 Great Spirit, and the chiefs
must obey them as well as others. Here is another commandment - Whosoever shall
smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.«
    »What that mean?« demanded Hist, with the quickness of lightning.
    Hetty explained that it was an order not to resent injuries, but rather to
submit to receive fresh wrongs from the offender.
    »And hear this, too, Hist,« she added. »Love your enemies, bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully
use you and persecute you.«
    By this time Hetty had become excited; her eye gleamed with the earnestness
of her feelings, her cheeks flushed, and her voice, usually so low and
modulated, became stronger and more impressive. With the bible she had been
early made familiar by her mother, and she now turned from passage to passage,
with surprising rapidity, taking care to cull such verses as taught the sublime
lessons of christian charity and christian forgiveness. To translate half she
said, in her pious earnestness, Wah-ta!-Wah would have found impracticable, had
she made the effort, but wonder held her tongue tied, equally with the chiefs,
and the young, simple-minded enthusiast had fairly become exhausted with her own
efforts, before the other opened her mouth, again, to utter a syllable. Then,
indeed, the Delaware girl gave a brief translation of the substance of what had
been both read and said, confining herself to one or two of the more striking of
the verses, those that had struck her own imagination as the most paradoxical,
and which certainly would have been the most applicable to the case, could the
uninstructed minds of the listeners embrace the great moral truths they
conveyed.
    It will be scarcely necessary to tell the reader the effect that such novel
duties would be likely to produce among a group of Indian warriors, with whom it
was a species of religious principle never to forget a benefit, or to forgive an
injury. Fortunately, the previous explanations of Hist had prepared the minds of
the Hurons for something extravagant, and most of that which to them seemed
inconsistent and paradoxical, was accounted for by the fact that the speaker
possessed a mind that was constituted differently from those of most of the
human race. Still there were one or two old men who had heard similar doctrines
from the missionaries, and these felt a desire to occupy an idle moment by
pursuing a subject that they found so curious.
    »This is the Good Book of the pale faces
