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Title: The Attache
       or, Sam Slick in England, Volume 1

Author: Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Release Date: July 23, 2009 [EBook #7821]
Last Updated: October 26, 2016

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATTACHE ***




Produced by Gardner Buchanan, and David Widger

THE ATTACHE

or, SAM SLICK IN ENGLAND, Volume 1

By Thomas Chandler Haliburton

(Greek Text)—GREEK PROVERB.

Tell you what, report my speeches if you like, but if you put my talk in, I’ll give you the mitten, as sure as you are born.—SLICKVILLE TRANSLATION

London, July 3rd, 1843.

MY DEAR HOPKINSON,

I have spent so many agreeable hours at Edgeworth heretofore, that my first visit on leaving London, will be to your hospitable mansion. In the meantime, I beg leave to introduce to you my “Attache,” who will precede me several days. His politics are similar to your own; I wish I could say as much in favour of his humour. His eccentricities will stand in need of your indulgence; but if you can overlook these, I am not without hopes that his originality, quaint sayings, and queer views of things in England, will afford you some amusement. At all events, I feel assured you will receive him kindly; if not for his own merits, at least for the sake of

Yours always,

THE AUTHOR.

To EDMUND HOPKINSON ESQ. Edgeworth, Gloucestershire.

Contents

THE ATTACHE; OR SAM SLICK IN ENGLAND.

FIRST VOLUME

THE ATTACHE; OR SAM SLICK IN ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I. UNCORKING A BOTTLE.

We left New York in the afternoon of — day of May, 184-, and embarked on board of the good Packet ship “Tyler” for England. Our party consisted of the Reverend Mr. Hopewell, Samuel Slick, Esq., myself, and Jube Japan, a black servant of the Attache.

I love brevity—I am a man of few words, and, therefore, constitutionally economical of them; but brevity is apt to degenerate into obscurity. Writing a book, however, and book-making, are two very different things: “spinning a yarn” is mechanical, and book-making savours of trade, and is the employment of a manufacturer. The author by profession, weaves his web by the piece, and as there is much competition in this branch of trade, extends it over the greatest possible surface, so as to make the most of his raw material. Hence every work of fancy is made to reach to three volumes, otherwise it will not pay, and a manufacture that does not requite the cost of production, invariably and inevitably terminates in bankruptcy. A thought, therefore, like a pound of cotton, must be well spun out to be valuable. It is very contemptuous to say of a man, that he has but one idea, but it is the highest meed of praise that can be bestowed on a book. A man, who writes thus, can write for ever.

Now, it is not only not my intention to write for ever, or as Mr. Slick would say “for everlastinly;” but to make my bow and retire very soon from the press altogether. I might assign many reasons for this modest course, all of them plausible, and some of them indeed quite dignified. I like dignity: any man who has lived the greater part of his life in a colony is so accustomed to it, that he becomes quite enamoured of it, and wrapping himself up in it as a cloak, stalks abroad the “observed of all observers.” I could undervalue this species of writing if I thought proper, affect a contempt for idiomatic humour, or hint at the employment being inconsistent with the grave discharge of important official duties, which are so distressingly onerous, as not to leave me a moment for recreation; but these airs, though dignified, will unfortunately not avail me. I shall put my dignity into my pocket, therefore, and disclose the real cause of this diffidence.

In the year one thousand eight hundred and fourteen, I embarked at Halifax on board the Buffalo store-ship for England. She was a noble teak built ship of twelve or thirteen hundred tons burden, had excellent accommodation, and carried over to merry old England, a very merry party of passengers, quorum parva pars fui, a youngster just emerged from college.

On the banks of Newfoundland we were becalmed, and the passengers amused themselves by throwing overboard a bottle, and shooting at it with ball. The guns used for this occasion, were the King’s muskets, taken from the arm-chest on the quarter-deck. The shooting was execrable. It was hard to say which were worse marksmen, the officers of the ship, or the passengers. Not a bottle was hit: many reasons were offered for this failure, but the two principal ones were, that the muskets were bad, and that it required great skill to overcome the difficulty occasioned by both, the vessel and the bottle being in motion at the same time, and that motion dissimilar.

I lost my patience. I had never practised shooting with ball; I had frightened a few snipe, and wounded a few partridges, but that was the extent of my experience. I knew, however, that I could not by any possibility shoot worse than every body else had done, and might by accident shoot better.

“Give me a gun, Captain,” said I, “and I will shew you how to uncork that bottle.”

I took the musket, but its weight was beyond my strength of arm. I was afraid that I could not hold it out steadily, even for a moment, it was so very heavy—I threw it up with a desperate effort and fired. The neck of the bottle flew up in the air a full yard, and then disappeared. I was amazed myself at my success. Every body was surprised, but as every body attributed it to long practice, they were not so much astonished as I was, who knew it was wholly owing to chance. It was a lucky hit, and I made the most of it; success made me arrogant, and boy-like, I became a boaster.

“Ah,” said I coolly, “you must be born with a rifle in your hand, Captain, to shoot well. Every body shoots well in America. I do not call myself a good shot. I have not had the requisite experience; but there are those who can take out the eye of a squirrel at a hundred yards.”

“Can you see the eye of a squirrel at that distance?” said the Captain, with a knowing wink of his own little ferret eye.

That question, which raised a general laugh at my expense, was a puzzler. The absurdity of the story, which I had heard a thousand times, never struck me so forcibly. But I was not to be pat down so easily.

“See it!” said I, “why not? Try it and you will find your sight improve with your shooting. Now, I can’t boast of being a good marksman myself; my studies” (and here I looked big, for I doubted if he could even read, much less construe a chapter in the Greek Testament) “did not leave me much time. A squirrel is too small an object for all but an experienced man, but a “large” mark like a quart bottle can easily be hit at a hundred yards—that is nothing.”

“I will take you a bet,” said he, “of a doubloon, you do not do it again?”

“Thank you,” I replied with great indifference: “I never bet, and besides, that gun has so injured my shoulder, that I could not, if I would.”

By that accidental shot, I obtained a great name as a marksman, and by prudence I retained it all the voyage. This is precisely my case now, gentle reader. I made an accidental hit with the Clockmaker: when he ceases to speak, I shall cease to write. The little reputation I then acquired, I do not intend to jeopardize by trying too many experiments. I know that it was chance—many people think it was skill. If they choose to think so, they have a right to their opinion, and that opinion is fame. I value this reputation too highly not to take care of it.

As I do not intend then to write often, I shall not wire-draw my subjects, for the mere purpose of filling my pages. Still a book should be perfect within itself, and intelligible without reference to other books. Authors are vain people, and vanity as well as dignity is indigenous to a colony. Like a pastry-cook’s apprentice, I see so much of both their sweet things around me daily, that I have no appetite for either of them.

I might perhaps be pardoned, if I took it for granted, that the dramatis personae of this work were sufficiently known, not to require a particular introduction. Dickens assumed the fact that his book on America would travel wherever the English language was spoken, and, therefore, called it “Notes for General Circulation.” Even Colonists say, that this was too bad, and if they say so, it must be so. I shall, therefore, briefly state, who and what the persons are that composed our travelling party, as if they were wholly unknown to fame, and then leave them to speak for themselves.

The Reverend Mr. Hopewell is a very aged clergyman of the Church of England, and was educated at Cambridge College, in Massachusetts. Previously to the revolution, he was appointed rector of a small parish in Connecticut. When the colonies obtained their independence, he remained with his little flock in his native land, and continued to minister to their spiritual wants until within a few years, when his parishioners becoming Unitarians, gave him his dismissal. Affable in his manners and simple in his habits, with a mind well stored with human lore, and a heart full of kindness for his fellow-creatures, he was at once an agreeable and an instructive companion. Born and educated in the United States, when they were British dependencies, and possessed of a thorough knowledge of the causes which led to the rebellion, and the means used to hasten the crisis, he was at home on all colonial topics; while his great experience of both monarchical and democratical governments, derived from a long residence in both, made him a most valuable authority on politics generally.

Mr. Samuel Slick is a native of the same parish, and received his education from Mr. Hopewell. I first became acquainted with him while travelling in Nova Scotia. He was then a manufacturer and vendor of wooden clocks. My first impression of him was by no means favourable. He forced himself most unceremoniously into my company and conversation. I was disposed to shake him off, but could not. Talk he would, and as his talk was of that kind, which did not require much reply on my part, he took my silence for acquiescence, and talked on. I soon found that he was a character; and, as he knew every part of the lower colonies, and every body in them, I employed him as my guide.

I have made at different times three several tours with him, the results of which I have given in three several series of a work, entitled the “Clockmaker, or the Sayings and Doings of Mr. Samuel Slick.” Our last tour terminated at New York, where, in consequence of the celebrity he obtained from these “Sayings and Doings” he received the appointment of Attache to the American Legation at the Court of St. James’s. The object of this work is to continue the record of his observations and proceedings in England.

The third person of the party, gentle reader, is your humble servant, Thomas Poker, Esquire, a native of Nova Scotia, and a retired member of the Provincial bar. My name will seldom appear in these pages, as I am uniformly addressed by both my companions as “Squire,” nor shall I have to perform the disagreeable task of “reporting my own speeches,” for naturally taciturn, I delight in listening rather than talking, and modestly prefer the duties of an amanuensis, to the responsibilities of original composition.

The last personage is Jube Japan, a black servant of the Attache.

Such are the persons who composed the little party that embarked at New York, on board the Packet ship “Tyler,” and sailed on the — of May, 184-, for England.

The motto prefixed to this work

   (Greek Text)

sufficiently explains its character. Classes and not individuals have been selected for observation. National traits are fair subjects for satire or for praise, but personal peculiarities claim the privilege of exemption in right of that hospitality, through whose medium they have been alone exhibited. Public topics are public property; every body has a right to use them without leave and without apology. It is only when we quit the limits of this “common” and enter upon “private grounds,” that we are guilty of “a trespass.” This distinction is alike obvious to good sense and right feeling. I have endeavoured to keep it constantly in view; and if at any time I shall be supposed to have erred (I say “supposed,” for I am unconscious of having done so) I must claim the indulgence always granted to involuntary offences.

Now the patience of my reader may fairly be considered a “private right.” I shall, therefore, respect its boundaries and proceed at once with my narrative, having been already quite long enough about “uncorking a bottle.”

CHAPTER II. A JUICY DAY IN THE COUNTRY.

All our preparations for the voyage having been completed, we spent the last day at our disposal, in visiting Brooklyn. The weather was uncommonly fine, the sky being perfectly clear and unclouded; and though the sun shone out brilliantly, the heat was tempered by a cool, bracing, westwardly wind. Its influence was perceptible on the spirits of every body on board the ferry-boat that transported us across the harbour.

“Squire,” said Mr. Slick, aint this as pretty a day as you’ll see atween this and Nova Scotia?—You can’t beat American weather, when it chooses, in no part of the world I’ve ever been in yet. This day is a tip-topper, and it’s the last we’ll see of the kind till we get back agin, I know. Take a fool’s advice, for once, and stick to it, as long as there is any of it left, for you’ll see the difference when you get to England. There never was so rainy a place in the univarse, as that, I don’t think, unless it’s Ireland, and the only difference atween them two is that it rains every day amost in England, and in Ireland it rains every day and every night too. It’s awful, and you must keep out of a country-house in such weather, or you’ll go for it; it will kill you, that’s sartain. I shall never forget a juicy day I once spent in one of them dismal old places. I’ll tell you how I came to be there.

“The last time I was to England, I was a dinin’ with our consul to Liverpool, and a very gentleman-like old man he was too; he was appointed by Washington, and had been there ever since our glorious revolution. Folks gave him a great name, they said he was a credit to us. Well, I met at his table one day an old country squire, that lived somewhere down in Shropshire, close on to Wales, and says he to me, arter cloth was off and cigars on, ‘Mr. Slick,’ says he, ‘I’ll be very glad to see you to Norman Manor,’ (that was the place where he staid, when he was to home). ‘If you will return with me I shall be glad to shew you the country in my neighbourhood, which is said to be considerable pretty.’

“‘Well,’ says I, ‘as I have nothin’ above particular to see to, I don’t care if I do go.’

“So off we started; and this I will say, he was as kind as he cleverly knew how to be, and that is sayin’ a great deal for a man that didn’t know nothin’ out of sight of his own clearin’ hardly.

“Now, when we got there, the house was chock full of company, and considerin’ it warn’t an overly large one, and that Britishers won’t stay in a house, unless every feller gets a separate bed, it’s a wonder to me, how he stowed away as many as he did. Says he, ‘Excuse your quarters, Mr. Slick, but I find more company nor I expected here. In a day or two, some on ‘em will be off, and then you shall be better provided.’

“With that I was showed up a great staircase, and out o’ that by a door-way into a narrer entry and from that into an old T like looking building, that stuck out behind the house. It warn’t the common company sleepin’ room, I expect, but kinder make shifts, tho’ they was good enough too for the matter o’ that; at all events I don’t want no better.

“Well, I had hardly got well housed a’most, afore it came on to rain, as if it was in rael right down airnest. It warn’t just a roarin’, racin’, sneezin’ rain like a thunder shower, but it kept a steady travellin’ gait, up hill and down dale, and no breathin’ time nor batin’ spell. It didn’t look as if it would stop till it was done, that’s a fact. But still as it was too late to go out agin that arternoon, I didn’t think much about it then. I hadn’t no notion what was in store for me next day, no more nor a child; if I had, I’d a double deal sooner hanged myself, than gone brousing in such place as that, in sticky weather.

“A wet day is considerable tiresome, any where or any way you can fix it; but it’s wus at an English country house than any where else, cause you are among strangers, formal, cold, gallus polite, and as thick in the head-piece as a puncheon. You hante nothin’ to do yourself and they never have nothin’ to do; they don’t know nothin’ about America, and don’t want to. Your talk don’t interest them, and they can’t talk to interest nobody but themselves; all you’ve got to do, is to pull out your watch and see how time goes; how much of the day is left, and then go to the winder and see how the sky looks, and whether there is any chance of holdin’ up or no. Well, that time I went to bed a little airlier than common, for I felt considerable sleepy, and considerable strange too; so as soon as I cleverly could, I off and turned in.

“Well I am an airly riser myself. I always was from a boy, so I waked up jist about the time when day ought to break, and was a thinkin’ to get up; but the shutters was too, and it was as dark as ink in the room, and I heer’d it rainin’ away for dear life. ‘So,’ sais I to myself, ‘what the dogs is the use of gittin’ up so airly? I can’t get out and get a smoke, and I can’t do nothin’ here; so here goes for a second nap.’ Well I was soon off agin in a most a beautiful of a snore, when all at once I heard thump-thump agin the shutter—and the most horrid noise I ever heerd since I was raised; it was sunthin’ quite onairthly.

“‘Hallo!’ says I to myself, ‘what in natur is all this hubbub about? Can this here confounded old house be harnted? Is them spirits that’s jabbering gibberish there, or is I wide awake or no?’ So I sets right up on my hind legs in bed, rubs my eyes, opens my ears and listens agin, when whop went every shutter agin, with a dead heavy sound, like somethin’ or another thrown agin ‘em, or fallin’ agin ‘em, and then comes the unknown tongues in discord chorus like. Sais I, ‘I know now, it’s them cussed navigators. They’ve besot the house, and are a givin’ lip to frighten folks. It’s regular banditti.’

“So I jist hops out of bed, and feels for my trunk, and outs with my talkin’ irons, that was all ready loaded, pokes my way to the winder—shoves the sash up and outs with the shutter, ready to let slip among ‘em. And what do you think it was?—Hundreds and hundreds of them nasty, dirty, filthy, ugly, black devils of rooks, located in the trees at the back eend of the house. Old Nick couldn’t have slept near ‘em; caw caw, caw, all mixt up together in one jumble of a sound, like “jawe.”

“You black, evil-lookin’, foul-mouthed villains,’ sais I, ‘I’d like no better sport than jist to sit here, all this blessed day with these pistols, and drop you one arter another, I know.’ But they was pets, was them rooks, and of course like all pets, everlastin’ nuisances to every body else.

“Well, when a man’s in a feeze, there’s no more sleep that hitch; so I dresses and sits up; but what was I to do? It was jist half past four, and as it was a rainin’ like every thing, I know’d breakfast wouldn’t be ready till eleven o’clock, for nobody wouldn’t get up if they could help it—they wouldn’t be such fools; so there was jail for six hours and a half.

“Well, I walked up and down the room, as easy as I could, not to waken folks; but three steps and a round turn makes you kinder dizzy, so I sits down again to chaw the cud of vexation.

“‘Ain’t this a handsum fix?’ sais I, ‘but it sarves you right, what busniss had you here at all? you always was a fool, and always will be to the eend of the chapter.—‘What in natur are you a scoldin’ for?’ sais I: ‘that won’t mend the matter; how’s time? They must soon be a stirrin’ now, I guess.’ Well, as I am a livin’ sinner, it was only five o’clock; ‘oh dear,’ sais I, ‘time is like women and pigs the more you want it to go, the more it won’t. What on airth shall I do?—guess, I’ll strap my rasor.’

“Well, I strapped and strapped away, until it would cut a single hair pulled strait up on eend out o’ your head, without bendin’ it—take it off slick. ‘Now,’ sais I, ‘I’ll mend my trowsers I tore, a goin’ to see the ruin on the road yesterday; so I takes out Sister Sall’s little needle-case, and sows away till I got them to look considerable jam agin; ‘and then,’ sais I, ‘here’s a gallus button off, I’ll jist fix that,’ and when that was done, there was a hole to my yarn sock, so I turned too and darned that.

“‘Now,’ sais I, ‘how goes it? I’m considerable sharp set. It must be gettin’ tolerable late now.’ It wanted a quarter to six. ‘My! sakes,’ sais I, ‘five hours and a quarter yet afore feedin’ time; well if that don’t pass. What shall I do next?’ ‘I’ll tell you what to do,’ sais I, ‘smoke, that will take the edge of your appetite off, and if they don’t like it, they may lump it; what business have they to keep them horrid screetchin’ infarnal, sleepless rooks to disturb people that way?’ Well, I takes a lucifer, and lights a cigar, and I puts my head up the chimbly to let the smoke off, and it felt good, I promise you. I don’t know as I ever enjoyed one half so much afore. It had a rael first chop flavour had that cigar.

“‘When that was done,’ sais I, ‘What do you say to another?’ ‘Well, I don’t know,’ sais I, ‘I should like it, that’s a fact; but holdin’ of my head crooked up chimbly that way, has a’ most broke my neck; I’ve got the cramp in it like.’

“So I sot, and shook my head first a one side and then the other, and then turned it on its hinges as far as it would go, till it felt about right, and then I lights another, and puts my head in the flue again.

“Well, smokin’ makes, a feller feel kinder good-natured, and I began to think it warn’t quite so bad arter all, when whop went my cigar right out of my mouth into my bosom, atween the shirt and the skin, and burnt me like a gally nipper. Both my eyes was fill’d at the same time, and I got a crack on the pate from some critter or another that clawed and scratched my head like any thing, and then seemed to empty a bushel of sut on me, and I looked like a chimbly sweep, and felt like old Scratch himself. My smoke had brought down a chimbly swaller, or a martin, or some such varmint, for it up and off agin’ afore I could catch it, to wring its infarnal neck off, that’s a fact.

“Well, here was somethin’ to do, and no mistake: here was to clean and groom up agin’ till all was in its right shape; and a pretty job it was, I tell you. I thought I never should get the sut out of my hair, and then never get it out of my brush again, and my eyes smarted so, they did nothing but water, and wink, and make faces. But I did; I worked on and worked on, till all was sot right once more.

“‘Now,’ sais I, ‘how’s time?’ ‘half past seven,’ sais I, ‘and three hours and a half more yet to breakfast. Well,’ sais I, ‘I can’t stand this—and what’s more I won’t: I begin to get my Ebenezer up, and feel wolfish. I’ll ring up the handsum chamber-maid, and just fall to, and chaw her right up—I’m savagerous.‘* ‘That’s cowardly,’ sais I, ‘call the footman, pick a quarrel with him and kick him down stairs, speak but one word to him, and let that be strong enough to skin the coon arter it has killed him, the noise will wake up folks I know, and then we shall have sunthin’ to eat.’

[* Footnote: The word “savagerous” is not of “Yankee” but of “Western origin.”—Its use in this place is best explained by the following extract from the Third Series of the Clockmaker. “In order that the sketch which I am now about to give may be fully understood, it may be necessary to request the reader to recollect that Mr. Slick is a Yankee, a designation the origin of which is now not very obvious, but it has been assumed by, and conceded by common consent to, the inhabitants of New England. It is a name, though sometimes satirically used, of which they have great reason to be proud, as it is descriptive of a most cultivated, intelligent, enterprising, frugal, and industrious population, who may well challenge a comparison with the inhabitants of any other country in the world; but it has only a local application.

“The United States cover an immense extent of territory, and the inhabitants of different parts of the Union differ as widely in character, feelings, and even in appearance, as the people of different countries usually do. These sections differ also in dialect and in humour, as much as in other things, and to as great, if not a greater extent, than the natives of different parts of Great Britain vary from each other. It is customary in Europe to call all Americans, Yankees; but it is as much a misnomer as it would be to call all Europeans Frenchmen. Throughout these works it will be observed, that Mr. Slick’s pronunciation is that of the Yankee, or an inhabitant of the rural districts of New England. His conversation is generally purely so; but in some instances he uses, as his countrymen frequently do from choice, phrases which, though Americanisms, are not of Eastern origin. Wholly to exclude these would be to violate the usages of American life; to introduce them oftener would be to confound two dissimilar dialects, and to make an equal departure from the truth. Every section has its own characteristic dialect, a very small portion of which it has imparted to its neighbours. The dry, quaint humour of New England is occasionally found in the west, and the rich gasconade and exaggerative language of the west migrates not unfrequently to the east. This idiomatic exchange is perceptibly on the increase. It arises from the travelling propensities of the Americans, and the constant intercourse mutually maintained by the inhabitants of the different States. A droll or an original expression is thus imported and adopted, and, though not indigenous, soon becomes engrafted on the general stock of the language of the country.”—3rd Series, p. 142.]

