She had been, not merely a bride, but a wife,
and each hour had helped to plume the noble bird. A coronet of pearls
will not shame her brow; it is white and ample, a worthy altar for
love and thought.
Even among the North American Indians, a race of men as completely
engaged in mere instinctive life as almost any in the world, and where
each chief, keeping many wives as useful servants, of course looks
with no kind eye on celibacy in Woman, it was excused in the following
instance mentioned by Mrs. Jameson. A woman dreamt in youth that she
was betrothed to the Sun. She built her a wigwam apart, filled it with
emblems of her alliance, and means of on independent life. There she
passed her days, sustained by her own exertions, and true to her
supposed engagement.
In any tribe, we believe, a woman, who lived as if she was betrothed
to the Sun, would be tolerated, and the rays which made her youth
blossom sweetly, would crown her with a halo in age.
There is, on this subject, a nobler view than heretofore, if not the
noblest, and improvement here must coincide with that in the view
taken of marriage. "We must have units before we can have union," says
one of the ripe thinkers of the times.
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