Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/322

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308
EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.

in which, to hide their heads, or a suitable robe in which to dispense justice to their fellow-men! Regarded from the philosopher's point of view it is precisely on a level with rag and bone picking in the streets of cities. The Indian led a more respectable life before he was tempted to debase himself so much by the white man. Think how many musquash and weasel skins the Hudson's Bay Company pile up annually in their warehouses, leaving the bare red carcasses on the banks of the streams throughout all British America, and this it is chiefly which makes it British America. It is the place where Great Britain goes a-mousing. When we see men and boys spend their time shooting and trapping musquash and mink, we cannot but have a poorer opinion of them, unless we thought meanly of them before. Yet the world is imposed on by the fame of the Hudson Bay and Northwest Fur Companies, who are only so many partners, more or less, in the same sort of business, with thousands of just such loafing men and boys in their service to abet them. On the one side is the Hudson Bay Company, on the other the company of scavengers who clear the sewers of Paris of their vermin. There is a good excuse for smoking out or poisoning rats which infest the house, but when they are as far off as Hudson's Bay, I think that we had bet-