“I was ready to bile right over, when as luck would have it, the rain stopt all of a sudden, the sun broke out o’ prison, and I thought I never seed any thing look so green and so beautiful as the country did. ‘Come,’ sais I, ‘now for a walk down the avenue, and a comfortable smoke, and if the man at the gate is up and stirrin’, I will just pop in and breakfast with him and his wife. There is some natur there, but here it’s all cussed rooks and chimbly swallers, and heavy men and fat women, and lazy helps, and Sunday every day in the week.’ So I fills my cigar-case and outs into the passage.

“But here was a fix! One of the doors opened into the great staircase, and which was it? ‘Ay,’ sais I, ‘which is it, do you know?’ ‘Upon my soul, I don’t know,’ sais I; ‘but try, it’s no use to be caged up here like a painter, and out I will, that’s a fact.’

“So I stops and studies, ‘that’s it,’ sais I, and I opens a door: it was a bedroom—it was the likely chambermaid’s.

“‘Softly, Sir,’ sais she, a puttin’ of her finger on her lip, ‘don’t make no noise; Missus will hear you.’

“‘Yes,’ sais I, ‘I won’t make no noise;’ and I outs and shuts the door too arter me gently.

“‘What next?’ sais I; ‘why you fool, you,’ sais I, ‘why didn’t you ax the sarvant maid, which door it was?’ ‘Why I was so conflastrigated,’ sais I, ‘I didn’t think of it. Try that door,’ well I opened another, it belonged to one o’ the horrid hansum stranger galls that dined at table yesterday. When she seed me, she gave a scream, popt her head onder the clothes, like a terrapin, and vanished—well I vanished too.

“‘Ain’t this too bad?’ sais I; ‘I wish I could open a man’s door, I’d lick him out of spite; I hope I may be shot if I don’t, and I doubled up my fist, for I didn’t like it a spec, and opened another door—it was the housekeeper’s. ‘Come,’ sais I, ‘I won’t be balked no more.’ She sot up and fixed her cap. A woman never forgets the becomins.

“‘Anything I can do for you, Sir?’ sais she, and she raelly did look pretty; all good natur’d people, it appears to me, do look so.

“‘Will you be so good as to tell me, which door leads to the staircase, Marm?’ sais I.

“‘Oh, is that all?’ sais she, (I suppose, she thort I wanted her to get up and get breakfast for me,) ‘it’s the first on the right, and she fixed her cap agin’ and laid down, and I took the first on the right and off like a blowed out candle. There was the staircase. I walked down, took my hat, onbolted the outer door, and what a beautiful day was there. I lit my cigar, I breathed freely, and I strolled down the avenue.

“The bushes glistened, and the grass glistened, and the air was sweet, and the birds sung, and there was natur’ once more. I walked to the lodge; they had breakfasted had the old folks, so I chatted away with them for a considerable of a spell about matters and things in general, and then turned towards the house agin’. ‘Hallo!’ sais I, ‘what’s this? warn’t that a drop of rain?’ I looks up, it was another shower by Gosh. I pulls foot for dear life: it was tall walking you may depend, but the shower wins, (comprehensive as my legs be), and down it comes, as hard as all possest. ‘Take it easy, Sam,’ sais I, ‘your flint is fixed; you are wet thro’—runnin’ won’t dry you,’ and I settled down to a careless walk, quite desperate.

“‘Nothin’ in natur’, unless it is an Ingin, is so treacherous as the climate here. It jist clears up on purpose I do believe, to tempt you out without your umbreller, and jist as sure as you trust it and leave it to home, it clouds right up, and sarves you out for it—it does indeed. What a sight of new clothes I’ve spilte here, for the rain has a sort of dye in it. It stains so, it alters the colour of the cloth, for the smoke is filled with gas and all sorts of chemicals. Well, back I goes to my room agin’ to the rooks, chimbly swallers, and all, leavin’ a great endurin’ streak of wet arter me all the way, like a cracked pitcher that leaks; onriggs, and puts on dry clothes from head to foot.

“By this time breakfast is ready; but the English don’t do nothin’ like other folks; I don’t know whether it’s affectation, or bein’ wrong in the head—a little of both I guess. Now where do you suppose the solid part of breakfast is, Squire? Why, it’s on the side-board—I hope I may be shot if it ain’t—well, the tea and coffee are on the table, to make it as onconvenient as possible.

“Says I, to the lady of the house, as I got up to help myself, for I was hungry enough to make beef ache I know. ‘Aunty,’ sais I, ‘you’ll excuse me, but why don’t you put the eatables on the table, or else put the tea on the side-board? They’re like man and wife, they don’t ought to be separated, them two.’

“She looked at me, oh what a look of pity it was”, as much as to say, ‘Where have you been all your born days, not to know better nor that?—but I guess you don’t know better in the States—how could you know any thing there?’ But she only said it was the custom here, for she was a very purlite old woman, was Aunty.

“Well sense is sense, let it grow where it will, and I guess we raise about the best kind, which is common sense, and I warn’t to be put down with short metre, arter that fashion. So I tried the old man; sais I, ‘Uncle,’ sais I, ‘if you will divorce the eatables from the drinkables that way, why not let the servants come and tend. It’s monstrous onconvenient and ridikilous to be a jumpin’ up for everlastinly that way; you can’t sit still one blessed minit.’

“‘We think it pleasant,’ said he, ‘sometimes to dispense with their attendance.’

“‘Exactly,’ sais I, ‘then dispense with sarvants at dinner, for when the wine is in, the wit is out.’ (I said that to compliment him, for the critter had no wit in at no time,) ‘and they hear all the talk. But at breakfast every one is only half awake, (especially when you rise so airly as you do in this country,’ sais I, but the old critter couldn’t see a joke, even if he felt it, and he didn’t know I was a funnin’.) ‘Folks are considerably sharp set at breakfast,’ sais I, ‘and not very talkative. That’s the right time to have sarvants to tend on you.’

“‘What an idea!’ said he, and he puckered up his pictur, and the way he stared was a caution to an owl.

“Well, we sot and sot till I was tired, so thinks I, ‘what’s next?’ for it’s rainin’ agin as hard as ever.’ So I took a turn in the study to sarch for a book, but there was nothin’ there, but a Guide to the Sessions, Burn’s Justice, and a book of London club rules, and two or three novels. He said he got books from the sarkilatin’ library.

“‘Lunch is ready.’

“‘What, eatin’ agin? My goody!’ thinks I, ‘if you are so fond of it, why the plague don’t you begin airly? If you’d a had it at five o’clock this morning, I’d a done justice to it; now I couldn’t touch it if I was to die.’

“There it was, though. Help yourself, and no thanks, for there is no sarvants agin. The rule here is, no talk no sarvants—and when it’s all talk, it’s all sarvants.

“Thinks I to myself, ‘now, what shall I do till dinner-time, for it rains so there is no stirrin’ out?—Waiter, where is eldest son?—he and I will have a game of billiards, I guess.’

“‘He is laying down, sir.’

“‘Shows his sense,’ sais I, ‘I see, he is not the fool I took him to be. If I could sleep in the day, I’de turn in too. Where is second son?’

“‘Left this mornin’ in the close carriage, sir.’

“‘Oh cuss him, it was him then was it?’

“‘What, Sir?’

“‘That woke them confounded rooks up, out o’ their fust nap, and kick’t up such a bobbery. Where is the Parson?’

“‘Which one, Sir?’

“‘The one that’s so fond of fishing.’

“‘Ain’t up yet, Sir.’

“‘Well, the old boy, that wore breeches.’

“Out on a sick visit to one of the cottages, Sir.’

“When he comes in, send him to me, I’m shockin’ sick.’

“With that I goes to look arter the two pretty galls in the drawin’ room; and there was the ladies a chatterin’ away like any thing. The moment I came in it was as dumb as a quaker’s meetin’. They all hauled up at once, like a stage-coach to an inn-door, from a hand-gallop to a stock still stand. I seed men warn’t wanted there, it warn’t the custom so airly, so I polled out o’ that creek, starn first. They don’t like men in the mornin’, in England, do the ladies; they think ‘em in the way.

“‘What on airth, shall I do?’ says I, ‘it’s nothin’ but rain, rain, rain—here in this awful dismal country. Nobody smokes, nobody talks, nobody plays cards, nobody fires at a mark, and nobody trades; only let me get thro’ this juicy day, and I am done: let me get out of this scrape, and if I am caught agin, I’ll give you leave to tell me of it, in meetin’. It tante pretty, I do suppose to be a jawin’ with the butler, but I’ll make an excuse for a talk, for talk comes kinder nateral to me, like suction to a snipe.’

“‘Waiter?’

“‘Sir.’

“‘Galls don’t like to be tree’d here of a mornin’ do they?’

“‘Sir.’

“‘It’s usual for the ladies,’ sais I, ‘to be together in the airly part of the forenoon here, ain’t it, afore the gentlemen jine them?’

“‘Yes, Sir.’

“‘It puts me in mind,’ sais I, ‘of the old seals down to Sable Island—you know where Sable Isle is, don’t you?’

“‘Yes, Sir, it’s in the cathedral down here.’

“‘No, no, not that, it’s an island on the coast of Nova Scotia. You know where that is sartainly.’

“‘I never heard of it, Sir.’

“‘Well, Lord love you! you know what an old seal is?’

“‘Oh, yes, sir, I’ll get you my master’s in a moment.’

And off he sot full chisel.

“Cus him! he is as stupid as a rook, that crittur, it’s no use to tell him a story, and now I think of it, I will go and smoke them black imps of darkness,—the rooks.’

“So I goes up stairs, as slowly as I cleverly could, jist liftin’ one foot arter another as if it had a fifty-six tied to it, on pupus to spend time; lit a cigar, opened the window nearest the rooks, and smoked, but oh the rain killed all the smoke in a minite; it didn’t even make one on ‘em sneeze. ‘Dull musick this, Sam,’ sais I, ‘ain’t it? Tell you what: I’ll put on my ile-skin, take an umbreller and go and talk to the stable helps, for I feel as lonely as a catamount, and as dull as a bachelor beaver. So I trampousses off to the stable, and says I to the head man, ‘A smart little hoss that,’ sais I, ‘you are a cleaning of: he looks like a first chop article that.’

“‘Y mae’,’ sais he.

“‘Hullo,’ sais I, ‘what in natur’ is this? Is it him that can’t speak English, or me that can’t onderstand? for one on us is a fool, that’s sartain. I’ll try him agin.

“So I sais to him, ‘He looks,’ sais I, ‘as if he’d trot a considerable good stick, that horse,’ sais I, ‘I guess he is a goer.’

“Y’ mae, ye un trotter da,’ sais he.

“‘Creation!’ sais I, ‘if this don’t beat gineral trainin’. I have heerd in my time, broken French, broken Scotch, broken Irish, broken Yankee, broken Nigger, and broken Indgin; but I have hearn two pure genewine languages to-day, and no mistake, rael rook, and rael Britton, and I don’t exactly know which I like wus. It’s no use to stand talkin’ to this critter. Good-bye,’ sais I.

“Now what do you think he said? Why, you would suppose he’d say good-bye too, wouldn’t you? Well, he didn’t, nor nothin’ like it, but he jist ups, and sais, ‘Forwelloaugh,’ he did, upon my soul. I never felt so stumpt afore in all my life. Sais I, ‘Friend, here is half a dollar for you; it arn’t often I’m brought to a dead stare, and when I am, I am willin’ to pay for it.’

“There’s two languages, Squire, that’s univarsal: the language of love, and the language of money; the galls onderstand the one, and the men onderstand the other, all the wide world over, from Canton to Niagara. I no sooner showed him the half dollar, than it walked into his pocket, a plaguy sight quicker than it will walk out, I guess.

“Sais I, ‘Friend, you’ve taken the consait out of me properly. Captain Hall said there warn’t a man, woman, or child, in the whole of the thirteen united univarsal worlds of our great Republic, that could speak pure English, and I was a goin’ to kick him for it; but he is right, arter all. There ain’t one livin’ soul on us can; I don’t believe they ever as much as heerd it, for I never did, till this blessed day, and there are few things I haven’t either see’d, or heern tell of. Yes, we can’t speak English, do you take?’ ‘Dim comrag,’ sais he, which in Yankee, means, “that’s no English,” and he stood, looked puzzled, and scratched his head, rael hansum, ‘Dim comrag,’ sais he.

“Well, it made me larf spiteful. I felt kinder wicked, and as I had a hat on, and I couldn’t scratch my head, I stood jist like him, clown fashion, with my eyes wanderin’ and my mouth wide open, and put my hand behind me, and scratched there; and I stared, and looked puzzled too, and made the same identical vacant face he did, and repeated arter him slowly, with another scratch, mocking him like, ‘Dim comrag.’

“Such a pair o’ fools you never saw, Squire, since the last time you shaved afore a lookin’ glass; and the stable boys larfed, and he larfed, and I larfed, and it was the only larf I had all that juicy day.

“Well, I turns agin to the door; but it’s the old story over again—rain, rain, rain; spatter, spatter, spatter,—‘I can’t stop here with these true Brittons,’ sais I, ‘guess I’ll go and see the old Squire: he is in his study.’

“So I goes there: ‘Squire,’ sais I, ‘let me offer you a rael genewine Havana cigar; I can recommend it to you.’ He thanks me, he don’t smoke, but plague take him, he don’t say, ‘If you are fond of smokin’, pray smoke yourself.’ And he is writing I won’t interrupt him.

“‘Waiter, order me a post-chaise, to be here in the mornin’, when the rooks wake.’

“‘Yes, Sir.’

“Come, I’ll try the women folk in the drawin’-room, agin’. Ladies don’t mind the rain here; they are used to it. It’s like the musk plant, arter you put it to your nose once, you can’t smell it a second time. Oh what beautiful galls they be! What a shame it is to bar a feller out such a day as this. One on ‘em blushes like a red cabbage, when she speaks to me, that’s the one, I reckon, I disturbed this mornin’. Cuss the rooks! I’ll pyson them, and that won’t make no noise.

“She shows me the consarvitery. ‘Take care, Sir, your coat has caught this geranium,’ and she onhitches it. ‘Stop, Sir, you’ll break this jilly flower,’ and she lifts off the coat tail agin; in fact, it’s so crowded, you can’t squeeze along, scarcely, without a doin’ of mischief somewhere or another.

“Next time, she goes first, and then it’s my turn, ‘Stop, Miss,’ sais I, ‘your frock has this rose tree over,’ and I loosens it; once more, ‘Miss, this rose has got tangled,’ and I ontangles it from her furbeloes.

“I wonder what makes my hand shake so, and my heart it bumps so, it has bust a button off. If I stay in this consarvitery, I shan’t consarve myself long, that’s a fact, for this gall has put her whole team on, and is a runnin’ me off the road. ‘Hullo! what’s that? Bell for dressin’ for dinner.’ Thank Heavens! I shall escape from myself, and from this beautiful critter, too, for I’m gettin’ spoony, and shall talk silly presently.

“I don’t like to be left alone with a gall, it’s plaguy apt to set me a soft sawderin’ and a courtin’. There’s a sort of nateral attraction like in this world. Two ships in a calm, are sure to get up alongside of each other, if there is no wind, and they have nothin’ to do, but look at each other; natur’ does it. “Well, even, the tongs and the shovel, won’t stand alone long; they’re sure to get on the same side of the fire, and be sociable; one on ‘em has a loadstone and draws ‘tother, that’s sartain. If that’s the case with hard-hearted things, like oak and iron, what is it with tender hearted things like humans? Shut me up in a ‘sarvatory with a hansum gall of a rainy day, and see if I don’t think she is the sweetest flower in it. Yes, I am glad it is the dinner-bell, for I ain’t ready to marry yet, and when I am, I guess I must get a gall where I got my hoss, in Old Connecticut, and that state takes the shine off of all creation for geese, galls and onions, that’s a fact.

“Well dinner won’t wait, so I ups agin once more near the rooks, to brush up a bit; but there it is agin the same old tune, the whole blessed day, rain, rain, rain. It’s rained all day and don’t talk of stoppin’ nother. How I hate the sound, and how streaked I feel. I don’t mind its huskin’ my voice, for there is no one to talk to, but cuss it, it has softened my bones.

“Dinner is ready; the rain has damped every body’s spirits, and squenched ‘em out; even champaign won’t raise ‘em agin; feedin’ is heavy, talk is heavy, time is heavy, tea is heavy, and there ain’t musick; the only thing that’s light is a bed room candle—heavens and airth how glad I am this ‘juicy day’ is over!”

CHAPTER III. TYING A NIGHT-CAP.

In the preceding sketch I have given Mr. Slick’s account of the English climate, and his opinion of the dulness of a country house, as nearly as possible in his own words. It struck me at the time that they were exaggerated views; but if the weather were unpropitious, and the company not well selected, I can easily conceive, that the impression on his mind would be as strong and as unfavourable, as he has described it to have been.

The climate of England is healthy, and, as it admits of much out-door exercise, and is not subject to any very sudden variation, or violent extremes of heat and cold, it may be said to be good, though not agreeable; but its great humidity is very sensibly felt by Americans and other foreigners accustomed to a dry atmosphere and clear sky. That Mr. Slick should find a rainy day in the country dull, is not to be wondered at; it is probable it would be so any where, to a man who had so few resources, within himself, as the Attache. Much of course depends on the inmates; and the company at the Shropshire house, to which he alludes, do not appear to have been the best calculated to make the state of the weather a matter of indifference to him.

I cannot say, but that I have at times suffered a depression of spirits from the frequent, and sometimes long continued rains of this country; but I do not know that, as an ardent admirer of scenery, I would desire less humidity, if it diminished, as I fear it would, the extraordinary verdure and great beauty of the English landscape. With respect to my own visits at country houses, I have generally been fortunate in the weather, and always in the company; but I can easily conceive, that a man situated as Mr. Slick appears to have been with respect to both, would find the combination intolerably dull. But to return to my narrative.

Early on the following day we accompanied our luggage to the wharf, where a small steamer lay to convey us to the usual anchorage ground of the packets, in the bay. We were attended by a large concourse of people. The piety, learning, unaffected simplicity, and kind disposition of my excellent friend, Mr. Hopewell, were well known and fully appreciated by the people of New York, who were anxious to testify their respect for his virtues, and their sympathy for his unmerited persecution, by a personal escort and a cordial farewell.

“Are all those people going with us, Sam?” said he; “how pleasant it will be to have so many old friends on board, won’t it?”

“No, Sir,” said the Attache, “they are only a goin’ to see you on board—it is a mark of respect to you. They will go down to the “Tyler,” to take their last farewell of you.”

“Well, that’s kind now, ain’t it?” he replied. “I suppose they thought I would feel kinder dull and melancholy like, on leaving my native land this way; and I must say I don’t feel jist altogether right neither. Ever so many things rise right up in my mind, not one arter another, but all together like, so that I can’t take ‘em one by one and reason ‘em down, but they jist overpower me by numbers. You understand me, Sam, don’t you?”

“Poor old critter!” said Mr. Slick to me in an under-tone, “it’s no wonder he is sad, is it? I must try to cheer him up, if I can. Understand you, minister!” said he, “to be sure I do. I have been that way often and often. That was the case when I was to Lowel factories, with the galls a taking of them off in the paintin’ line. The dear little critters kept up such an everlastin’ almighty clatter, clatter, clatter; jabber, jabber, jabber, all talkin’ and chatterin’ at once, you couldn’t hear no blessed one of them; and they jist fairly stunned a feller. For nothin’ in natur’, unless it be perpetual motion, can equal a woman’s tongue. It’s most a pity we hadn’t some of the angeliferous little dears with us too, for they do make the time pass quick, that’s a fact. I want some on ‘em to tie a night-cap for me to-night; I don’t commonly wear one, but I somehow kinder guess, I intend to have one this time, and no mistake.”

“A night-cap, Sam!” said he; “why what on airth do you mean?”

“Why, I’ll tell you, minister,” said he, “you recollect sister Sall, don’t you.”

“Indeed, I do,” said he, “and an excellent girl she is, a dutiful daughter, and a kind and affectionate sister. Yes, she is a good girl is Sally, a very good girl indeed; but what of her?”

“Well, she was a most a beautiful critter, to brew a glass of whiskey toddy, as I ever see’d in all my travels was sister Sall, and I used to call that tipple, when I took it late, a night-cap; apple jack and white nose ain’t the smallest part of a circumstance to it. On such an occasion as this, minister, when a body is leavin’ the greatest nation atween the poles, to go among benighted, ignorant, insolent foreigners, you wouldn’t object to a night-cap, now would you?”

