Anecdotes of public men; by John W. Forney.

FRANCES SLOCUM S ROMANCE. 209
a half old when his sister was carried off by the Indians, started
for the Indian country in company with his eldest sister, who
had aided him to escape, and another brother, then living in
Ohio, born after the captivity of Frances. After a long journey
they found a little wigwam among the Miami Indians. "We
shall know Frances," said the sister, "because she lost the nail
of her first finger. You, brother, hammered it off in the blacksmith shop when she was four years old." They entered and
found a swarthy woman who looked to be seventy-five. She was
painted, jeweled, and dressed like an Indian in all respects.
Nothing but her hair and her covered skin indicated her origin.
They got an interpreter, asked her name and where she was
born. " How came that nail gone?" said the eldest sister. She
answered, " My elder brother pounded it off when I was a little
child in the shop." They had discovered the long-lost sister.
They asked her Christian name. She had forgotten it. "Was
it Frances?" As if smitten by a revelation, she answered
"Yes." It was the first time she had heard it pronounced in
sixty years. Here they were met, two brothers and two sisters,
after having been separated for more than half a century. The
brothers were walking the cabin, unable to speak, the sister was
drowned in tears, but the poor Indian sat motionless and passionless. She could not speak a word of English. She did not
know when Sunday came. Was not this the consummation of
ignorance in a descendant of the Puritans? She was carried
off by the Indians, and when she grew up she married one of
their number. He either died or ran away, and then she mar,
ried a Miami chief, since dead. She had two daughters, both
married, who, thirty-four years ago, lived in all the glory of
Indian cabins, deer-skin clothes, and cow-skin head-dresses.
They had horses in abundance, and when the Indian sister accompanied her new relatives, she bridled her horse and mounted it astride. At night she slept on the floor, with her blanket
around her. They could not persuade her to return to Wilkes