find it very dull indeed to go all the way to Stamford alone . '' My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that the Indian would prefer his own solitary musings to the gay society thus offered him ; on the contrary , the girl 's proposal met with immediate acceptance and seemed to animate him with a misty expectation of enjoyment . I now gave myself up to a course of thought which , whether it flowed naturally from this combination of events or was drawn forth by a wayward fancy , caused my mind to thrill as if I were listening to deep music . I saw mankind in this weary old age of the world either enduring a sluggish existence amid the smoke and dust of cities , or , if they breathed a purer air , still lying down at night with no hope but to wear out to-morrow , and all the to-morrows which make up life , among the same dull scenes and in the same wretched toil that had darkened the sunshine of today . But there were some full of the primeval instinct who preserved the freshness of youth to their latest years by the continual excitement of new objects , new pursuits and new associates , and cared little , though their birthplace might have been here in New England , if the grave should close over them in Central Asia . Fate was summoning a parliament of these free spirits ; unconscious of the impulse which directed them to a common centre , they had come hither from far and near , and last of all appeared the representatives of those mighty vagrants who had chased the deer during thousands of years , and were chasing it now in the spirit-land .
Wandering down through the waste of ages , the woods had vanished around his path ; his arm had lost somewhat of its strength , his foot of its fleetness , his mien XXXXX its wild regality , his heart and mind of their savage virtue and uncultured force , but here , untamable to the routine of artificial life , roving now along the dusty road as of old over the forest-leaves , -- here was the Indian still .
at down for in into of on toward whether while