“Well, I don’t know as I would, Sam,” said he; “parting from friends whether temporally or for ever, is a sad thing, and the former is typical of the latter. No, I do not know as I would. We may use these things, but not abuse them. Be temperate, be moderate, but it is a sorry heart that knows no pleasure. Take your night-cap, Sam, and then commend yourself to His safe keeping, who rules the wind and the waves to Him who—”

“Well then, minister, what a dreadful awful looking thing a night-cap is without a tassel, ain’t it? Oh! you must put a tassel on it, and that is another glass. Well then, what is the use of a night-cap, if it has a tassel on it, but has no string, it will slip off your head the very first turn you take; and that is another glass you know. But one string won’t tie a cap; one hand can’t shake hands along with itself: you must have two strings to it, and that brings one glass more. Well then, what is the use of two strings if they ain’t fastened? If you want to keep the cap on, it must be tied, that’s sartain, and that is another go; and then, minister, what an everlastin’ miserable stingy, ongenteel critter a feller must be, that won’t drink to the health of the Female Brewer. Well, that’s another glass to sweethearts and wives, and then turn in for sleep, and that’s what I intend to do to-night. I guess I’ll tie the night-cap this hitch, if I never do agin, and that’s a fact.”

“Oh Sam, Sam,” said Mr. Hopewell, “for a man that is wide awake and duly sober, I never saw one yet that talked such nonsense as you do. You said, you understood me, but you don’t, one mite or morsel; but men are made differently, some people’s narves operate on the brain sensitively and give them exquisite pain or excessive pleasure; other folks seem as if they had no narves at all. You understand my words, but you don’t enter into my feelings. Distressing images rise up in my mind in such rapid succession, I can’t master them, but they master me. They come slower to you, and the moment you see their shadows before you, you turn round to the light, and throw these dark figures behind you. I can’t do that; I could when I was younger, but I can’t now. Reason is comparing two ideas, and drawing an inference. Insanity is, when you have such a rapid succession of ideas, that you can’t compare them. How great then must be the pain when you are almost pressed into insanity and yet retain your reason? What is a broken heart? Is it death? I think it must be very like it, if it is not a figure of speech, for I feel that my heart is broken, and yet I am as sensitive to pain as ever. Nature cannot stand this suffering long. You say these good people have come to take their last farewell of me; most likely, Sam, it is a last farewell. I am an old man now, I am well stricken in years; shall I ever live to see my native land again? I know not, the Lord’s will be done! If I had a wish, I should desire to return to be laid with my kindred, to repose in death with those that were the companions of my earthly pilgrimage; but if it be ordered otherwise. I am ready to say with truth and meekness, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.’”

When this excellent old man said that, Mr. Slick did not enter into his feelings—he did not do him justice. His attachment to and veneration for his aged pastor and friend were quite filial, and such as to do honour to his head and heart. Those persons who have made character a study, will all agree, that the cold exterior of the New England man arises from other causes than a coldness of feeling; much of the rhodomontade of the attache, addressed to Mr. Hopewell, was uttered for the kind purpose of withdrawing his attention from those griefs which preyed so heavily upon his spirits.

“Minister,” said Mr. Slick, “come, cheer up, it makes me kinder dismal to hear you talk so. When Captain McKenzie hanged up them three free and enlightened citizens of ours on board of the—Somers—he gave ‘em three cheers. We are worth half a dozen dead men yet, so cheer up. Talk to these friends of ourn, they might think you considerable starch if you don’t talk, and talk is cheap, it don’t cost nothin’ but breath, a scrape of your hind leg, and a jupe of the head, that’s a fact.”

Having thus engaged him in conversation with his friends, we proceeded on board the steamer, which, in a short time, was alongside of the great “Liner.” The day was now spent, and Mr. Hopewell having taken leave of his escort, retired to his cabin, very much overpowered by his feelings.

Mr. Slick insisted on his companions taking a parting glass with him, and I was much amused with the advice given him by some of his young friends and admirers. He was cautioned to sustain the high character of the nation abroad; to take care that he returned as he went—a true American; to insist upon the possession of the Oregon Territory; to demand and enforce his right position in society; to negotiate the national loan; and above all never to accede to the right of search of slave-vessels; all which having been duly promised, they took an affectionate leave of each other, and we remained on board, intending to depart in the course of the following morning.

As soon as they had gone, Mr. Slick ordered materials for brewing, namely: whisky, hot water, sugar and lemon; and having duly prepared in regular succession the cap, the tassel, and the two strings, filled his tumbler again, and said,

“Come now, Squire, before we turn in, let us tie the night-cap.”

CHAPTER IV. HOME AND THE SEA.

At eleven o’clock the next day the Tyler having shaken out her pinions, and spread them to the breeze, commenced at a rapid rate her long and solitary voyage across the Atlantic. Object after object rose in rapid succession into distinct view, was approached and passed, until leaving the calm and sheltered waters of the bay, we emerged into the ocean, and involuntarily turned to look back upon the land we had left. Long after the lesser hills and low country had disappeared, a few ambitious peaks of the highlands still met the eye, appearing as if they had advanced to the very edge of the water, to prolong the view of us till the last moment.

This coast is a portion of my native continent, for though not a subject of the Republic, I am still an American in its larger sense, having been born in a British province in this hemisphere. I therefore sympathised with the feelings of my two companions, whose straining eyes were still fixed on those dim and distant specks in the horizon.

“There,” said Mr. Slick, rising from his seat, “I believe we have seen the last of home till next time; and this I will say, it is the most glorious country onder the sun; travel where you will, you won’t ditto it no where. It is the toploftiest place in all creation, ain’t it, minister?”

There was no response to all this bombast. It was evident he had not been heard; and turning to Mr. Hopewell, I observed his eyes were fixed intently on the distance, and his mind pre-occupied by painful reflexions, for tears were coursing after each other down his furrowed but placid cheek.

“Squire,” said Mr. Slick to me, “this won’t do. We must not allow him to dwell too long on the thoughts of leaving home, or he’ll droop like any thing, and p’raps, hang his head and fade right away. He is aged and feeble, and every thing depends on keeping up his spirits. An old plant must be shaded, well watered, and tended, or you can’t transplant it no how, you can fix it, that’s a fact. He won’t give ear to me now, for he knows I can’t talk serious, if I was to try; but he will listen to you. Try to cheer him up, and I will go down below and give you a chance.”

As soon as I addressed him, he started and said, “Oh! is it you, Squire? come and sit down by me, my friend. I can talk to you, and I assure you I take great pleasure in doing so I cannot always talk to Sam: he is excited now; he is anticipating great pleasure from his visit to England, and is quite boisterous in the exuberance of his spirits. I own I am depressed at times; it is natural I should be, but I shall endeavour not to be the cause of sadness in others. I not only like cheerfulness myself, but I like to promote it; it is a sign of an innocent mind, and a heart in peace with God and in charity with man. All nature is cheerful, its voice is harmonious, and its countenance smiling; the very garb in which it is clothed is gay; why then should man be an exception to every thing around him? Sour sectarians, who address our fears, rather than our affections, may say what they please, Sir, but mirth is not inconsistent with religion, but rather an evidence that our religion is right. If I appear dull, therefore, do not suppose it is because I think it necessary to be so, but because certain reflections are natural to me as a clergyman, as a man far advanced in years, and as a pilgrim who leaves his home at a period of life, when the probabilities are, he may not be spared to revisit it.

“I am like yourself, a colonist by birth. At the revolution I took no part in the struggle; my profession and my habits both exempted me. Whether the separation was justifiable or not, either on civil or religious principles, it is not now necessary to discuss. It took place, however, and the colonies became a nation, and after due consideration, I concluded to dwell among mine own people. There I have continued, with the exception of one or two short journeys for the benefit of my health, to the present period. Parting with those whom I have known so long and loved so well, is doubtless a trial to one whose heart is still warm, while his nerves are weak, and whose affections are greater than his firmness. But I weary you with this egotism?”

“Not at all,” I replied, “I am both instructed and delighted by your conversation. Pray proceed, Sir.”

“Well it is kind, very kind of you,” said he, “to say so. I will explain these sensations to you, and then endeavour never to allude to them again. America is my birth-place and my home. Home has two significations, a restricted one and an enlarged one; in its restricted sense, it is the place of our abode, it includes our social circle, our parents, children, and friends, and contains the living and the dead; the past and the present generations of our race. By a very natural process, the scene of our affections soon becomes identified with them, and a portion of our regard is transferred from animate to inanimate objects. The streams on which we sported, the mountains on which we clambered, the fields in which we wandered, the school where we were instructed, the church where we worshipped, the very bell whose pensive melancholy music recalled our wandering steps in youth, awaken in after-years many a tender thought, many a pleasing recollection, and appeal to the heart with the force and eloquence of love. The country again contains all these things, the sphere is widened, new objects are included, and this extension of the circle is love of country. It is thus that the nation is said in an enlarged sense, to be our home also.

“This love of country is both natural and laudable: so natural, that to exclude a man from his country, is the greatest punishment that country can inflict upon him; and so laudable, that when it becomes a principle of action, it forms the hero and the patriot. How impressive, how beautiful, how dignified was the answer of the Shunamite woman to Elisha, who in his gratitude to her for her hospitality and kindness, made her a tender of his interest at court. ‘Wouldst thou,’ said he, ‘be spoken for to the king, or to the captain of the host?’—What an offer was that, to gratify her ambition or flatter her pride!—‘I dwell,’ said she, ‘among mine own people.’ What a characteristic answer! all history furnishes no parallel to it.

“I too dwell ‘among my own people:’ my affections are there, and there also is the sphere of my duties; and if I am depressed by the thoughts of parting from ‘my people,’ I will do you the justice to believe, that you would rather bear with its effects, than witness the absence of such natural affection.

“But this is not the sole cause: independently of some afflictions of a clerical nature in my late parish, to which it is not necessary to allude, the contemplation of this vast and fathomless ocean, both from its novelty and its grandeur, overwhelms me. At home I am fond of tracing the Creator in his works. From the erratic comet in the firmament, to the flower that blossoms in the field; in all animate, and inanimate matter; in all that is animal, vegetable or mineral, I see His infinite wisdom, almighty power, and everlasting glory.

“But that Home is inland; I have not beheld the sea now for many years. I never saw it without emotion; I now view it with awe. What an emblem of eternity!—Its dominion is alone reserved to Him, who made it. Changing yet changeless—ever varying, yet always the same. How weak and powerless is man! how short his span of life, when he is viewed in connexion with the sea! He has left no trace upon it—it will not receive the impress of his hands; it obeys no laws, but those imposed upon it by Him, who called it into existence; generation after generation has looked upon it as we now do—and where are they? Like yonder waves that press upon each other in regular succession, they have passed away for ever; and their nation, their language, their temples and their tombs have perished with them. But there is the Undying one. When man was formed, the voice of the ocean was heard, as it now is, speaking of its mysteries, and proclaiming His glory, who alone lifteth its waves or stilleth the rage thereof.

“And yet, my dear friend, for so you must allow me to call you, awful as these considerations are, which it suggests, who are they that go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business in great waters? The sordid trader, and the armed and mercenary sailor: gold or blood is their object, and the fear of God is not always in them. Yet the sea shall give up its dead, as well as the grave; and all shall—

“But it is not my intention to preach to you. To intrude serious topics upon our friends at all times, has a tendency to make both ourselves and our topics distasteful. I mention these things to you, not that they are not obvious to you and every other right-minded man, or that I think I can clothe them in more attractive language, or utter them with more effect than others; but merely to account for my absence of mind and evident air of abstraction. I know my days are numbered, and in the nature of things, that those that are left, cannot be many.

“Pardon me, therefore, I pray you, my friend; make allowances for an old man, unaccustomed to leave home, and uncertain whether he shall ever be permitted to return to it. I feel deeply and sensibly your kindness in soliciting my company on this tour, and will endeavour so to regulate my feelings as not to make you regret your invitation. I shall not again recur to these topics, or trouble you with any further reflections ‘on Home and the Sea.’”

CHAPTER V. T’OTHER EEND OF THE GUN.

“Squire,” said Mr. Hopewell, one morning when we were alone on the quarter-deck, “sit down by me, if you please. I wish to have a little private conversation with you. I am a good deal concerned about Sam. I never liked this appointment he has received: neither his education, his habits, nor his manners have qualified him for it. He is fitted for a trader and for nothing else. He looks upon politics as he does upon his traffic in clocks, rather as profitable to himself than beneficial to others. Self is predominant with him. He overrates the importance of his office, as he will find when he arrives in London; but what is still worse, he overrates the importance of the opinions of others regarding the States.

“He has been reading that foolish book of Cooper’s ‘Gleanings in Europe,’ and intends to shew fight, he says. He called my attention, yesterday, to this absurd passage, which he maintains is the most manly and sensible thing that Cooper ever wrote: ‘This indifference to the feelings of others, is a dark spot on the national manners of England. The only way to put it down, is to become belligerent yourself, by introducing Pauperism, Radicalism, Ireland, the Indies, or some other sore point. Like all who make butts of others, they do not manifest the proper forbearance when the tables are turned. Of this, I have had abundance of proof in my own experience. Sometimes their remarks are absolutely rude, and personally offensive, as a disregard of one’s national character, is a disrespect to his principles; but as personal quarrels on such grounds are to be avoided, I have uniformly retorted in kind, if there was the smallest opening for such retaliation.”

“Now, every gentleman in the States repudiates such sentiments as these. My object in mentioning the subject to you, is to request the favour of you, to persuade Sam not to be too sensitive on these topics; not to take offence, where it is not intended; and, above all, rather to vindicate his nationality by his conduct, than to justify those aspersions, by his intemperate behaviour. But here he comes; I shall withdraw and leave you together.”

Fortunately, Mr. Slick commenced talking upon a topic, which naturally led to that to which Mr. Hopewell had wished me to direct his attention.

“Well, Squire,” said he, “I am glad too, you are a goin’ to England along with me: we will take a rise out of John Bull, won’t we?—We’ve hit Blue-nose and Brother Jonathan both pretty considerable tarnation hard, and John has split his sides with larfter. Let’s tickle him now, by feeling his own short ribs, and see how he will like it; we’ll soon see whose hide is the thickest, hisn or ourn, won’t we? Let’s see whether he will say chee, chee, chee, when he gets to the t’other eend of the gun.”

“What is the meaning of that saying?” I asked. “I never heard it before.”

“Why,” said he, “when I was a considerable of a grown up saplin of a boy to Slickville, I used to be a gunnin’ for everlastinly amost in our hickory woods, a shootin’ of squirrels with a rifle, and I got amazin’ expart at it. I could take the head off of them chatterin’ little imps, when I got a fair shot at ‘em with a ball, at any reasonable distance, a’most in nine cases out of ten.

“Well, one day I was out as usual, and our Irish help Paddy Burke was along with me, and every time he see’d me a drawin’ of the bead fine on ‘em, he used to say, ‘Well, you’ve an excellent gun entirely, Master Sam. Oh by Jakers! the squirrel has no chance with that gun, it’s an excellent one entirely.’

“At last I got tired a hearin’ of him a jawin’ so for ever and a day about the excellent gun entirely; so, sais I, ‘You fool you, do you think it’s the gun that does it entirely as you say; ain’t there a little dust of skill in it? Do you think you could fetch one down?’

“‘Oh, it’s a capital gun entirely,’ said he.

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘if it ‘tis, try it now, and see what sort of a fist you’ll make of it.’

“So Paddy takes the rifle, lookin’ as knowin’ all the time as if he had ever seed one afore. Well, there was a great red squirrel, on the tip-top of a limb, chatterin’ away like any thing, chee, chee, chee, proper frightened; he know’d it warn’t me, that was a parsecutin’ of him, and he expected he’d be hurt. They know’d me, did the little critters, when they seed me, and they know’d I never had hurt one on ‘em, my balls never givin’ ‘em a chance to feel what was the matter of them; but Pat they didn’t know, and they see’d he warn’t the man to handle ‘old Bull-Dog.’ I used to call my rifle Bull-Dog, cause she always bit afore she barked.

“Pat threw one foot out astarn, like a skullin’ oar, and then bent forrards like a hoop, and fetched the rifle slowly up to the line, and shot to the right eye. Chee, chee, chee, went the squirrel. He see’d it was wrong. ‘By the powers!’ sais Pat, ‘this is a left-handed boot,’ and he brought the gun to the other shoulder, and then shot to his left eye. ‘Fegs!’ sais Pat, ‘this gun was made for a squint eye, for I can’t get a right strait sight of the critter, either side.’ So I fixt it for him and told him which eye to sight by. ‘An excellent gun entirely,’ sais Pat, ‘but it tante made like the rifles we have.’

“Ain’t they strange critters, them Irish, Squire? That feller never handled a rifle afore in all his born days; but unless it was to a priest, he wouldn’t confess that much for the world. They are as bad as the English that way; they always pretend they know every thing.

“‘Come, Pat,’ sais I, ‘blaze away now.’ Back goes the hind leg agin, up bends the back, and Bull-Dog rises slowly to his shoulder; and then he stared, and stared, until his arm shook like palsy. Chee, chee, chee, went the squirrel agin, louder than ever, as much as to say, ‘Why the plague don’t you fire? I’m not a goin’ to stand here all day, for you this way,’ and then throwin’ his tail over his back, he jumped on to the next branch.

“‘By the piper that played before Moses!’ sais Pat, ‘I’ll stop your chee, chee, cheein’ for you, you chatterin’ spalpeen of a devil, you’. So he ups with the rifle agin, takes a fair aim at him, shuts both eyes, turns his head round, and fires; and “Bull-Dog,” findin’ he didn’t know how to hold her tight to the shoulder, got mad, and kicked him head over heels, on the broad of his back. Pat got up, a makin’ awful wry faces, and began to limp, to show how lame his shoulder was, and to rub his arm, to see if he had one left, and the squirrel ran about the tree hoppin’ mad, hollerin’ out as loud as it could scream, chee, chee, chee.

“‘Oh bad luck to you,’ sais Pat, ‘if you had a been at t’other eend of the gun,’ and he rubbed his shoulder agin, and cried like a baby, ‘you wouldn’t have said chee, chee, chee, that way, I know.’

“Now when your gun, Squire, was a knockin’ over Blue-nose, and makin’ a proper fool of him, and a knockin’ over Jonathan, and a spilin’ of his bran-new clothes, the English sung out chee, chee, chee, till all was blue agin. You had an excellent gun entirely then: let’s see if they will sing out chee, chee, chee, now, when we take a shot at them. Do you take?” and he laid his thumb on his nose, as if perfectly satisfied with the application of his story. “Do you take, Squire? you have an excellent gun entirely, as Pat says. It’s what I call puttin’ the leake into ‘em properly. If you had a written this book fust, the English would have said your gun was no good; it wouldn’t have been like the rifles they had seen. Lord, I could tell you stories about the English, that would make even them cryin’ devils the Mississippi crocodiles laugh, if they was to hear ‘em.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Slick,” I said, “this is not the temper with which you should visit England.”

“What is the temper,” he replied with much warmth, “that they visit us in? Cuss ‘em! Look at Dickens; was there ever a man made so much of, except La Fayette? And who was Dickens? Not a Frenchman that is a friend to us, not a native that has a claim on us; not a colonist, who, though English by name is still an American by birth, six of one and half a dozen of t’other, and therefore a kind of half-breed brother. No! he was a cussed Britisher; and what is wus, a British author; and yet, because he was a man of genius, because genius has the ‘tarnal globe for its theme, and the world for its home, and mankind for its readers, and bean’t a citizen of this state or that state, but a native of the univarse, why we welcomed him, and feasted him, and leveed him, and escorted him, and cheered him, and honoured him, did he honour us? What did he say of us when he returned? Read his book.

“No, don’t read his book, for it tante worth readin’. Has he said one word of all that reception in his book? that book that will be read, translated, and read agin all over Europe—has he said one word of that reception? Answer me that, will you? Darned the word, his memory was bad; he lost it over the tafrail when he was sea-sick. But his notebook was safe under lock and key, and the pigs in New York, and the chap the rats eat in jail, and the rough man from Kentucky, and the entire raft of galls emprisoned in one night, and the spittin’ boxes and all that stuff, warn’t trusted to memory, it was noted down, and printed.

“But it tante no matter. Let any man give me any sarce in England, about my country, or not give me the right po-sition in society, as Attache to our Legation, and, as Cooper says, I’ll become belligerent, too, I will, I snore. I can snuff a candle with a pistol as fast as you can light it; hang up an orange, and I’ll first peel it with ball and then quarter it. Heavens! I’ll let daylight dawn through some o’ their jackets, I know.

“Jube, you infarnal black scoundrel, you odoriferous nigger you, what’s that you’ve got there?”

“An apple, massa.”

“Take off your cap and put that apple on your head, then stand sideways by that port-hole, and hold steady, or you might stand a smart chance to have your wool carded, that’s all.”

Then taking a pistol out of the side-pocket of his mackintosh, he deliberately walked over to the other side of the deck, and examined his priming.

“Good heavens, Mr. Slick!” said I in great alarm, “what are you about?”

“I am goin’,” he said with the greatest coolness, but at the same time with equal sternness, “to bore a hole through that apple, Sir.”

“For shame! Sir,” I said. “How can you think of such a thing? Suppose you were to miss your shot, and kill that unfortunate boy?”

“I won’t suppose no such thing, Sir. I can’t miss it. I couldn’t miss it if I was to try. Hold your head steady, Jube—and if I did, it’s no great matter. The onsarcumcised Amalikite ain’t worth over three hundred dollars at the furthest, that’s a fact; and the way he’d pyson a shark ain’t no matter. Are you ready, Jube?”

“Yes, massa.”

“You shall do no such thing, Sir,” I said, seizing his arm with both my hands. “If you attempt to shoot at that apple, I shall hold no further intercourse with you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sir.”

