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196   MEMORIES OF MY LIFE

Lucy, has lived with me as companion, and I have followed a somewhat similar routine of life, except in being no longer advised by the doctor to try cures, the best means of securing health now being to escape a winter in London.


Yearly Medallions.--M y fancy had been taken long ago by a custom of certain North American Indians, of naming years, each after some characteristic event that had occurred in it.' I t appears that an annual consultation of Indian chiefs was held, at which the more

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striking occurrences of the past year were reviewed and one selected as its representative. Thereupon an Indian who was reputed for skill in drawing made a picture or symbol of the event on his buffalo-skin robe. They are as rude in conception and execution as an English child of five years old might draw. Thus the " smallpox year " is symbolically expressed by an elementary

1 Fhotographs of the North American Indians. By Garrick Mallery, from the Fourth Annual Report of the Museum of Ethnology, Washington, Govern. ment Printing office, 1886.