Red Plume — page 93: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“THE SWEATING-HOUSE. | 93 for the old squaw and take care of the chief. He tlfen said that he never performed such an operation unless requested to do so by the party concerned. That objection was soon set- tled, for As-moo-tah was brought forward, and made known her aedirds in person. As the Yankee jooked at- the wrinkled face and malicious eyes*of the hag, hé became, as he would have expressed it, “ kinder riled,” and*resolved to es in pe tice a plan that hhe had previously formed. - * On the bank of the river, a short distance from the village, was a sweating-house. This was’a peculiar Indian institution, being a small, tightly-closed building; in' which the person to be sweated was shut up, and was steamed by water being ‘slowly poured oyer hot stones... To this establishment, having arranged it to suit himself, he conducted Ab-tnoodal accom- .panied by the old warrior with the hard name. He caused a goodly number of stones to be heated very hot, and placed within the sweating-house. He then seated the old woman Within, on a very narrow bench, and gave to. her, ‘to hold in her left hand, a string, which phesad over a sort of ‘pulley in the roof, and from the other end of which depended a loosely-tied bag, filled with small stones. In her right hand he put a fragment of looking-glass, which she had»procured in the village, and told her-that, while she held the string and looked in the glass, she would’ perceive herself growing grad- ually handsome, and if she persevered until the stones were - cooled, she would come out perfectly beautiful. He shut her up in the building, fastened the door, told her that she: must do exactly as he had ordered, or the charm would* be broken, and directed a couple of Indian boys to pour ‘water’ slowly upon the stones, through tubes that he had “ — 5 He then went away witlr the old Indian. The sequel may be imagined. The old bing had a natural desire for beauty, and more than half believed in the extraya- gant pretensions of Eben. As the steam began t6 rise around her, and to fill the small inclosure, she gazed intently on the glass, and was sure that the wrinkles on her face were fading away, the steam tending to produce that effect. When the gluss was so dimmed that it reflected nothing, her imagination supplied the mirror, and she saw herseif becoming transfig- ured. But the steam was even more powerful than her conmicloooks. con