“Ky! massa,” said Jube, “let him fire, Sar; he no hurt Jube; he no foozle de hair. I isn’t one mossel afeerd. He often do it, jist to keep him hand in, Sar. Massa most a grand shot, Sar. He take off de ear oh de squirrel so slick, he neber miss it, till he go scratchin’ his head. Let him appel hab it, massa.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Slick, “he is a Christian is Jube, he is as good as a white Britisher: same flesh, only a leetle, jist a leetle darker; same blood, only not quite so old, ain’t quite so much tarter on the bottle as a lord’s has; oh him and a Britisher is all one brother—oh by all means—

   Him fader’s hope—him mudder’s joy,
   Him darlin little nigger boy.

You’d better cry over him, hadn’t you. Buss him, call him brother, hug him, give him the “Abolition” kiss, write an article on slavery, like Dickens; marry him to a white gall to England, get him a saint’s darter with a good fortin, and well soon see whether her father was a talkin’ cant or no, about niggers. Cuss ‘em, let any o’ these Britishers give me slack, and I’ll give ‘em cranberry for their goose, I know. I’d jump right down their throat with spurs on, and gallop their sarce out.”

“Mr. Slick I’ve done; I shall say no more; we part, and part for ever. I had no idea whatever, that a man, whose whole conduct has evinced a kind heart, and cheerful disposition, could have entertained such a revengeful spirit, or given utterance to such unchristian and uncharitable language, as you have used to-day. We part”—

“No, we don’t,” said he; “don’t kick afore you are spurred. I guess I have feelins as well as other folks have, that’s a fact; one can’t help being ryled to hear foreigners talk this way; and these critters are enough to make a man spotty on the back. I won’t deny I’ve got some grit, but I ain’t ugly. Pat me on the back and I soon cool down, drop in a soft word and I won’t bile over; but don’t talk big, don’t threaten, or I curl directly.”

“Mr. Slick,” said I, “neither my countrymen, the Nova Scotians, nor your friends, the Americans, took any thing amiss, in our previous remarks, because, though satirical, they were good natured. There was nothing malicious in them. They were not made for the mere purpose of shewing them up, but were incidental to the topic we were discussing, and their whole tenor shewed that while “we were alive to the ludicrous, we fully appreciated, and properly valued their many excellent and sterling qualities. My countrymen, for whose good I published them, had the most reason to complain, for I took the liberty to apply ridicule to them with no sparing hand. They understood the motive, and joined in the laugh, which was raised at their expense. Let us treat the English in the same style; let us keep our temper. John Bull is a good-natured fellow, and has no objection to a joke, provided it is not made the vehicle of conveying an insult. Don’t adopt Cooper’s maxims; nobody approves of them, on either side of the water; don’t be too thin-skinned. If the English have been amused by the sketches their tourists have drawn of, the Yankees, perhaps the Americans may laugh over our sketches of the English. Let us make both of them smile, if we can, and endeavour to offend neither. If Dickens omitted to mention the festivals that were given in honour of his arrival in the States, he was doubtless actuated by a desire to avoid the appearance of personal vanity. A man cannot well make himself the hero of his own book.”

“Well, well,” said he, “I believe the black ox did tread on my toe that time. I don’t know but what you’re right. Soft words are good enough in their way, but still they butter no parsnips, as the sayin’ is. John may be a good-natured critter, tho’ I never see’d any of it yet; and he may be fond of a joke, and p’raps is, seein’ that he haw-haws considerable loud at his own. Let’s try him at all events. We’ll soon see how he likes other folks’ jokes; I have my scruple about him, I must say. I am dubersome whether he will say ‘chee, chee, chee’ when he gets ‘T’other eend of the gun.’”

CHAPTER VI. SMALL POTATOES AND FEW IN A HILL.

“Pray Sir,” said one of my fellow passengers, “can you tell me why the Nova Scotians are called ‘Blue-noses?’”

“It is the name of a potatoe,” said I, “which they produce in great perfection, and boast to be the best in the world. The Americans have, in consequence, given them the nick-name of “Blue-noses.’”

“And now,” said Mr. Slick,” as you have told the entire stranger, who a Blue-nose is, I’ll jist up and tell him what he is.

“One day, Stranger, I was a joggin’ along into Windsor on Old Clay, on a sort of butter and eggs’ gait (for a fast walk on a journey tires a horse considerable), and who should I see a settin’ straddle legs “on the fence, but Squire Gabriel Soogit, with his coat off, a holdin’ of a hoe in one hand, and his hat in t’other, and a blowin’ like a porpus proper tired.

“‘Why, Squire Gabe,’ sais I, ‘what is the matter of you? you look as if you couldn’t help yourself; who is dead and what is to pay now, eh?’

“‘Fairly beat out,’ said he, ‘I am shockin’ tired. I’ve been hard at work all the mornin’; a body has to stir about considerable smart in this country, to make a livin’, I tell you.’

“I looked over the fence, and I seed he had hoed jist ten hills of potatoes, and that’s all. Fact I assure you.

“Sais he, ‘Mr. Slick, tell you what, of all the work I ever did in my life I like hoein’ potatoes the best, and I’d rather die than do that, it makes my back ache so.”

“‘Good airth” and seas,’ sais I to myself, ‘what a parfect pictur of a lazy man that is! How far is it to Windsor?’

“‘Three miles,’ sais he. I took out my pocket-book purtendin’ to write down the distance, but I booked his sayin’ in my way-bill.

“Yes, that is a Blue-nose; is it any wonder, Stranger, he is small potatoes and few in a hill?”

CHAPTER VII. A GENTLEMAN AT LARGE.

It is not my intention to record any of the ordinary incidents of a sea voyage: the subject is too hackneyed and too trite; and besides, when the topic is seasickness, it is infectious and the description nauseates. Hominem pagina nostra sapit. The proper study of mankind is man; human nature is what I delight in contemplating; I love to trace out and delineate the springs of human action.

Mr. Slick and Mr. Hopewell are both studies. The former is a perfect master of certain chords; He has practised upon them, not for philosophical, but for mercenary purposes. He knows the depth, and strength, and tone of vanity, curiosity, pride, envy, avarice, superstition, nationality, and local and general prejudice. He has learned the effect of these, not because they contribute to make him wiser, but because they make him richer; not to enable him to regulate his conduct in life, but to promote and secure the increase of his trade.

Mr. Hopewell, on the contrary, has studied the human heart as a philanthropist, as a man whose business it was to minister to it, to cultivate and improve it. His views are more sound and more comprehensive than those of the other’s, and his objects are more noble. They are both extraordinary men.

They differed, however, materially in their opinion of England and its institutions. Mr. Slick evidently viewed them with prejudice. Whether this arose from the supercilious manner of English tourists in America, or from the ridicule they have thrown upon Republican society, in the books of travels they have published, after their return to Europe, I could not discover; but it soon became manifest to me, that Great Britain did not stand so high in his estimation, as the colonies did.

Mr. Hopewell, on the contrary, from early associations, cherished a feeling of regard and respect for England; and when his opinion was asked, he always gave it with great frankness and impartiality. When there was any thing he could not approve of, it appeared to be a subject of regret to him; whereas, the other seized upon it at once as a matter of great exultation. The first sight we had of land naturally called out their respective opinions.

As we were pacing the deck speculating upon the probable termination of our voyage, Cape Clear was descried by the look-out on the mast-head.

“Hallo! what’s that? why if it ain’t land ahead, as I’m alive!” said Mr. Slick. “Well, come this is pleasant too, we have made amost an everlastin’ short voyage of it, hante we; and I must say I like land quite as well as sea, in a giniral way, arter all; but, Squire, here is the first Britisher. That critter that’s a clawin’ up the side of the vessel like a cat, is the pilot: now do for goodness gracious sake, jist look at him, and hear him.”

“What port?”

“Liverpool.”

“Keep her up a point.”

“Do you hear that, Squire? that’s English, or what we used to call to singing school short metre. The critter don’t say a word, even as much as ‘by your leave’; but jist goes and takes his post, and don’t ask the name of the vessel, or pass the time o’ day with the Captin. That ain’t in the bill, it tante paid for that; if it was, he’d off cap, touch the deck three times with his forehead, and ‘Slam’ like a Turk to his Honour the Skipper.

“There’s plenty of civility here to England if you pay for it: you can buy as much in five minits, as will make you sick for a week; but if you don’t pay for it, you not only won’t get it, but you get sarce instead of it, that is if you are fool enough to stand and have it rubbed in. They are as cold as Presbyterian charity, and mean enough to put the sun in eclipse, are the English. They hante set up the brazen image here to worship, but they’ve got a gold one, and that they do adore and no mistake; it’s all pay, pay, pay; parquisite, parquisite, parquisite; extortion, extortion, extortion. There is a whole pack of yelpin’ devils to your heels here, for everlastinly a cringin’, fawnin’ and coaxin’, or snarlin’, grumblin’ or bullyin’ you out of your money. There’s the boatman, and tide-waiter, and porter, and custom-er, and truck man as soon as you land; and the sarvant-man, and chamber-gall, and boots, and porter again to the inn. And then on the road, there is trunk-lifter, and coachman, and guard, and beggar-man, and a critter that opens the coach door, that they calls a waterman, cause he is infarnal dirty, and never sees water. They are jist like a snarl o’ snakes, their name is legion and there ain’t no eend to ‘em.

“The only thing you get for nothin’ here is rain and smoke, the rumatiz, and scorny airs. If you could buy an Englishman at what he was worth, and sell him at his own valiation, he would realise as much as a nigger, and would be worth tradin’ in, that’s a fact; but as it is he ain’t worth nothin’, there is no market for such critters, no one would buy him at no price. A Scotchman is wus, for he is prouder and meaner. Pat ain’t no better nother; he ain’t proud, cause he has a hole in his breeches and another in his elbow, and he thinks pride won’t patch ‘em, and he ain’t mean cause he hante got nothin’ to be mean with. Whether it takes nine tailors to make a man, I can’t jist exactly say, but this I will say, and take my davy of it too, that it would take three such goneys as these to make a pattern for one of our rael genuwine free and enlightened citizens, and then I wouldn’t swap without large boot, I tell you. Guess I’ll go, and pack up my fixing and have ‘em ready to land.”

He now went below, leaving Mr. Hopewell and myself on the deck. All this tirade of Mr. Slick was uttered in the hearing of the pilot, and intended rather for his conciliation, than my instruction. The pilot was immoveable; he let the cause against his country go “by default,” and left us to our process of “inquiry;” but when Mr. Slick was in the act of descending to the cabin, he turned and gave him a look of admeasurement, very similar to that which a grazier gives an ox; a look which estimates the weight and value of the animal, and I am bound to admit, that the result of that “sizing or laying” as it is technically called, was by no means favourable to the Attache”.

Mr. Hopewell had evidently not attended to it; his eye was fixed on the bold and precipitous shore of Wales, and the lofty summits of the everlasting hills, that in the distance, aspired to a companionship with the clouds. I took my seat at a little distance from him and surveyed the scene with mingled feelings of curiosity and admiration, until a thick volume of sulphureous smoke from the copper furnaces of Anglesey intercepted our view.

“Squire,” said he, “it is impossible for us to contemplate this country, that now lies before us, without strong emotion. It is our fatherland. I recollect when I was a colonist, as you are, we were in the habit of applying to it, in common with Englishmen, that endearing appellation “Home,” and I believe you still continue to do so in the provinces. Our nursery tales, taught our infant lips to lisp in English, and the ballads, that first exercised our memories, stored the mind with the traditions of our forefathers; their literature was our literature, their religion our religion, their history our history. The battle of Hastings, the murder of Becket, the signature of Runymede, the execution at Whitehall; the divines, the poets, the orators, the heroes, the martyrs, each and all were familiar to us.

“In approaching this country now, after a lapse of many, many years, and approaching it too for the last time, for mine eyes shall see it no more, I cannot describe to you the feelings that agitate my heart. I go to visit the tombs of my ancestors; I go to my home, and my home knoweth me no more. Great and good, and brave and free are the English; and may God grant that they may ever continue so!”

“I cordially join in that prayer, Sir,” said I; “you have a country of your own. The old colonies having ripened into maturity, formed a distinct and separate family, in the great community of mankind. You are now a nation of yourselves, and your attachment to England, is of course subordinate to that of your own country; you view it as the place that was in days of yore the home of your forefathers; we regard it as the paternal estate, continuing to call it ‘Home’ as you have just now observed. We owe it a debt of gratitude that not only cannot be repaid, but is too great for expression. Their armies protect us within, and their fleets defend us, and our commerce without. Their government is not only paternal and indulgent, but is wholly gratuitous. We neither pay these forces, nor feed them, nor clothe them. We not only raise no taxes, but are not expected to do so. The blessings of true religion are diffused among us, by the pious liberality of England, and a collegiate establishment at Windsor, supported by British friends, has for years supplied the Church, the Bar and the Legislature with scholars and gentlemen. Where the national funds have failed, private contribution has volunteered its aid, and means are never wanting for any useful or beneficial object.

“Our condition is a most enviable one. The history of the world has no example to offer of such noble disinterestedness and such liberal rule, as that exhibited by Great Britain to her colonies. If the policy of the Colonial Office is not always good (which I fear is too much to say) it is ever liberal; and if we do not mutually derive all the benefit we might from the connexion, we, at least, reap more solid advantages than we have a right to expect, and more, I am afraid, than our conduct always deserves. I hope the Secretary for the Colonies may have the advantage of making your acquaintance, Sir. Your experience is so great, you might give him a vast deal of useful information, which he could obtain from no one else.

“Minister,” said Mr. Slick, who had just mounted the companion-ladder, “will your honour,” touching his hat, “jist look at your honour’s plunder, and see it’s all right; remember me, Sir; thank your honour. This way, Sir; let me help your honour down. Remember me again, Sir. Thank your honour. Now you may go and break your neck, your honour, as soon as you please; for I’ve got all out of you I can squeeze, that’s a fact. That’s English, Squire—that’s English servility, which they call civility, and English meanness and beggin’, which they call parquisite. Who was that you wanted to see the Minister, that I heerd you a talkin’ of when I come on deck?”

“The Secretary of the Colonies,” I said.

“Oh for goodness sake don’t send that crittur to him,” said he, “or minister will have to pay him for his visit, more, p’raps, than he can afford. John Russell, that had the ribbons afore him, appointed a settler as a member of Legislative Council to Prince Edward’s Island, a berth that has no pay, that takes a feller three months a year from home, and has a horrid sight to do; and what do you think he did? Now jist guess. You give it up, do you? Well, you might as well, for if you was five Yankees biled down to one, you wouldn’t guess it. ‘Remember Secretary’s clerk,’ says he, a touchin’ of his hat, ‘give him a little tip of thirty pound sterling, your honour.’ Well, colonist had a drop of Yankee blood in him, which was about one third molasses, and, of course, one third more of a man than they commonly is, and so he jist ups and says, ‘I’ll see you and your clerk to Jericho beyond Jordan fust. The office ain’t worth the fee. Take it and sell it to some one else that has more money nor wit.’ He did, upon my soul.”

“No, don’t send State-Secretary to Minister, send him to me at eleven o’clock to-night, for I shall be the toploftiest feller about that time you’ve seen this while past, I tell you. Stop till I touch land once more, that’s all; the way I’ll stretch my legs ain’t no matter.”

He then uttered the negro ejaculation “chah!—chah!” and putting his arms a-kimbo, danced in a most extraordinary style to the music of a song, which he gave with great expression:

  “Oh hab you nebber heerd ob de battle ob Orleens,
   Where de dandy Yankee lads gave de Britishers de beans;
   Oh de Louisiana boys dey did it pretty slick,
   When dey cotch ole Packenham and rode him up a creek.
   Wee my zippy dooden dooden dooden, dooden dooden dey,
   Wee my zippy dooden dooden dooden, dooden dooden dey.

“Oh yes, send Secretary to me at eleven or twelve to-night, I’ll be in tune then, jist about up to concart pitch. I’ll smoke with him, or drink with him, or swap stories with him, or wrastle with him, or make a fool of him, or lick him, or any thing he likes; and when I’ve done, I’ll rise up, tweak the fore-top-knot of my head by the nose, bow pretty, and say ‘Remember me, your honour? Don’t forget the tip?’ Lord, how I long to walk into some o’ these chaps, and give ‘em the beans! and I will yet afore I’m many days older, hang me if I don’t. I shall bust, I do expect; and if I do, them that ain’t drownded will be scalded, I know. Chah!—chah!

  “Oh de British name is Bull, and de French name is Frog,
   And noisy critters too, when a braggin’ on a log,—
   But I is an alligator, a floatin’ down stream.
   And I’ll chaw both the bullies up, as I would an ice-cream:
   Wee my zippy dooden dooden dooden, dooden dooden dee,
   Wee my zippy dooden dooden dooden, dooden dooden dee.

“Yes, I’ve been pent up in that drawer-like lookin’ berth, till I’ve growed like a pine-tree with its branches off—straight up and down. My legs is like a pair of compasses that’s got wet; they are rusty on the hinges, and won’t work. I’ll play leapfrog up the street, over every feller’s head, till I get to the Liners’ Hotel; I hope I may be shot if I don’t. Jube, you villain, stand still there on the deck, and hold up stiff, you nigger. Warny once—warny twice—warny three times; now I come.”

And he ran forward, and putting a hand on each shoulder, jumped over him.

“Turn round agin, you young sucking Satan, you; and don’t give one mite or morsel, or you might ‘break massa’s precious neck,’ p’raps. Warny once—warny twice—warny three times.”

And he repeated the feat again.

“That’s the way I’ll shin it up street, with a hop, skip and a jump. Won’t I make Old Bull stare, when he finds his head under my coat tails, and me jist makin’ a lever of him? He’ll think he has run foul of a snag, I know. Lord, I’ll shack right over their heads, as they do over a colonist; only when they do, they never say warny wunst, cuss ‘em, they arn’t civil enough for that. They arn’t paid for it—there is no parquisite to be got by it. Won’t I tuck in the Champaine to-night, that’s all, till I get the steam up right, and make the paddles work? Won’t I have a lark of the rael Kentuck breed? Won’t I trip up a policeman’s heels, thunder the knockers of the street doors, and ring the bells and leave no card? Won’t I have a shy at a lamp, and then off hot foot to the hotel? Won’t I say, ‘Waiter, how dare you do that?’

“‘What, Sir?’

“‘Tread on my foot.’

“‘I didn’t, Sir.’

“‘You did, Sir. Take that!’ knock him down like wink, and help him up on his feet agin with a kick on his western eend. Kiss the barmaid, about the quickest and wickedest she ever heerd tell of, and then off to bed as sober as a judge. ‘Chambermaid, bring a pan of coals and air my bed.’ ‘Yes, Sir.’ Foller close at her heels, jist put a hand on each short rib, tickle her till she spills the red hot coals all over the floor, and begins to cry over ‘em to put ‘em out, whip the candle out of her hand, leave her to her lamentations, and then off to roost in no time. And when I get there, won’t I strike out all abroad—take up the room of three men with their clothes on—lay all over and over the bed, and feel once more I am a free man and a ‘Gentleman at large.’”

CHAPTER VIII. SEEING LIVERPOOL.

On looking back to any given period of our life, we generally find that the intervening time appears much shorter than it really is. We see at once the starting-post and the terminus, and the mind takes in at one view the entire space.

But this observation is more peculiarly applicable to a short passage across the Atlantic. Knowing how great the distance is, and accustomed to consider the voyage as the work of many weeks, we are so astonished at finding ourselves transported in a few days, from one continent to another, that we can hardly credit the evidence of our own senses.

Who is there that on landing has not asked himself the question, “Is it possible that I am in England? It seems but as yesterday that I was in America, to-day I am in Europe. Is it a dream, or a reality?”

The river and the docks—the country and the town—the people and their accent—the verdure and the climate are all new to me. I have not been prepared for this; I have not been led on imperceptibly, by travelling mile after mile by land from my own home, to accustom my senses to the gradual change of country. There has been no border to pass, where the language, the dress, the habits, and outward appearances assimilate. There has been no blending of colours—no dissolving views in the retrospect—no opening or expanding ones in prospect. I have no difficulty in ascertaining the point where one terminates and the other begins.

The change is sudden and startling. The last time I slept on shore, was in America—to-night I sleep in England. The effect is magical—one country is withdrawn from view, and another is suddenly presented to my astonished gaze. I am bewildered; I rouse myself, and rubbing my eyes, again ask whether I am awake? Is this England? that great country, that world of itself; Old England, that place I was taught to call home par excellence, the home of other homes, whose flag, I called our flag? (no, I am wrong, I have been accustomed to call our flag, the flag of England; our church, not the Church of Nova Scotia, nor the Colonial nor the Episcopal, nor the Established, but the Church of England.) Is it then that England, whose language I speak, whose subject I am, the mistress of the world, the country of Kings and Queens, and nobles and prelates, and sages and heroes?

I have read of it, so have I read of old Rome; but the sight of Rome, Caesar and the senate would not astonish me more than that of London, the Queen and the Parliament. Both are yet ideal; the imagination has sketched them, but when were its sketches ever true to nature? I have a veneration for both, but, gentle reader, excuse the confessions of an old man, for I have a soft spot in the heart yet, I love Old England. I love its institutions, its literature, its people. I love its law, because, while it protects property, it ensures liberty. I love its church, not only because I believe it is the true church, but because though armed with power, it is tolerant in practice. I love its constitution, because it combines the stability of a monarchy, with the most valuable peculiarities of a republic, and without violating nature by attempting to make men equal, wisely follow its dictates, by securing freedom to all.

I like the people, though not all in the same degree. They are not what they were. Dissent, reform and agitation have altered their character. It is necessary to distinguish. A real Englishman is generous, loyal and brave, manly in his conduct and gentlemanly in his feeling. When I meet such a man as this, I cannot but respect him; but when I find that in addition to these good qualities, he has the further recommendation of being a churchman in his religion and a tory in his politics, I know then that his heart is in the right place, and I love him.

The drafts of these chapters were read to Mr. Slick, at his particular request, that he might be assured they contained nothing that would injure his election as President of the United States, in the event of the Slickville ticket becoming hereafter the favourite one. This, he said, was on the cards, strange as it might seem, for making a fool of John Bull and turning the laugh on him, would be sure to take and be popular. The last paragraphs, he said, he affectioned and approbated with all his heart.

“It is rather tall talkin’ that,” said he; “I like its patronisin’ tone. There is sunthin’ goodish in a colonist patronisin’ a Britisher. It’s turnin’ the tables on ‘em; it’s sarvin’ ‘em out in their own way. Lord, I think I see old Bull put his eye-glass up and look at you, with a dead aim, and hear him say, ‘Come, this is cuttin’ it rather fat.’ Or, as the feller said to his second wife, when she tapped him on the shoulder, ‘Marm, my first wife was a Pursy, and she never presumed to take that liberty.’ Yes, that’s good, Squire. Go it, my shirt-tails! you’ll win if you get in fust, see if you don’t. Patronizin’ a Britisher!!! A critter that has Lucifer’s pride, Arkwright’s wealth, and Bedlam’s sense, ain’t it rich? Oh, wake snakes and walk your chalks, will you! Give me your figgery-four Squire, I’ll go in up to the handle for you. Hit or miss, rough or tumble, claw or mud-scraper, any way, you damn please, I’m your man.”

But to return to my narrative. I was under the necessity of devoting the day next after our landing at Liverpool, to writing letters announcing my safe arrival to my anxious friends in Nova Scotia, and in different parts of England; and also some few on matters of business. Mr. Slick was very urgent in his request, that I should defer this work till the evening, and accompany him in a stroll about the town, and at last became quite peevish at my reiterated refusal.

“You remind me, Squire,” said he, “of Rufus Dodge, our great ile marchant of Boston, and as you won’t walk, p’raps you’ll talk, so I’ll jist tell you the story.

“I was once at the Cataract House to Niagara. It is jist a short distance above the Falls. Out of the winders, you have a view of the splendid white waters, or the rapids of foam, afore the river takes its everlastin’ leap over the cliff.

“Well, Rufus come all the way from Boston to see the Falls: he said he didn’t care much about them hisself, seein’ that he warn’t in the mill business; but, as he was a goin’ to England, he didn’t like to say he hadn’t been there, especially as all the English knowed about America was, that there was a great big waterfall called Niagara, an everlastin’ Almighty big river called Mississippi, and a parfect pictur of a wappin’ big man called Kentuckian there. Both t’other ones he’d seen over and over agin, but Niagara he’d never sot eyes on.

“So as soon as he arrives, he goes into the public room, and looks at the white waters, and, sais he, ‘Waiter,’ sais he, ‘is them the falls down there?’ a-pintin’ by accident in the direction where the Falls actilly was.

“‘Yes, Sir,’ sais the waiter.

“‘Hem!’ sais Rufe, ‘them’s the Falls of Niagara, eh! So I’ve seen the Falls at last, eh! Well it’s pretty too: they ain’t bad, that’s a fact. So them’s the Falls of Niagara! How long is it afore the stage starts?’

“‘An hour, Sir.’

“‘Go and book me for Boston, and then bring me a paper.’

“‘Yes, Sir.’

“Well he got his paper and sot there a readin’ of it, and every now and then, he’d look out of the winder and say: ‘So them’s the Falls of Niagara, eh? Well, it’s a pretty little mill privilege that too, ain’t it; but it ain’t just altogether worth comin’ so far to see. So I’ve seen the Falls at last!’

“Arter a while in comes a Britisher.

“‘Waiter,’ says he, ‘how far is it to the Falls?’

“‘Little over a half a mile, Sir.’

“‘Which way do you get there?’

“‘Turn to the right, and then to the left, and then go a-head.’

“Rufe heard all this, and it kinder seemed dark to him; so arter cypherin’ it over in his head a bit, ‘Waiter,’ says he, ‘ain’t them the Falls of Niagara, I see there?’

“‘No, Sir.’

“‘Well, that’s tarnation all over now. Not the Falls?’

“‘No, Sir.’

“‘Why, you don’t mean to say, that them are ain’t the Falls?’

“‘Yes, I do, Sir.’

“‘Heaven and airth! I’ve come hundreds of miles a puppus to see ‘em, and nothin’ else; not a bit of trade, or speckelation, or any airthly thing but to see them cussed Falls, and come as near as 100 cents to a dollar, startin’ off without sein’ ‘em arter all. If it hadn’t a been for that are Britisher I was sold, that’s a fact. Can I run down there and back in half an hour in time for the stage?’

“‘Yes, Sir, but you will have no time to see them.’

“‘See ‘em, cuss ‘em, I don’t want to see ‘em, I tell you. I want to look at ‘em, I want to say I was to the Falls, that’s all. Give me my hat, quick! So them ain’t the Falls! I ha’n’t see’d the Falls of Niagara arter all. What a devil of a take-in that is, ain’t it?’ And he dove down stairs like a Newfoundland dog into a pond arter a stone, and out of sight in no time.

“Now, you are as like Rufe, as two peas, Squire. You want to say, you was to Liverpool, but you don’t want to see nothin’.’

“Waiter.”

“Sir.”

“Is this Liverpool, I see out of the Winder?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Guess I have seen Liverpool then. So this is the great city of Liverpool, eh? When does the train start for London?”

“In half an hour, Sir?”

“Book me for London then, for I have been to Liverpool and seen the city. Oh, take your place, Squire, you have seen Liverpool; and if you see as much of all other places, as you have of this here one, afore you return home, you will know most as much of England as them do that never was there at all.

“I am sorry too, you won’t go, Squire,” added he, “for minister seems kinder dull.”

“Don’t say another word, Mr. Slick,” said I; “every thing shall give way to him.” And locking up my writing-desk I said: “I am ready.”

“Stop, Squire,” said he, “I’ve got a favour to ask of you. Don’t for gracious sake, say nothin’ before Mr. Hopewell about that ‘ere lark I had last night arter landin’, it would sorter worry him, and set him off a-preachin’, and I’d rather he’d strike me any time amost than lectur, for he does it so tender and kindly, it hurts my feelins like, a considerable sum. I’ve had a pretty how-do-ye-do about it this mornin’, and have had to plank down handsum’, and do the thing genteel; but Mister Landlord found, I reckon, he had no fool to deal with, nother. He comes to me, as soon as I was cleverly up this mornin’, lookin’ as full of importance, as Jube Japan did when I put the Legation button on him.

“‘Bad business this, Sir,’ says he; ‘never had such a scene in my house before, Sir; have had great difficulty to prevent my sarvants takin’ the law of you.’

“‘Ah,’ sais I to myself, ‘I see how the cat jumps; here’s a little tid bit of extortion now; but you won’t find that no go, I don’t think.’

“‘You will have to satisfy them, Sir,’ says he, ‘or take the consequences.’

“‘Sartainly,’ said I, ‘any thin’ you please: I leave it entirely to you; jist name what you think proper, and I will liquidate it.’

“‘I said, I knew you would behave like a gentleman, Sir,’ sais he, ‘for, sais I, don’t talk to me of law, name it to the gentleman, and he’ll do what is right; he’ll behave liberal, you may depend.’

“‘You said right,’ sais I, ‘and now, Sir, what’s the damage?’

“‘Fifty pounds, I should think about the thing, Sir,’ said he.

“‘Certainly,’ said I, ‘you shall have the fifty pounds, but you must give me a receipt in full for it.’

“‘By all means,’ said he, and he was a cuttin’ off full chisel to get a stamp, when I sais, ‘Stop,’ sais I, ‘uncle, mind and put in the receipt, the bill of items, and charge ‘em separate?’

“‘Bill of items? sais he.

“‘Yes,’ sais I, ‘let me see what each is to get. Well, there’s the waiter, now. Say to knockin’ down the waiter and kicking him, so much; then there’s the barmaid so much, and so on. I make no objection, I am willin’ to pay all you ask, but I want to include all, for I intend to post a copy of it in the elegant cabins of each of our splendid New York Liners. This house convenes the Americans—they all know me. I want them to know how their Attache was imposed on, and if any American ever sets foot in this cussed house agin I will pay his bill, and post that up too, as a letter of credit for him.’

“‘You wouldn’t take that advantage of me, Sir?’ said he.

“‘I take no advantage,’ sais I. ‘I’ll pay you what you ask, but you shall never take advantage agin of another free and enlightened American citizen, I can tell you.’

“‘You must keep your money then, Sir,’ said he, ‘but this is not a fair deal; no gentleman would do it.’

“‘What’s fair, I am willin’ to do,’ sais I; ‘what’s onfair, is what you want to do. Now, look here: I knocked the waiter down; here is two sovereigns for him; I won’t pay him nothin’ for the kickin’, for that I give him out of contempt, for not defendin’ of himself. Here’s three sovereigns for the bar-maid; she don’t ought to have nothin’, for she never got so innocent a kiss afore, in all her born days I know, for I didn’t mean no harm, and she never got so good a one afore nother, that’s a fact; but then I ought to pay, I do suppose, because I hadn’t ought to treat a lady that way; it was onhansum’, that’s fact; and besides, it tante right to give the galls a taste for such things. They come fast enough in the nateral way, do kisses, without inokilatin’ folks for ‘em. And here’s a sovereign for the scoldin’ and siscerarin’ you gave the maid, that spilt the coals and that’s an eend of the matter, and I don’t want no receipt.’

“Well, he bowed and walked off, without sayin’ of a word.”

Here Mr. Hopewell joined us, and we descended to the street, to commence our perambulation of the city; but it had begun to rain, and we were compelled to defer it until the next day.

“Well, it ain’t much matter, Squire,” said Mr. Slick: “ain’t that Liverpool, I see out of the winder? Well, then I’ve been to Liverpool. Book me for London. So I have seen Liverpool at last, eh! or, as Rufus said, I have felt it too, for this wet day reminds me of the rest of his story.

“In about a half hour arter Rufus raced off to the Falls, back he comes as hard as he could tear, a-puffing and a blowin’ like a sizeable grampus. You never seed such a figure as he was, he was wet through and through, and the dry dust stickin’ to his clothes, made him look like a dog, that had jumped into the water, and then took a roll in the road to dry hisself; he was a caution to look at, that’s a fact.

“‘Well,’ sais I, ‘Stranger, did you see the Falls?’

“‘Yes,’ sais he, ‘I have see’d ‘em and felt ‘em too; them’s very wet Falls, that’s a fact. I hante a dry rag on me; if it hadn’t a been for that ere Britisher, I wouldn’t have see’d ‘em at all, and yet a thought I had been there all the time. It’s a pity too, that that winder don’t bear on it, for then you could see it without the trouble of goin’ there, or gettin’ ducked, or gettin’ skeered so. I got an awful fright there—I shall never forget it, if I live as long as Merusalem. You know I hadn’t much time left, when. I found out I hadn’t been there arter all, so I ran all the way, right down as hard as I could clip; and, seein’ some folks comin’ out from onder the Fall, I pushed strait in, but the noise actilly stunned me, and the spray wet me through and through like a piece of sponged cloth; and the great pourin’, bilin’ flood, blinded me so I couldn’t see a bit; and I hadn’t gone far in, afore a cold, wet, clammy, dead hand, felt my face all over. I believe in my soul, it was the Indian squaw that went over the Falls in the canoe, or the crazy Englisher, that tried to jump across it.

“‘Oh creation, how cold it was! The moment that spirit rose, mine fell, and I actilly thought I should have dropt lumpus, I was so skeered. Give me your hand, said Ghost, for I didn’t see nothin’ but a kinder dark shadow. Give me your hand. I think it must ha’ been the squaw, for it begged for all the world, jist like an Indgian. I’d see you hanged fust, said I; I wouldn’t touch that are dead tacky hand o’ yourn’ for half a million o’ hard dollars, cash down without any ragged eends; and with that, I turned to run out, but Lord love you I couldn’t run. The stones was all wet and slimy, and onnateral slippy, and I expected every minute, I should heels up and go for it: atween them two critters the Ghost and the juicy ledge, I felt awful skeered I tell you. So I begins to say my catechism; what’s your name, sais I? Rufus Dodge. Who gave you that name? Godfather and godmother granny Eells. What did they promise for you? That I should renounce the devil and all his works—works—works—I couldn’t get no farther, I stuck fast there, for I had forgot it.

“‘The moment I stopt, ghost kinder jumped forward, and seized me by my mustn’t-mention’ems, and most pulled the seat out. Oh dear! my heart most went out along with it, for I thought my time had come. You black she-sinner of a heathen Indgian! sais I; let me go this blessed minite, for I renounce the devil and all his works, the devil and all his works—so there now; and I let go a kick behind, the wickedest you ever see, and took it right in the bread basket. Oh, it yelled and howled and screached like a wounded hyaena, till my ears fairly cracked agin. I renounce you, Satan, sais I; I renounce you, and the world, and the flesh and the devil. And now, sais I, a jumpin’ on terry firm once more, and turnin’ round and facin’ the enemy, I’ll promise a little dust more for myself, and that is to renounce Niagara, and Indgian squaws, and dead Britishers, and the whole seed, breed and generation of ‘em from this time forth, for evermore. Amen.

“‘Oh blazes! how cold my face is yet. Waiter, half a pint of clear cocktail; somethin’ to warm me. Oh, that cold hand! Did you ever touch a dead man’s hand? it’s awful cold, you may depend. Is there any marks on my face? do you see the tracks of the fingers there?’

“‘No, Sir,’ sais I,’ I can’t say I do.’

“‘Well, then I feel them there,’ sais he, ‘as plain as any thing.’

“‘Stranger,’ sais I, ‘it was nothin’ but some poor no-souled critter, like yourself, that was skeered a’most to death, and wanted to be helped out that’s all.”

“‘Skeered!’ said he, ‘sarves him right then; he might have knowed how to feel for other folks, and not funkify them so peskily; I don’t keer if he never gets out; but I have my doubts about its bein’ a livin’ human, I tell you. If I hadn’t a renounced the devil and all his works that time, I don’t know what the upshot would have been, for Old Scratch was there too. I saw him as plain as I see you; he ran out afore me, and couldn’t stop or look back, as long as I said catekism. He was in his old shape of the sarpent; he was the matter of a yard long, and as thick round as my arm and travelled belly-flounder fashion; when I touched land, he dodged into an eddy, and out of sight in no time. Oh, there is no mistake, I’ll take my oath of it; I see him, I did upon my soul. It was the old gentleman hisself; he come there to cool hisself. Oh, it was the devil, that’s a fact.’

“‘It was nothin’ but a fresh water eel,’ sais I; ‘I have seen thousands of ‘em there; for the crevices of them rocks are chock full of ‘em. How can you come for to go, for to talk arter that fashion; you are a disgrace to our great nation, you great lummokin coward, you. An American citizen is afeerd of nothin’, but a bad spekilation, or bein’ found oat.’

“Well, that posed him, he seemed kinder bothered, and looked down.

“‘An eel, eh! well, it mought be an eel,’ sais be, ‘that’s a fact. I didn’t think of that; but then if it was, it was god-mother granny Eells, that promised I should renounce the devil and all his works, that took that shape, and come to keep me to my bargain. She died fifty years ago, poor old soul, and never kept company with Indgians, or niggers, or any such trash. Heavens and airth! I don’t wonder the Falls wakes the dead, it makes such an everlastin’ almighty noise, does Niagara. Waiter, more cocktail, that last was as weak as water.’

“‘Yes, Sir,’ and he swallered it like wink.

“‘The stage is ready, Sir.’

“‘Is it?’ said he, and he jumped in all wet as he was; for time is money and he didn’t want to waste neither. As it drove off, I heerd him say, ‘Well them’s the Falls, eh! So I have seen the Falls of Niagara and felt ‘em too, eh!’

“Now, we are better off than Rufus Dodge was, Squire; for we hante got wet, and we hante got frightened, but we can look out o’ the winder and say, ‘Well, that’s Liverpool, eh! so I have—seen Liverpool.’”

CHAPTER IX. CHANGING A NAME.

The rain having confined us to the house this afternoon, we sat over our wine after dinner longer than usual. Among the different topics that were discussed, the most prominent was the state of the political parties in this country. Mr. Slick, who paid great deference to the opinions of Mr. Hopewell, was anxious to ascertain from him what he thought upon the subject, in order to regulate his conduct and conversation by it hereafter.

“Minister,” said he, “what do you think of the politics of the British?”

“I don’t think about them at all, Sam. I hear so much of such matters at home, that I am heartily tired of them; our political world is divided into two classes, the knaves and the dupes. Don’t let us talk of such exciting, things.”

“But, Minister,” said Mr. Slick, “holdin’ the high and dignified station I do, as Attache, they will be a-pumpin’ me for everlastinly, will the great men here, and they think a plaguy sight more of our opinion than you are aware on; we have tried all them things they are a jawin’ about here, and they naterally want to know the results. Cooper says not one Tory called on him when he was to England, but Walter Scott; and that I take it, was more lest folks should think he was jealous of him, than any thing else; they jist cut him as dead as a skunk; but among the Whigs, he was quite an oracle on ballot, univarsal suffrage, and all other democratic institutions.”

“Well, he was a ninny then, was Cooper, to go and blart it all out to the world that way; for if no Tory visited him, I should like you to ask him the next time you see him, how many gentlemen called upon him? Jist ask him that, and it will stop him from writing such stuff any more.”

“But, Minister, jist tell us now, here you are, as a body might say in England, now what are you?”

“I am a man, Sam; Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.”

“Well, what’s all that when it’s fried?”

“Why, that when away from home, I am a citizen of the world. I belong to no party, but take an interest in the whole human family.”

“Well, Minister, if you choose to sing dumb, you can, but I should like to have you answer me one question now, and if you won’t, why you must jist do t’other thing, that’s all. Are you a Consarvative?”

“No.”

“Are you a Whig?”

“No.”

“A Radical?”

“God forbid!”

“What in natur’ are you then?”

“A Tory.”

“A Tory! well, I thought that a Tory and a Consarvative, were as the Indgians say, “all same one brudder.” Where is the difference?”

“You will soon find that out, Sam; go and talk to a Consarvative as a Tory, and you will find he is a Whig: go and talk to him again as a Whig, and you will find he is a Tory. They are, for all the world, like a sturgeon. There is very good beef steaks in a sturgeon, and very good fish too, and yet it tante either fish or flesh. I don’t like taking a new name, it looks amazing like taking new principles, or, at all events, like loosenin’ old ones, and I hante seen the creed of this new sect yet—I don’t know what its tenets are, nor where to go and look for ‘em. It strikes me they don’t accord with the Tories, and yet arn’t in tune with the Whigs, but are half a note lower than the one, and half a note higher than t’other. Now, changes in the body politic are always necessary more or less, in order to meet the changes of time, and the changes in the condition of man. When they are necessary, make ‘em, and ha’ done with ‘em. Make ‘em like men, not when you are forced to do so, and nobody thanks you, but when you see they are wanted, and are proper; but don’t alter your name.

“My wardens wanted me to do that; they came to me, and said ‘Minister,’ says they, ‘we don’t want you to change, we don’t ask it; jist let us call you a Unitarian, and you can remain Episcopalian still. We are tired of that old fashioned name, it’s generally thought unsuited to the times, and behind the enlightment of the age; it’s only fit for benighted Europeans. Change the name, you needn’t change any thing else. What is a name?’

“‘Every thing,’ says I, ‘every thing, my brethren; one name belongs to a Christian, and the other don’t; that’s the difference. I’d die before I surrendered my name; for in surrenderin’ that, I surrender my principles.’”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Slick, “that’s what Brother Eldad used to say. ‘Sam,’ said he, ‘a man with an alias is the worst character in the world; for takin’ a new name, shows he is ashamed of his old one; and havin’ an old one, shows his new one is a cheat.’”

“No,” said Mr. Hopewell, “I don’t like that word Consarvative. Them folks may be good kind of people, and I guess they be, seein’ that the Tories support ‘em, which is the best thing I see about them; but I don’t like changin’ a name.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Mr. Slick, “p’raps their old name was so infarnal dry rotted, they wanted to change it for a sound new one. You recollect when that super-superior villain, Expected Thorne, brought an action of defamation agin’ me, to Slickville, for takin’ away his character, about stealing the watch to Nova Scotia; well, I jist pleaded my own case, and I ups and sais, ‘Gentlemen of the Jury,’ sais I, “Expected’s character, every soul knows, is about the wust in all Slickville. If I have taken it away, I have done him a great sarvice, for he has a smart chance of gettin’ a better one; and if he don’t find a swap to his mind, why no character is better nor a bad one.’

“Well, the old judge and the whole court larfed right out like any thin’; and the jury, without stirrin’ from the box, returned a vardict for the defendant. P’raps now, that mought be the case with the Tories.”

“The difference,” said Mr. Hopewell, is jist this:—your friend, Mr. Expected Thorne, had a name he had ought to have been ashamed of, and the Tories one that the whole nation had very great reason to be proud of. There is some little difference, you must admit. My English politics, (mind you, I say English, for they hare no reference to America,) are Tory, and I don’t want to go to Sir Robert Peel, or Lord John Russell either.”

“As for Johnny Russell,” said Mr. Slick, “he is a clever little chap that; he—”

“Don’t call him Johnny Russell,” said Mr. Hopewell, “or a little chap, or such flippant names, I don’t like to hear you talk that way. It neither becomes you as a Christian nor a gentleman. St. Luke and St. Paul, when addressing people of rank, use the word ‘[Greek text]’ which, as nearly as possible, answers to the title of ‘your Excellency.’ Honour, we are told, should be given to those to whom honour is due; and if we had no such authority on the subject, the omission of titles, where they are usual and legal, is, to say the least of it, a vulgar familiarity, ill becoming an Attache of our embassy. But as I was saying, I do not require to go to either of those statesmen to be instructed in my politics. I take mine where I take my religion, from the Bible. ‘Fear God, honour the King, and meddle not with those that are given to change.’”

“Oh, Minister,” said Mr. Slick, “you mis’t a figur at our glorious Revolution, you had ought to have held on to the British; they would have made a bishop of you, and shoved you into the House of Lords, black apron, lawn sleeves, shovel hat and all, as sure as rates. ‘The right reverend, the Lord Bishop of Slickville:’ wouldn’t it look well on the back of a letter, eh? or your signature to one sent to me, signed ‘Joshua Slickville.’ It sounds better, that, than ‘Old Minister,’ don’t it?”

“Oh, if you go for to talk that way, Sam, I am done; but I will shew you that the Tories are the men to govern this great nation. A Tory I may say ‘noscitur a sociis.’”

“What in natur is that, when it’s biled and the skin took off?” asked Mr. Slick.

“Why is it possible you don’t know that? Have you forgotten that common schoolboy phrase?”

“Guess I do know; but it don’t tally jist altogether nohow, as it were. Known as a Socialist, isn’t it?”

“If, Sir,” said Mr. Hopewell, with much earnestness, “if instead of ornamenting your conversation with cant terms, and miserable slang, picked up from the lowest refuse of our population, both east and west, you had cultivated your mind, and enriched it with quotations from classical writers, you would have been more like an Attache, and less like a peddling clockmaker than you are.”

“Minister,” said Mr. Slick, “I was only in jeest, but you are in airnest. What you have said is too true for a joke, and I feel it. I was only a sparrin’; but you took off the gloves, and felt my short ribs in a way that has given me a stitch in the side. It tante fair to kick that way afore you are spurred. You’ve hurt me considerable.”

“Sam, I am old, narvous, and irritable. I was wrong to speak unkindly to you, very wrong indeed, and I am sorry for it; but don’t teaze me no more, that’s a good lad; for I feel worse than you do about it. I beg your pardon, I—”

“Well,” said Mr. Slick, “to get back to what we was a sayin’, for you do talk like a book, that’s a fact; ‘noscitur a sociis,’ says you.”

“Ay, ‘Birds of a feather flock together,’ as the old maxim goes. Now, Sam, who supported the Whigs?”

“Why, let me see; a few of the lords, a few of the gentry, the repealers, the manufacturin’ folks, the independents, the baptists, the dissentin’ Scotch, the socialists, the radicals, the discontented, and most of the lower orders, and so on.”

“Well, who supported the Tories?”

“Why, the majority of the lords, the great body of landed gentry, the univarsities, the whole of the Church of England, the whole of the methodists, amost the principal part of the kirk, the great marchants, capitalists, bankers, lawyers, army and navy officers, and soon.”

“Now don’t take your politics from me, Sam, for I am no politician; but as an American citizen, judge for yourself, which of those two parties is most likely to be right, or which would you like to belong to.”

“Well, I must say,” replied he, “I do think that the larnin’, piety, property, and respectability, is on the Tory side; and where all them things is united, right most commonly is found a-joggin’ along in company.”

“Well now, Sam, you know we are a calculatin’ people, a commercial people, a practical people. Europe laughs at us for it. Perhaps if they attended better to their own financial affairs, they would be in a better situation to laugh. But still we must look to facts and results. How did the Tories, when they went out of office, leave the kingdom?—At peace?”

“Yes, with all the world.”

“How did the Whigs leave it?”

“With three wars on hand, and one in the vat a-brewin’ with America. Every great interest injured, some ruined, and all alarmed at the impendin’ danger—of national bankruptcy.”

“Well, now for dollars and cents. How did the Tories leave the treasury?”

“With a surplus revenue of millions.”

“How did the Whigs?”

“With a deficiency that made the nation scratch their head, and stare agin.”

“I could go through the details with you, as far as my imperfect information extends, or more imperfect memory would let me; but it is all the same, and always will be, here, in France, with us, in the colonies, and everywhere else. Whenever property, talent, and virtue are all on one side, and only ignorant numbers, with a mere sprinkling of property and talent to agitate ‘em and make use of ‘em, or misinformed or mistaken virtue to sanction ‘em on the other side, no honest man can take long to deliberate which side he will choose.

“As to those conservatives, I don’t know what to say, Sam; I should like to put you right if I could. But I’ll tell you what puzzles me. I ask myself what is a Tory? I find he is a man who goes the whole figur’ for the support of the monarchy, in its three orders, of king, lords, and commons, as by law established; that he is for the connexion of Church and State and so on; and that as the wealthiest man in England, he offers to prove his sincerity, by paying the greatest part of the taxes to uphold these things. Well, then I ask what is Consarvitism? I am told that it means, what it imports, a conservation of things as they are. Where, then, is the difference? If there is no difference, it is a mere juggle to change the name: if there is a difference, the word is worse than a juggle, for it don’t import any.”

“Tell you what,” said Mr. Slick, “I heerd an old critter to Halifax once describe ‘em beautiful. He said he could tell a man’s politicks by his shirt. ‘A Tory, Sir,’ said he, for he was a pompious old boy was old Blue-Nose; ‘a Tory, Sir,’ said he, ‘is a gentleman every inch of him, stock, lock, and barrel; and he puts a clean frill shirt on every day. A Whig, Sir,’ says he, ‘is a gentleman every other inch of him, and he puts an onfrilled one on every other day. A Radical, Sir, ain’t no gentleman at all, and he only puts one on of a Sunday. But a Chartist, Sir, is a loafer; he never puts one on till the old one won’t hold together no longer, and drops off in, pieces.’”

“Pooh!” said Mr. Hopewell, “now don’t talk nonsense; but as I was a-goin’ to say, I am a plain man, and a straightforward man, Sam; what I say, I mean; and what I mean, I say. Private and public life are subject to the same rules; and truth and manliness are two qualities that will carry you through this world much better than policy, or tact, or expediency, or any other word that ever was devised to conceal, or mystify a deviation from the straight line. They have a sartificate of character, these consarvitives, in having the support of the Tories; but that don’t quite satisfy me. It may, perhaps, mean no more than this, arter all—they are the best sarvants we have; but not as good as we want. However, I shall know more about it soon; and when I do, I will give you my opinion candidly. One thing, however, is certain, a change in the institutions of a country I could accede to, approve, and support, if necessary and good; but I never can approve of either an individual or a party—‘changing a name.’”

CHAPTER X. THE NELSON MONUMENT.

The following day being dry, we walked out to view the wonders of this great commercial city of England, Liverpool. The side-paths were filled with an active and busy population, and the main streets thronged with heavily-laden waggons, conveying to the docks the manufactures of the country, or carrying inward the productions of foreign nations. It was an animating and busy scene.

“This,” said Mr. Hopewell, “is solitude. It is in a place like this, that you feel yourself to be an isolated being, when you are surrounded by multitudes who have no sympathy with you, to whom you are not only wholly unknown, but not one of whom you have ever seen before.

“The solitude of the vast American forest is not equal to this. Encompassed by the great objects of nature, you recognise nature’s God every where; you feel his presence, and rely on his protection. Every thing in a city is artificial, the predominant idea is man; and man, under circumstances like the present, is neither your friend nor protector. You form no part of the social system here. Gregarious by nature, you cannot associate; dependent, you cannot attach yourself; a rational being, you cannot interchange ideas. In seeking the wilderness you enter the abode of solitude, and are naturally and voluntarily alone. On visiting a city, on the contrary, you enter the residence of man, and if you are forced into isolation there, to you it is worse than a desert.

“I know of nothing so depressing as this feeling of unconnected individuality, amidst a dense population like this. But, my friend, there is One who never forsakes us either in the throng or the wilderness, whose ear is always open to our petitions, and who has invited us to rely on his goodness and mercy.”

“You hadn’t ought to feel lonely here, Minister,” said Mr. Slick. “It’s a place we have a right to boast of is Liverpool; we built it, and I’ll tell you what it is, to build two such cities as New York and Liverpool in the short time we did, is sunthin’ to brag of. If there had been no New York, there would have been no Liverpool; but if there had been no Liverpool, there would have been a New York though. They couldn’t do nothin’ without us. We had to build them elegant line-packets for ‘em; they couldn’t build one that could sail, and if she sail’d she couldn’t steer, and if she sail’d and steer’d, she upsot; there was always a screw loose somewhere.

“It cost us a great deal too to build them ere great docks. They cover about seventy acres, I reckon. We have to pay heavy port dues to keep ‘em up, and pay interest on capital. The worst of it is, too, while we pay for all this, we hante got the direction of the works.”

“If you have paid for all these things,” said I, “you had better lay claim to Liverpool. Like the disputed territory (to which it now appears, you knew you had no legal or equitable claim), it is probable you will have half of it ceded to you, for the purpose of conciliation. I admire this boast of yours uncommonly. It reminds me of the conversation we had some years ago, about the device on your “naval button,” of the eagle holding an anchor in its claws—that national emblem of ill-directed ambition and vulgar pretension.”

“I thank you for that hint,” said Mr. Slick, “I was in jeest like; but there is more in it, for all that, than you’d think. It ain’t literal fact, but it is figurative truth. But now I’ll shew you sunthin’ in this town, that’s as false as parjury, sunthin that’s a disgrace to this country and an insult to our great nation, and there is no jeest in it nother, but a downright lie; and, since you go for to throw up to me our naval button with its ‘eagle and anchor,’ I’ll point out to you sunthin’ a hundred thousand million times wus. What was the name o’ that English admiral folks made such a touss about; that cripple-gaited, one-eyed, one-armed little naval critter?”

“Do you mean Lord Nelson?”

“I do,” said he, and pointing to his monument, he continued, “There he is as big as life, five feet nothin’, with his shoes on. Now examine that monument, and tell me if the English don’t know how to brag, as well as some other folks, and whether they don’t brag too sumtimes, when they hante got no right to. There is four figures there a representing the four quarters of the globe in chains, and among them America, a crouchin’ down, and a-beggin’ for life, like a mean heathen Ingin. Well, jist do the civil now, and tell me when that little braggin’ feller ever whipped us, will you? Just tell me the day of the year he was ever able to do it, since his mammy cut the apron string and let him run to seek his fortin’. Heavens and airth, we’d a chawed him right up!

“No, there never was an officer among you, that had any thing to brag of about us but one, and he wasn’t a Britisher—he was a despisable Blue-nose colonist boy of Halifax. When his captain was took below wounded, he was leftenant, so he jist ups and takes command o’ the Shannon, and fit like a tiger and took our splendid frigate the Chesapeake, and that was sumthing to brag on. And what did he get for it? Why colony sarce, half-pay, and leave to make room for Englishers to go over his head; and here is a lyin’ false monument, erected to this man that never even see’d one of our national ships, much less smelt thunder and lightning out of one, that English like, has got this for what he didn’t do.

“I am sorry Mr. Lett [Footnote: This was the man that blew up the Brock monument in Canada. He was a Patriot.] is dead to Canada, or I’d give him a hint about this. I’d say, ‘I hope none of our free and enlightened citizens will blow this lyin’, swaggerin’, bullyin’ monument up? I should be sorry for ‘em to take notice of such vulgar insolence as this; for bullies will brag.’ He’d wink and say, ‘I won’t non-concur with you, Mr. Slick. I hope it won’t be blowed up; but wishes like dreams come contrary ways sometimes, and I shouldn’t much wonder if it bragged till it bust some night.’ It would go for it, that’s a fact. For Mr. Lett has a kind of nateral genius for blowin’ up of monuments.

“Now you talk of our Eagle takin’ an anchor in its claws as bad taste. I won’t say it isn’t; but it is a nation sight better nor this. See what the little admiral critter is about! why he is a stampin’ and a jabbin’ of the iron heel of his boot into the lifeless body of a fallen foe! It’s horrid disgustin’, and ain’t overly brave nother; and to make matters wus, as if this warn’t bad enough, them four emblem figures, have great heavy iron chains on ‘em, and a great enormous sneezer of a lion has one part o’ the chain in its mouth, and is a-growlin’ and a-grinnin’ and a-snarling at ‘em like mad, as much as to say, ‘if you dare to move the sixteen hundredth part of an inch, I will fall to and make mincemeat of you, in less than half no time. I don’t think there never was nothin’ so bad as this, ever seen since the days of old daddy Adam down to this present blessed day, I don’t indeed. So don’t come for to go, Squire, to tarnt me with the Eagle and the anchor no more, for I don’t like it a bit; you’d better look to your ‘Nelson monument’ and let us alone. So come now!”

Amidst much that was coarse, and more that was exaggerated, there was still some foundation for the remarks of the Attache.

“You arrogate a little too much to yourselves,” I observed, “in considering the United States as all America. At the time these brilliant deeds were achieved, which this monument is intended to commemorate, the Spaniards owned a very much greater portion of the transatlantic continent than you now do, and their navy composed a part of the hostile fleets which were destroyed by Lord Nelson. At that time, also, you had no navy, or at all events, so few ships, as scarcely to deserve the name of one; nor had you won for yourselves that high character, which you now so justly enjoy, for skill and gallantry. I agree with you, however, in thinking the monument is in bad taste. The name of Lord Nelson is its own monument. It will survive when these perishable structures, which the pride or the gratitude of his countrymen have erected to perpetuate his fame, shall have mouldered into dust, and been forgotten for ever. If visible objects are thought necessary to suggest the mention of his name oftener that it would otherwise occur to the mind, they should be such as to improve the taste, as well as awaken the patriotism of the beholder. As an American, there is nothing to which you have a right to object, but as a critic, I admit that there is much that you cannot approve in the ‘Nelson Monument.’”

CHAPTER XI. COTTAGES.

On the tenth day after we landed at Liverpool, we arrived in London and settled ourselves very comfortably in lodgings at No. 202, Piccadilly, where every possible attention was paid to us by our landlord and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Weeks. We performed the journey in a post-chaise, fearing that the rapid motion of a rail car might have an unpleasant effect upon the health of Mr. Hope well.

Of the little incidents of travel that occurred to us, or of the various objects of attraction on the route, it is not my intention to give any account. Our journey was doubtless much like the journeys of other people, and every thing of local interest is to be found in Guide Books, or topographical works, which are within the reach of every body.

This book, however imperfect its execution may be, is altogether of another kind. I shall therefore pass over this and other subsequent journeys, with no other remark, than that they were performed, until something shall occur illustrative of the objects I have in view.

On this occasion I shall select from my diary a description of the labourer’s cottage, and the parish church; because the one shews the habits, tastes, and condition of the poor of this country, in contrast with that of America—and the other, the relative means of religious instruction, and its effect on the lower orders.

On the Saturday morning, while preparing to resume our journey, which was now nearly half completed, Mr. Hopewell expressed a desire to remain at the inn where we were, until the following Monday. As the day was fine, he said he should like to ramble about the neighbourhood, and enjoy the fresh air. His attention was soon drawn to some very beautiful new cottages.

“These,” said he, “are no doubt erected at the expense, and for the gratification of some great landed proprietor. They are not the abodes of ordinary labourers, but designed for some favoured dependant or aged servant. They are expensive toys, but still they are not without their use. They diffuse a taste among the peasantry—they present them with models, which, though they cannot imitate in costliness of material or finish, they can copy in arrangement, and in that sort of decoration, which flowers, and vines, and culture, and care can give. Let us seek one which is peculiarly the poor man’s cottage, and let us go in and see who and what they are, how they live, and above all, how they think and talk. Here is a lane, let us follow it, till we come to a habitation.”

We turned into a grass road, bounded on either side by a high straggling thorn hedge. At its termination was an irregular cottage with a thatched roof, which projected over the windows in front. The latter were latticed with diamond-shaped panes of glass, and were four in number, one on each side of the door and two just under the roof. The door was made of two transverse parts, the upper half of which was open. On one side was a basket-like cage containing a magpie, and on the other, a cat lay extended on a bench, dozing in the warmth of the sun. The blue smoke, curling upwards from a crooked chimney, afforded proof of some one being within.

We therefore opened a little gate, and proceeded through a neat garden, in which flowers and vegetables were intermixed. It had a gay appearance from the pear, apple, thorn and cherry being all in full bloom. We were received at the door by a middle-aged woman, with the ruddy glow of health on her cheeks, and dressed in coarse, plain, but remarkably neat and suitable, attire. As this was a cottage selected at random, and visited without previous intimation of our intention, I took particular notice of every thing I saw, because I regarded its appearance as a fair specimen of its constant and daily state.

Mr. Hopewell needed no introduction. His appearance told what he was. His great stature and erect bearing, his intelligent and amiable face, his noble forehead, his beautiful snow-white locks, his precise and antique dress, his simplicity of manner, every thing, in short, about him, at once attracted attention and conciliated favour.

Mrs. Hodgins, for such was her name, received us with that mixture of respect and ease, which shewed she was accustomed to converse with her superiors. She was dressed in a blue homespun gown, (the sleeves of which were drawn up to her elbows and the lower part tucked through her pocket-hole,) a black stuff petticoat, black stockings and shoes with the soles more than half an inch thick. She wore also, a large white apron, and a neat and by no means unbecoming cap. She informed us her husband was a gardener’s labourer, that supported his family by his daily work, and by the proceeds of the little garden attached to the house, and invited us to come in and sit down.

The apartment into which the door opened, was a kitchen or common room. On one side, was a large fire-place, the mantel-piece or shelf, of which was filled with brass candlesticks, large and small, some queer old-fashioned lamps, snuffers and trays, polished to a degree of brightness, that was dazzling. A dresser was carried round the wall, filled with plates and dishes, and underneath were exhibited the ordinary culinary utensils, in excellent order. A small table stood before the fire, with a cloth of spotless whiteness spread upon it, as if in preparation for a meal. A few stools completed the furniture.

Passing through this place, we were shewn into the parlour, a small room with a sanded floor. Against the sides were placed some old, dark, and highly polished chairs, of antique form and rude workmanship. The walls were decorated with several coloured prints, illustrative of the Pilgrim’s Progress and hung in small red frames of about six inches square. The fire-place was filled with moss, and its mantel-shelf had its china sheep and sheperdesses, and a small looking-glass, the whole being surmounted by a gun hung transversely. The Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments worked in worsted, were suspended in a wooden frame between the windows, which had white muslin blinds, and opened on hinges, like a door. A cupboard made to fit the corner, in a manner to economise room, was filled with china mugs, cups and saucers of different sizes and patterns, some old tea-spoons and a plated tea-pot.

There was a small table opposite to the window, which Contained half a dozen books. One of these was large, handsomely bound, and decorated with gilt edged paper. Mr. Hopewell opened it, and expressed great satisfaction at finding such an edition of a bible in such a house. Mrs. Hodgins explained that this was a present from her eldest son, who had thus appropriated his first earnings to the gratification of his mother.

“Creditable to you both, dear,” said Mr. Hopewell: “to you, because it is a proof how well you have instructed him; and to him, that he so well appreciated and so faithfully remembered those lessons of duty.”

He then inquired into the state of her family, whether the boy who was training a peach-tree against the end of the house was her son, and many other matters not necessary to record with the same precision that I have enumerated the furniture.

“Oh, here is a pretty little child!” said he. “Come here, dear, and shake hands along with me. What beautiful hair she has! and she looks so clean and nice, too. Every thing and every body here is so neat, so tidy, and so appropriate. Kiss me, dear; and then talk to me; for I love little children. ‘Suffer them to come unto me,’ said our Master, ‘for of such is the kingdom of Heaven:’ that is, that we should resemble these little ones in our innocence.”

He then took her on his knee. “Can you say the Lord’s Prayer, dear?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Very good. And the ten Commandments?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Who taught you?”

“My mother, Sir; and the parson taught me the Catechism.”

“Why, Sam, this child can say the Lord’s Prayer, the ten Commandments, and the Catechism. Ain’t this beautiful? Tell me the fifth, dear.”

And the child repeated it distinctly and accurately.

“Right. Now, dear, always bear that in mind, especially towards your mother. You have an excellent mother; her cares and her toils are many; and amidst them all, how well she has done her duty to you. The only way she can be repaid, is to find that you are what she desires you to be, a good girl. God commands this return to be made, and offers you the reward of length of days. Here is a piece of money for you. And now, dear,” placing her again upon her feet, “you never saw so old a man as me, and never will again; and one, too, that came from a far-off country, three thousand miles off; it would take you a long time to count three thousand; it is so far. Whenever you do what you ought not, think of the advice of the ‘old Minister.’”

Here Mr. Slick beckoned the mother to the door, and whispered something to her, of which, the only words that met my ear were “a trump,” “a brick,” “the other man like him ain’t made yet,” “do it, he’ll talk, then.”

To which she replied, “I have—oh yes, Sir—by all means.”

She then advanced to Mr. Hopewell, and asked him if he would like to smoke.

“Indeed I would, dear, but I have no pipe here.”

She said her old man smoked of an evening, after his work was done, and that she could give him a pipe and some tobacco, if he would condescend to use them; and going to the cupboard, she produced a long white clay pipe and some cut tobacco.

Having filled and lighted his pipe, Mr. Hopewell said, “What church do you go to, dear?”

“The parish church, Sir.”

“Right; you will hear Sound doctrine and good morals preached there. Oh this a fortunate country, Sam, for the state provides for the religious instruction of the poor. Where the voluntary system prevails, the poor have to give from their poverty, or go without; and their gifts are so small, that they can purchase but little. It’s a beautiful system, a charitable system, a Christian system. Who is your landlord?”

“Squire Merton, Sir; and one of the kindest masters, too, that ever was. He is so good to the poor; and the ladies. Sir, they are so kind, also. When my poor daughter Mary was so ill with the lever, I do think she would have died but for the attentions of those young ladies; and when she grew better, they sent her wine and nourishing things from their own table. They will be so glad to see you. Sir, at the Priory. Oh, I wish you could see them!”

“There it is, Sam,” he continued “That illustrates what I always told you of their social system here. We may boast of our independence, but that independence produces isolation. There is an individuality about every man and every family in America, that gives no right of inquiry, and imposes no duty of relief on any one. Sickness, and sorrow, and trouble, are not divulged; joy, success, and happiness are not imparted. If we are independent in our thoughts and actions, so are we left to sustain the burden of our own ills. How applicable to our state is that passage of Scripture, ‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy.’

“Now, look at this poor family; here is a clergyman provided for them, whom they do not, and are not even expected to pay; their spiritual wants are ministered to, faithfully and zealously, as we see by the instruction of that little child. Here is a friend upon whom they can rely in their hour of trouble, as the bereaved mother did on Elisha. ‘And she went up and laid her child that was dead on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door on him, and went out.’ And when a long train of agitation, mis-government, and ill-digested changes have deranged this happy country, as has recently been the case, here is an indulgent landlord, disposed to lower his rent or give further time for payment, or if sickness invades any of these cottages, to seek out the sufferer, to afford the remedies, and by his countenance, his kindness, and advice, to alleviate their trouble. Here it is, a positive duty arising from their relative situations of landlord and tenant. The tenants support the owner, the landlord protects the tenants: the duties are reciprocal.

“With us the duties, as far as Christian duties can be said to be optional, are voluntary; and the voluntary discharge of duties, like the voluntary support of religion, we know, from sad experience, to be sometimes imperfectly performed, at others intermitted, and often wholly neglected. Oh! it is a happy country this, a great and a good country; and how base, how wicked, how diabolical it is to try to set such a family as this against their best friends, their pastor and their landlord; to instil dissatisfaction and distrust into their simple minds, and to teach them to loathe the hand, that proffers nothing but regard or relief. It is shocking, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I often say, Sir,” said Mrs. Hodgins, “to my old man, to keep away from them Chartists.”

“Chartists! dear, who are they? I never heard of them.”

“Why, Sir, they are the men that want the five pints.”

“Five pints! why you don’t say so; oh! they are bad men, have nothing to do with them. Five pints! why that is two quarts and a half; that is too much to drink if it was water; and if any thing else, it is beastly drunkenness. Have nothing to do with them.”

“Oh! no, Sir, it is five points of law.”

“Tut—tut—tut! what have you got to do with law, my dear?”

“By gosh, Aunty,” said Mr. Slick, “you had better not cut that pie: you will find it rather sour in the apple sarce, and tough in the paste, I tell you.”

“Yes, Sir,” she replied, “but they are a unsettling of his mind. What shall I do? for I don’t like these night meetings, and he always comes home from ‘em cross and sour-like.”

“Well, I am sorry to hear that,” said Mr. Hopewell, “I wish I could see him; but I can’t, for I am bound on a journey. I am sorry to hear it, dear. Sam, this country is so beautiful, so highly cultivated, so adorned by nature and art, and contains so much comfort and happiness, that it resembles almost the garden of Eden. But, Sam, the Serpent is here, the Serpent is here beyond a doubt. It changes its shape, and alters its name, and takes a new colour, but still it is the Serpent, and it ought to be crushed. Sometimes it calls itself liberal, then radical, then chartist, then agitator, then repealer, then political dissenter, then anti-corn leaguer, and so on. Sometimes it stings the clergy, and coils round them, and almost strangles them, for it knows the Church is its greatest enemy, and it is furious against it. Then it attacks the peers, and covers them with its froth and slaver, and then it bites the landlord. Then it changes form, and shoots at the Queen, or her ministers, and sets fire to buildings, and burns up corn to increase distress; and, when hunted away, it dives down into the collieries, or visits the manufactories, and maddens the people, and urges them on to plunder and destruction. It’s a melancholy thing to think of; but he is as of old, alive and active, seeing whom he can allure and deceive, and whoever listens is ruined for ever.

“Stay, dear, I’ll tell you what I will do for you. I’ll inquire about these Chartists; and when I go to London, I will write a little tract so plain that any child may read it and understand it; and call it The Chartist, and get it printed, and I will send you one for your husband, and two or three others, to give to those whom they may benefit.

“And now, dear, I must go. You and I will never meet again in this world; but I shall often think of you, and often speak of you. I shall tell my people of the comforts, of the neatness, of the beauty of an English cottage. May God bless you, and so regulate your mind as to preserve in you a reverence for his holy word, an obedience to the commands of your Spiritual Pastor, and a respect for all that are placed in authority over you!”

“Well, it is pretty, too, is this cottage,” said Mr. Slick, as we strolled back to the inn, “but the handsumestest thing is to hear that good old soul talk dictionary that way, aint it? How nateral he is! Guess they don’t often see such a ‘postle as that in these diggins. Yes, it’s pretty is this cottage; but it’s small, arter all. You feel like a squirrel in a cage, in it; you have to run round and round, and don’t go forward none. What would a man do with a rifle here? For my part, I have a taste for the wild woods; it comes on me regular in the fall, like the lake fever, and I up gun, and off for a week or two, and camp out, and get a snuff of the spruce-wood air, and a good appetite, and a bit of fresh ven’son to sup on at night.

“I shall be off to the highlands this fall; but, cuss em, they hante got no woods there; nothin’ but heather, and thats only high enough to tear your clothes. That’s the reason the Scotch don’t wear no breeches, they don’t like to get ‘em ragged up that way for everlastinly, they can’t afford it; so they let em scratch and tear their skin, for that will grow agin, and trowsers won’t.

“Yes, it’s a pretty cottage that, and a nice tidy body that too, is Mrs. Hodgins. I’ve seen the time when I would have given a good deal to have been so well housed as that. There is some little difference atween that cottage and a log hut of a poor back emigrant settler, you and I know where. Did ever I tell you of the night I spent at Lake Teal, with old Judge Sandford?”

“No, not that I recollect.”

“Well, once upon a time I was a-goin’ from Mill-bridge to Shadbrooke, on a little matter of bisness, and an awful bad and lonely road it was, too. There was scarcely no settlers in it, and the road was all made of sticks, stones, mud holes, and broken bridges. It was een amost onpassible, and who should I overtake on the way but the Judge, and his guide, on horseback, and Lawyer Traverse a-joggin’ along in his gig, at the rate of two miles an hour at the fardest.

“‘Mornin,’ sais the Judge, for he was a sociable man, and had a kind word for every body, had the Judge. Few men ‘know’d human natur’ better nor he did, and what he used to call the philosophy of life. ‘I am glad to see you on the road, Mr. Slick, sais he, ‘for it is so bad I am afraid there are places that will require our united efforts to pass ‘em.’

“Well, I felt kinder sorry for the delay too, for I know’d we should make a poor journey on’t, on account of that lawyer critter’s gig, that hadn’t no more busness on that rough track than a steam engine had. But I see’d the Judge wanted me to stay company, and help him along, and so I did. He was fond of a joke, was the old Judge, and sais he,

“‘I’m afraid we shall illustrate that passage o’ Scriptur’, Mr. Slick,’ said he, ‘“And their judges shall be overthrown in stony places.” It’s jist a road for it, ain’t it?’

“Well we chattered along the road this way a leetle, jist a leetle faster than we travelled, for we made a snail’s gallop of it, that’s a fact; and night overtook us, as I suspected it would, at Obi Rafuse’s, at the Great Lake; and as it was the only public for fourteen miles, and dark was settin’ in, we dismounted, but oh, what a house it was!

“Obi was an emigrant, and those emigrants are ginerally so fond of ownin’ the soil, that like misers, they carry as much of it about ‘em on their parsons, in a common way, as they cleverly can. Some on ‘em are awful dirty folks, that’s a fact, and Obi was one of them. He kept public, did Obi; the sign said it was a house of entertainment for man and beast. For critters that ain’t human, I do suppose it spoke the truth, for it was enough to make a hoss larf, if he could understand it, that’s a fact; but dirt, wretchedness and rags, don’t have that effect on me.

“The house was built of rough spruce logs, (the only thing spruce about it), with the bark on, and the cracks and seams was stuffed with moss. The roof was made of coarse slabs, battened and not shingled, and the chimbly peeped out like a black pot, made of sticks and mud, the way a crow’s nest is. The winders were half broke out, and stopped up with shingles and old clothes, and a great bank of mud and straw all round, reached half way up to the roof, to keep the frost out of the cellar. It looked like an old hat on a dung heap. I pitied the old Judge, because he was a man that took the world as he found it, and made no complaints. He know’d if you got the best, it was no use complainin’ that the best warn’t good.

“Well, the house stood alone in the middle of a clearin’, without an outhouse of any sort or kind about it, or any fence or enclosure, but jist rose up as a toodstool grows, all alone in the field. Close behind it was a thick short second growth of young birches, about fifteen feet high, which was the only shelter it had, and that was on the wrong side, for it was towards the south.

“Well, when we alighted, and got the baggage off, away starts the guide with the Judge’s traps, and ups a path through the woods to a settler’s, and leaves us. Away down by the edge of the lake was a little barn, filled up to the roof with grain and hay, and there was no standin’ room or shelter in it for the hosses. So the lawyer hitches his critter to a tree, and goes and fetches up some fodder for him, and leaves him for the night, to weather it as he could. As soon as he goes in, I takes Old Clay to the barn, for it’s a maxim of mine always to look out arter number one, opens the door, and pulls out sheaf arter sheaf of grain as fast as I could, and throws it out, till I got a place big enough for him to crawl in.

“‘Now,’ sais I, ‘old boy,’ as I shot to the door arter him, ‘if that hole ain’t big enough for you, eat away till it is, that’s all.’

“I had hardly got to the house afore the rain, that had threatened all day, came down like smoke, and the wind got up, and it blew like a young hurricane, and the lake roared dismal; it was an awful night, and it was hard to say which was wus, the Storm or the shelter.

“‘Of two evils,’ sais I to the lawyer, ‘choose the least. It ain’t a bad thing to be well housed in a night like this, is it?’

“The critter groaned, for both cases was so ‘bad he didn’t know which to take up to defend, so he grinned horrid and said nothin’; and it was enough to make him grin too, that’s a fact. He looked as if he had got hold on a bill o’ pains and penalties instead of a bill of costs that time, you may depend.

“Inside of the house was three rooms, the keepin’ room, where we was all half circled round the fire, and two sleepin’ rooms off of it. One of these Obi had, who was a-bed, groanin’, coughin’, and turnin’ over and over all the time on the creakin’ bedstead with pleurisy; t’other was for the judge. The loft was for the old woman, his mother, and the hearth, or any other soft place we could find, was allocated for lawyer and me.

“What a scarecrow lookin’ critter old aunty was, warn’t she? She was all in rags and tatters, and though she lived ‘longside of the lake the best part of her emigrant life, had never used water since she was christened. Her eyes were so sunk in her head, they looked like two burnt holes in a blanket. Her hair was pushed back, and tied so tight with an eel-skin behind her head, it seemed to take the hide with it. I ‘most wonder how she ever shot to her eyes to go to sleep. She had no stockins on her legs, and no heels to her shoes, so she couldn’t lift her feet up, for fear of droppin’ off her slippers; but she just shoved and slid about as if she was on ice. She had a small pipe in her mouth, with about an inch of a stem, to keep her nose warm, and her skin was so yaller and wrinkled, and hard and oily, she looked jist like a dried smoked red herrin’, she did upon my soul.

“The floor of the room was blacker nor ink, because that is pale sometimes; and the utenshils, oh, if the fire didn’t purify ‘em now and ag’in, all the scrubbin’ in the world wouldn’t, they was past that. Whenever the door was opened, in run the pigs, and the old woman hobbled round arter them, bangin’ them with a fryin’ pan, till she seemed out o’ breath. Every time she took less and less notice of ‘em, for she was ‘most beat out herself, and was busy a gettin’ of the tea-kettle to bile, and it appeared to me she was a-goin’ to give in and let ‘em sleep with me and the lawyer, near the fire.

“So I jist puts the tongs in the sparklin’ coals and heats the eends on ‘em red hot, and the next time they comes in, I watches a chance, outs with the tongs, and seizes the old sow by the tail, and holds on till I singes it beautiful. The way she let go ain’t no matter, but if she didn’t yell it’s a pity, that’s all. She made right straight for the door, dashed in atween old aunty’s legs, and carries her out on her back, ridin’ straddle-legs like a man, and tumbles her head over heels in the duck pond of dirty water outside, and then lays down along side of her, to put the fire out in its tail and cool itself.

“Aunty took up the screamin’ then, where the pig left off; but her voice warn’t so good, poor thing! she was too old for that, it sounded like a cracked bell; it was loud enough, but it warn’t jist so clear. She came in drippin’ and cryin’ and scoldin’; she hated water, and what was wus, this water made her dirtier. It ran off of her like a gutter. The way she let out agin pigs, travellers and houses of entertainment, was a caution to sinners. She vowed she’d stop public next mornin’, and bile her kettle with the sign; folks might entertain themselves and be hanged to ‘em, for all her, that they might. Then she mounted a ladder and goes up into the loft-to change.

“‘Judge’ sais I, ‘I am sorry, too, I singed that pig’s tail arter that fashion, for the smell of pork chops makes me feel kinder hungry, and if we had ‘em, no soul could eat ‘em here in such a stye as this. But, dear me,’ sais I, ‘You’d better move, Sir; that old woman is juicy, and I see it a comin’ through the cracks of the floor above, like a streak of molasses.

“‘Mr. Slick,’ sais he, ‘this is dreadful. I never saw any thing so bad before in all this country; but what can’t be cured must be endured, I do suppose. We must only be good-natured and do the best we can, that’s all. An emigrant house is no place to stop at, is it? There is a tin case,’ sais he, ‘containin’ a cold tongue and some biscuits, in my portmanter; please to get them out. You must act as butler to-night, if you please; for I can’t eat any thing that old woman touches.’

“So I spreads one of his napkins on the table, and gets out the eatables, and then he produced a pocket pistol, for he was a sensible man was the judge, and we made a small check, for there warn’t enough for a feed.

“Arter that, he takes out a night-cap, and fits it on tight, and then puts on his cloak, and wraps the hood of it close over his head, and foldin’ himself up in it, he went and laid down without ondressin’. The lawyer took a stretch for it on the bench, with his gig cushions for a pillar, and I makes up the fire, sits down on the chair, puts my legs up on the jamb, draws my hat over my eyes, and folds my arms for sleep.

“‘But fust and foremost,’ sais I, ‘aunty, take a drop of the strong waters: arter goin’ the whole hog that way, you must need some,’ and I poured her out a stiff corker into one of her mugs, put some sugar and hot water to it, and she tossed it off as if she railly did like it.

“‘Darn that pig,’ said she, ‘it is so poor, its back is as sharp as a knife. It hurt me properly, that’s a fact, and has most broke my crupper bone.’ And she put her hand behind her, and moaned piteous.

“‘Pig skin,’ sais I, ‘aunty, is well enough when made into a saddle, but it ain’t over pleasant to ride on bare back that way,’ sais I, ‘is it? And them bristles ain’t quite so soft as feathers, I do suppose.’

“I thought I should a died a holdin’ in of a haw haw that way. Stifling a larf a’most stifles oneself, that’s a fact. I felt sorry for her, too, but sorrow won’t always keep you from larfin’, unless you be sorry for yourself. So as I didn’t want to offend her I ups legs agin to the jam, and shot my eyes and tried to go to sleep.

“Well, I can snooze through most any thin’, but I couldn’t get much sleep that night. The pigs kept close to the door, a shovin’ agin it every now and then, to see all was right for a dash in, if the bears came; and the geese kept sentry too agin the foxes; and one old feller would squake out “all’s well” every five minuts, as he marched up and down and back agin on the bankin’ of the house.

“But the turkeys was the wust. They was perched upon the lee side of the roof, and sometimes an eddy of wind would take a feller right slap off his legs, and send him floppin’ and rollin’ and sprawlin’ and screamin’ down to the ground, and then he’d make most as much fuss a-gettin’ up into line agin. They are very fond of straight, lines is turkeys. I never see an old gobbler, with his gorget, that I don’t think of a kernel of a marchin’ regiment, and if you’ll listen to him and watch him, he’ll strut jist like one, and say, ‘halt! dress!’ oh, he is a military man is a turkey cock: he wears long spurs, carries a stiff neck, and charges at red cloth, like a trooper.

“Well then a little cowardly good natured cur, that lodged in an empty flour barrel, near the wood pile, gave out a long doleful howl, now and agin, to show these outside passengers, if he couldn’t fight for ‘em, he could at all events cry for ‘em, and it ain’t every goose has a mourner to her funeral, that’s a fact, unless it be the owner.

“In the mornin’ I wakes up, and looks round for lawyer, but he was gone. So I gathers up the brans, and makes up the fire, and walks out. The pigs didn’t try to come in agin, you may depend, when they see’d me; they didn’t like the curlin’ tongs, as much as some folks do, and pigs’ tails kinder curl naterally. But there was lawyer a-standin’ up by the grove, lookin’ as peeked and as forlorn, as an onmated loon.

“‘What’s the matter of you, Squire?’ sais I. ‘You look like a man that was ready to make a speech; but your witness hadn’t come, or you hadn’t got no jury.’

“‘Somebody has stole my horse,’ said he.

“Well, I know’d he was near-sighted, was lawyer, and couldn’t see a pint clear of his nose, unless it was a pint o’ law. So I looks all round and there was his hoss, a-standin’ on the bridge, with his long tail hanging down straight at one eend, and his long neck and head a banging down straight at t’other eend, so that you couldn’t tell one from t’other or which eend was towards you. It was a clear cold mornin’. The storm was over and the wind down, and there was a frost on the ground. The critter was cold I suppose, and had broke the rope and walked off to stretch his legs. It was a monstrous mean night to be out in, that’s sartain.

“‘There is your hoss,’ sais I.

“‘Where?’ sais he.

“‘Why on the bridge,’ sais I; “he has got his head down and is a-lookin’ atween his fore-legs to see where his tail is, for he is so cold, I do suppose he can’t feel it.’

“Well, as soon as we could, we started; but afore we left, sais the Judge to me, ‘Mr. Slick,’ sais he, ‘here is a plaister,’ taking out a pound note, ‘a plaister for the skin the pig rubbed off of the old woman. Give it to her, I hope it is big enough to cover it.’ And he fell back on the bed, and larfed and coughed, and coughed and larfed, till the tears ran down his cheeks.

“Yes,” said Mr. Slick, “yes, Squire, this is a pretty cottage of Marm Hodgins; but we have cottages quite as pretty as this, our side of the water, arter all. They are not all like Obi Rafuses, the immigrant. The natives have different guess places, where you might eat off the floor a’most, all’s so clean. P’raps we hante the hedges, and flowers, and vines and fixin’s, and what-nots.”

“Which, alone,” I said, “make a most important difference. No, Mr. Slick’, there is nothing to be compared to this little cottage.

“I perfectly agree with you, Squire,” said Mr. Hopewell, “it is quite unique. There is not only nothing equal to it, but nothing of its kind at all like—an English cottage.”

CHAPTER XII. STEALING THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE.

Shortly after our return to the inn, a carriage drove up to the door, and the cards of Mr. Merton, and the Reverend Mr. Homily, which were presented by the servant, were soon followed by the gentlemen themselves.

Mr. Merton said he had been informed by Mrs. Hodgins of our visit to her cottage, and from her account of our conversation and persons, he was convinced we could be no other than the party described in the “Sayings and Doings of Mr. Samuel Slick,” as about to visit England with the Attache. He expressed great pleasure in having the opportunity of making our acquaintance, and entreated us to spend a few days with him at the Priory. This invitation we were unfortunately compelled to decline, in consequence of urgent business in London, where our immediate presence was indispensable.

The rector then pressed Mr. Hopewell to preach for him, on the following day at the parish church, which he also declined. He said, that he had no sermons with him, and that he had very great objections to extemporaneous preaching, which he thought should never be resorted to except in cases of absolute necessity. He, however, at last consented to do so, on condition that Mrs. Hodgins and her husband attended, and upon being assured that it was their invariable custom to be present, he said, he thought it not impossible, that he might make an impression upon him, and as it was his maxim never to omit an opportunity of doing good, he would with the blessing of God, make the attempt.

The next day was remarkably fine, and as the scene was new to me, and most probably will be so to most of my colonial readers, I shall endeavour to describe it with some minuteness.

We walked to the church by a path over the hills, and heard the bells of a number of little churches, summoning the surrounding population to the House of God. The roads and the paths were crowded with the peasantry and their children, approaching the church-yard in different directions. The church and the rectory were contiguous to each other, and situated in a deep dell.

The former was a long and rather low structure, originally built of light coloured stone, which had grown grey with time. It had a large square steeple, with pointed corners, like turrets, each of which was furnished with a vane, but some of these ornaments were loose and turned round in a circle, while others stood still and appeared to be examining with true rustic curiosity, the condition of their neighbours.

The old rectory stood close to the church and was very irregularly built, one part looking as if it had stepped forward to take a peep at us, and another as if endeavouring to conceal itself from view, behind a screen of ivy. The windows which were constructed of diamond-shaped glass, were almost square, and opened on hinges. Nearly half of the house was covered by a rose-tree, from which the lattices peered very inquisitively upon the assembled congregation. Altogether it looked like the residence of a vigilant man, who could both see and be unseen if he pleased.

Near the door of the church were groups of men in their clean smock-frocks and straw hats, and of women in their tidy dark dresses and white aprons. The children all looked clean, healthy, and cheerful.

The interior of the church was so unlike that of an American one, that my attention was irresistibly drawn to its peculiarities. It was low, and divided in the centre by an arch. The floor was of stone, and from long and constant use, very uneven in places. The pews were much higher on the sides than ours, and were unpainted and roughly put together; while the pulpit was a rude square box, and was placed in the corner. Near the door stood an ancient stone font, of rough workmanship, and much worn.

The windows were long and narrow, and placed very high in the walls. On the one over the altar was a very old painting, on stained glass, of the Virgin, with a hoop and yellow petticoat, crimson vest, a fly cap, and very thick shoes. The light of this window was still further subdued by a fine old yew-tree, which stood in the yard close behind it.

There was another window of beautifully stained glass, the light of which fell on a large monument, many feet square, of white marble. In the centre of this ancient and beautiful work of art, were two principal figures, with smaller ones kneeling on each side, having the hands raised in the attitude of prayer. They were intended to represent some of the ancestors of the Merton family. The date was as old as 1575. On various parts of the wall were other and ruder monuments of slate-stone, the inscriptions and dates of which were nearly effaced by time.

The roof was of a construction now never seen in America; and the old oak rafters, which were more numerous, than was requisite, either for strength or ornament, were massive and curiously put together, giving this part of the building a heavy and gloomy appearance.

As we entered the church, Mr. Hopewell said he had selected a text suitable to the times, and that he would endeavour to save the poor people in the neighbourhood from the delusions of the chartist demagogues, who, it appeared, were endeavouring to undermine the throne and the altar, and bring universal ruin upon the country.

When he ascended the pulpit to preach, his figure, his great age, and his sensible and benevolent countenance, attracted universal attention. I had never seen him officiate till this day; but if I was struck with his venerable appearance before, I was now lost in admiration of his rich and deep-toned voice, his peculiar manner, and simple style of eloquence.

He took for his text these words: “So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.” He depicted, in a very striking manner, the arts of this intriguing and ungrateful man to ingratiate himself with the people, and render the government unpopular. He traced his whole course, from his standing at the crowded thoroughfare, and lamenting that the king had deputed no one to hear and decide upon the controversies of the people, to his untimely end, and the destruction of his ignorant followers. He made a powerful application of the seditious words of Absalom: “Oh that I were a judge in the land, that every man which hath a suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice.” He showed the effect of these empty and wicked promises upon his followers, who in the holy record of this unnatural rebellion are described as “men who went out in their simplicity, and knew not anything.”

He then said that similar arts were used in all ages for similar purposes; and that these professions of disinterested patriotism were the common pretences by which wicked men availed themselves of the animal force of those “who assemble in their simplicity, and know not any thing,” to achieve their own personal aggrandisement, and warned them, to give no heed to such dishonest people. He then drew a picture of the real blessings they enjoyed in this happy country, which, though not without an admixture of evil, were as many and as great as the imperfect and unequal condition of man was capable either of imparting or receiving.

Among the first of these, he placed the provision made by the state for the instruction of the poor, by means of an established Church. He said they would doubtless hear this wise and pious deed of their forefathers attacked also by unprincipled men; and falsehood and ridicule would be invoked to aid in the assault; but that he was a witness on its behalf, from the distant wilderness of North America, where the voice of gratitude was raised to England, whose missionaries had planted a church there similar to their own, and had proclaimed the glad tidings of salvation to those who would otherwise have still continued to live without its pale.

He then pourtrayed in a rapid and most masterly manner the sin and the disastrous consequences of rebellion; pointed out the necessity that existed for vigilance and defined their respective duties to God, and to those who, by his permission, were set in authority over them; and concluded with the usual benediction, which, though I had heard it on similar occasions all my life, seemed now more efficacious, more paternal, and more touching than ever, when uttered by him, in his peculiarly patriarchal manner.

The abstract I have just given, I regret to say, cannot convey any adequate idea of this powerful, excellent, and appropriate sermon. It was listened to with intense interest by the congregation, many of whom were affected to tears. In the afternoon we attended church again, when we heard a good, plain, and practical discourse from the rector; but, unfortunately, he had neither the talent, nor the natural eloquence of our friend, and, although it satisfied the judgment, it did not affect, the heart like that of the “Old Minister.”

At the door we met, on our return, Mrs. Hodgins. “Ah! my dear,” said Mr. Hopewell, “how do you do? I am going to your cottage; but I am an old man now; take my arm—it will support me in my walk.”

It was thus that this good man, while honouring this poor woman, avoided the appearance of condescension, and received her arm as a favour to himself.

She commenced thanking him for his sermon in the morning. She said it had convinced her William of the sin of the Chartist agitation, and that he had firmly resolved never to meet them again. It had saved him from ruin, and made her a happy woman.

“Glad to hear it has done him good, my dear,” said he; “it does me good, too, to hear its effect. Now, never remind him of past errors, never allude to them: make his home cheerful, make it the pleasantest place he can find any where, and he won’t want to seek amusement elsewhere, or excitement either; for these seditious meetings intoxicate by their excitement. Oh! I am very glad I have touched him; that I have prevented these seditious men from ‘stealing his heart.’”

In this way they chatted, until they arrived at the cottage, which Hodgins had just reached by a shorter, but more rugged path.

“It is such a lovely afternoon,” said Mr. Hopewell, “I believe I will rest in this arbour here awhile, and enjoy the fresh breeze, and the perfume of your honeysuckles and flowers.”

“Wouldn’t a pipe be better, Minister?” said Mr. Slick. “For my part, I don’t think any thing equal to the flavour of rael good genewine first chop tobacco.”

“Well, it is a great refreshment, is tobacco,” said Mr. Hopewell. “I don’t care if I do take a pipe. Bring me one, Mr. Hodgins, and one for yourself also, and I will smoke and talk with you awhile, for they seem as natural to each other, as eating and drinking do.”

As soon as these were produced, Mr. Slick and I retired, and requested Mrs. Hodgins to leave the Minister and her husband together for a while, for as Mr. Slick observed, “The old man will talk it into him like a book; for if he was possessed of the spirit of a devil, instead of a Chartist, he is jist the boy to drive it out of him. Let him be awhile, and he’ll tame old uncle there, like a cossit sheep; jist see if he don’t, that’s all.”

We then walked up and down the shady lane, smoking our cigars, and Mr. Slick observed, “Well, there is a nation sight of difference, too, ain’t there, atween this country church, and a country meetin’ house our side of the water; I won’t say in your country or my country; but I say our side of the water—and then it won’t rile nobody; for your folks will say I mean the States, and our citizens will say I mean the colonies; but you and I know who the cap fits, one or t’other, or both, don’t we?

“Now here, this old-fashioned church, ain’t quite up to the notch, and is a leetle behind the enlightment of the age like, with its queer old fixin’s and what not; but still it looks solemcoly’ don’t it, and the dim light seems as if we warn’t expected to be a lookin’ about, and as if outer world was shot out, from sight and thort, and it warn’t man’s house nother.

“I don’t know whether it was that dear old man’s preachin’, and he is a brick ain’t he? or, whether it’s the place, or the place and him together; but somehow, or somehow else, I feel more serious to-day than common, that’s a fact. The people too are all so plain dressed, so decent, so devout and no show, it looks like airnest.

“The only fashionable people here was the Squire’s sarvants; and they did look genteel, and no mistake. Elegant men, and most splendid lookin’ women they was too. I thought it was some noble, or aid’s, or big bug’s family; but Mrs. Hodgins says they are the people of the Squire’s about here, the butlers and ladies’ maids; and superfine uppercrust lookin’ folks they be too.

“Then every body walks here, even Squire Merton and his splendiriferous galls walked like the poorest of the poor, there was no carriage to the door, nor no hosses hitched to the gate, or tied to the back of waggons, or people gossipin’ outside; but all come in and minded their business, as if it was worth attendin’ to; and then arter church was finished off, I liked the way the big folks talked to the little folks, and enquired arter their families. It may he actin’, but if it is, it’s plaguy good actin’, I tell you.

“I’m a thinkin’ it tante a rael gentleman that’s proud, but only a hop. You’ve seen a hop grow, hante you? It shoots up in a night, the matter of several inches right out of the ground, as stiff as a poker, straight up and down, with a spick and span new green coat and a red nose, as proud as Lucifer. Well, I call all upstarts ‘hops,’ and I believe it’s only “hops” arter all that’s scorny.

“Yes, I kinder like an English country church, only it’s a leetle, jist a leetle too old fashioned for me. Folks look a leetle too much like grandfather Slick, and the boys used to laugh at him, and call him a benighted Britisher. Perhaps that’s the cause of my prejudice, and yet I must say, British or no British, it tante bad, is it?

“The meetin’ houses ‘our side of the water,’ no matter where, but away up in the back country, how teetotally different they be! bean’t they? A great big, handsome wooden house, chock full of winders, painted so white as to put your eyes out, and so full of light within, that inside seems all out-doors, and no tree nor bush, nor nothin’ near it but the road fence, with a man to preach in it, that is so strict and straight-laced he will do any thing of a week day, and nothin’’ of a Sunday. Congregations are rigged out in their spic and span bran new clothes, silks, satins, ribbins, leghorns, palmetters, kiss-me-quicks, and all sorts of rigs, and the men in their long-tail-blues, pig-skin pads calf-skin boots and sheep-skin saddle-cloths. Here they publish a book of fashions, there they publish ‘em in meetin’; and instead of a pictur, have the rael naked truth.

“Preacher there don’t preach morals, because that’s churchy, and he don’t like neither the church nor its morals; but he preaches doctrine, which doctrine is, there’s no Christians but themselves. Well, the fences outside of the meetin’ house, for a quarter of a mile or so, each side of the house, and each side of the road, ain’t to be seen for hosses and waggons, and gigs hitched there; poor devils of hosses that have ploughed, or hauled, or harrowed, or logged, or snaked, or somethin’ or another all the week, and rest of a Sunday by alterin’ their gait, as a man rests on a journey by a alterin’ of his sturup, a hole higher or a hole lower. Women that has all their finery on can’t walk, and some things is ondecent. It’s as ondecent for a woman to be seen walkin’ to meetin’, as it is to be caught at—what shall I say?—why caught at attendin’ to her business to home.

“The women are the fust and the last to meetin’; fine clothes cost sunthin’, and if they ain’t showed, what’s the use of them? The men folk remind me of the hosses to Sable Island. It’s a long low sand-bank on Nova Scotia coast, thirty miles long and better is Sable Island, and not much higher than the water. It has awful breakers round it, and picks up a shockin’ sight of vessels does that island. Government keeps a super-intender there and twelve men to save wracked people, and there is a herd of three hundred wild hosses kept there for food for saved crews that land there, when provision is short, or for super-intender to catch and break for use, as the case may be.

“Well, if he wants a new hoss, he mounts his folks on his tame hosses, and makes a dash into the herd, and runs a wild feller down, lugs him off to the stable-yard, and breaks him in, in no time. A smart little hoss he is too, but he always has an eye to natur’’ arterwards; the change is too sudden, and he’ll off, if he gets a chance.

“Now that’s the case with these country congregations, we know where. The women and old tame men folk are, inside; the young wild boys and ontamed men folk are on the fences, outside a settin’ on the top rail, a speculatin’ on times or marriages, or markets, or what not, or a walkin’ round and studyin’ hoss flesh, or a talkin’ of a swap to be completed of a Monday, or a leadin’ off of two hosses on the sly of the old deacon’s, takin’ a lick of a half mile on a bye road, right slap a-head, and swearin’ the hosses had got loose, and they was just a fetchin’ of them back.

“‘Whose side-saddle is this?’

“‘Slim Sall Dowdie’s.’

“‘Shift it on to the deacon’s beast, and put his on to her’n and tie the two critters together by the tail. This is old Mother Pitcher’s waggon; her hoss kicks like a grasshopper. Lengthen the breechin’, and when aunty starts, he’ll make all fly agin into shavin’s, like a plane. Who is that a comin’ along full split there a horseback?’

“‘It’s old Booby’s son, Tom. Well, it’s the old man’s shaft hoss; call out whoh! and he’ll stop short, and pitch Tom right over his head on the broad of his back, whap.

“Tim Fish, and Ned Pike, come scale up here with us boys on the fence.’ The weight is too great; away goes the fence, and away goes the boys, all flyin’; legs, arms, hats, poles, stakes, withes, and all, with an awful crash and an awful shout; and away goes two or three hosses that have broke their bridles, and off home like wink.

“Out comes Elder Sourcrout. ‘Them as won’t come in had better stay to home,’ sais he. And when he hears that them as are in had better stay in when they be there, he takes the hint and goes back agin. ‘Come, boys, let’s go to Black Stump Swamp and sarch for honey. We shall be back in time to walk home with the galls from night meetin’, by airly candle-light. Let’s go.’

“Well, when they want to recruit the stock of tame ones inside meetin’, they sarcumvent some o’ these wild ones outside; make a dash on ‘em, catch ‘em, dip ‘em, and give ‘em a name; for all sects don’t always baptise ‘em as we do, when children, but let ‘em grow up wild in the herd till they are wanted. They have hard work to break ‘em in, for they are smart ones, that’s a fact, but, like the hosses of Sable Island, they have always an eye to natur’’ arterwards; the change is too sudden, you can’t trust ‘em, at least I never see one as I could, that’s all.

“Well, when they come out o’ meetin’, look at the dignity and sanctity, and pride o’ humility o’ the tame old ones. Read their faces. ‘How does the print go?’ Why this way, ‘I am a sinner, at least I was once, but thank fortin’ I ain’t like you, you onconverted, benighted, good-for-nothin’ critter you.’ Read the ontamed one’s face, what’s the print there? Why it’s this. As soon as he sees over-righteous stalk by arter that fashion, it says, ‘How good we are, ain’t we? Who wet his hay to the lake tother day, on his way to market, and made two tons weigh two tons and a half? You’d better look as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, hadn’t you, old Sugar-cane?’

“Now jist foller them two rulin’ elders, Sourcrout and Coldslaugh; they are plaguy jealous of their neighbour, elder Josh Chisel, that exhorted to-day. ‘How did you like Brother Josh, to-day?’ says Sourcrout, a utterin’ of it through his nose. Good men always speak through the nose. It’s what comes out o’ the mouth that defiles a man; but there is no mistake in the nose; it’s the porch of the temple that. ‘How did you like Brother Josh?’

“‘Well, he wasn’t very peeowerful.’

“‘Was he ever peeowerful?’

“‘Well, when a boy, they say he was considerable sum as a wrastler.’

“Sourcrout won’t larf, because it’s agin rules; but he gig goggles like a turkey-cock, and says he, ‘It’s for ever and ever the same thing with Brother Josh. He is like an over-shot mill, one everlastin’ wishy-washy stream.’

“‘When the water ain’t quite enough to turn the wheel, and only spatters, spatters, spatters,’ says Coldslaugh.

“Sourcrout gig goggles again, as if he was swallerin’ shelled corn whole. ‘That trick of wettin’ the hay,’ says he, ‘to make it weigh heavy, warn’t cleverly done; it ain’t pretty to be caught; it’s only bunglers do that.’

“‘He is so fond of temperance,’ says Coldslaugh, ‘he wanted to make his hay jine society, and drink cold water, too.’

“Sourcrout gig goggles ag’in, till he takes a fit of the asmy, sets down on a stump, claps both hands on his sides, and coughs, and coughs till he finds coughing no joke no more. Oh dear, dear convarted men, though they won’t larf themselves, make others larf the worst kind, sometimes; don’t they?

“I do believe, on my soul, if religion was altogether left to the voluntary in this world, it would die a nateral death; not that men wouldn’t support it, but because it would be supported under false pretences. Truth can’t be long upheld by falsehood. Hypocrisy would change its features, and intolerance its name; and religion would soon degenerate into a cold, intriguing, onprincipled, marciless superstition, that’s a fact.

“Yes, on the whole, I rather like these plain, decent, onpretendin’, country churches here, although t’other ones remind me of old times, when I was an ontamed one too. Yes, I like an English church; but as for Minister pretendin’ for to come for to go for to preach agin that beautiful long-haired young rebel, Squire Absalom, for ‘stealin’ the hearts of the people,’ why it’s rather takin’ the rag off the bush, ain’t it?

“Tell you what, Squire; there ain’t a man in their whole church here, from Lord Canter Berry that preaches afore the Queen, to Parson Homily that preached afore us, nor never was, nor never will be equal to Old Minister hisself for ‘stealin’ the hearts of the people.’”

CHAPTER XIII. NATUR’.

In the course of our journey, the conversation turned upon the several series of the “Clockmaker” I had published, and their relative merits. Mr. Slick appeared to think they all owed their popularity mainly to the freshness and originality of character incidental to a new country.

“You are in the wrong pew here, Squire,” said he; “you are, upon my soul. If you think to sketch the English in a way any one will stop to look at, you have missed a figur’, that’s all. You can’t do it nohow; you can’t fix it. There is no contrasts here, no variation of colours, no light and shade, no nothin’. What sort of a pictur’ would straight lines of any thing make? Take a parcel of sodjers, officers and all, and stretch ‘em out in a row, and paint ‘em, and then engrave ‘em, and put it into one of our annuals, and see how folks would larf, and ask, ‘What boardin’-school gall did that? Who pulled her up out of standin’ corn, and sot her up on eend for an artist? they’d say.

“There is nothin’ here to take hold on. It’s so plaguy smooth and high polished, the hands slip off; you can’t get a grip of it. Now, take Lord First Chop, who is the most fashionable man in London, dress him in the last cut coat, best trowsers, French boots, Paris gloves, and grape-vine-root cane, don’t forget his whiskers, or mous-stache, or breast-pins, or gold chains, or any thing; and what have you got?—a tailor’s print-card, and nothin’ else.

“Take a lady, and dress her in a’most a beautiful long habit, man’s hat, stand-up collar and stock, clap a beautiful little cow-hide whip in her hand, and mount her on a’most a splendiferous white hoss, with long tail and flowin’ mane, a rairin’ and a cavortin’ like mad, and a champin’ and a chawin’ of its bit, and makin’ the froth fly from its mouth, a spatterin’ and white-spottin’ of her beautiful trailin’, skirt like any thing. And what have you got?—why a print like the posted hand-bills of a circus.

“Now spit on your fingers, and rub Lord First Chop out of the slate, and draw an Irish labourer, with his coat off, in his shirt-sleeves, with his breeches loose and ontied at the knees, his yarn stockings and thick shoes on; a little dudeen in his mouth, as black as ink and as short as nothin’; his hat with devilish little rim and no crown to it, and a hod on his shoulders, filled with bricks, and him lookin’ as if he was a singin’ away as merry as a cricket:

   When I was young and unmarried,
      my shoes they were new.
   But now I am old and am married,
      the water runs troo,’ 

Do that, and you have got sunthin’ worth lookin’ at, quite pictures-quee, as Sister Sall used to say. And because why? You have got sunthin’ nateral.

“Well, take the angylyferous dear a horseback, and rub her out, well, I won’t say that nother, for I’m fond of the little critturs, dressed or not dressed for company, or any way they like, yes, I like woman-natur’, I tell you. But turn over the slate, and draw on t’other side on’t an old woman, with a red cloak, and a striped petticoat, and a poor pinched-up, old, squashed-in bonnet on, bendin’ forrard, with a staff in her hand, a leadin’ of a donkey that has a pair of yaller willow saddle-bags on, with coloured vegetables and flowers, and red beet-tops, a goin’ to market. And what have you got? Why a pictur’ worth lookin’ at, too. Why?—because it’s natur’’.

“Now, look here, Squire; let Copley, if he was alive, but he ain’t; and it’s a pity too, for it would have kinder happified the old man, to see his son in the House of Lords, wouldn’t it? Squire Copley, you know, was a Boston man; and a credit to our great nation too. P’raps Europe never has dittoed him since.

“Well, if he was above ground now, alive, and stirrin’, why take him and fetch him to an upper crust London party; and sais you, ‘Old Tenor,’ sais you, ‘paint all them silver plates, and silver dishes, and silver coverlids, and what nots; and then paint them lords with their stars, and them ladies’ (Lord if he would paint them with their garters, folks would buy the pictur, cause that’s nateral) ‘them ladies with their jewels, and their sarvants with their liveries, as large as life, and twice as nateral.’

“Well, he’d paint it, if you paid him for it, that’s a fact; for there is no better bait to fish for us Yankees arter all, than a dollar. That old boy never turned up his nose at a dollar, except when he thought he ought to get two. And if he painted it, it wouldn’t be bad, I tell you.

“‘Now,’ sais you, ‘you have done high life, do low life for me, and I will pay you well. I’ll come down hansum, and do the thing genteel, you may depend. Then,’ sais you, ‘put in for a back ground that noble, old Noah-like lookin’ wood, that’s as dark as comingo. Have you done?’ sais you.

“‘I guess so,’ sais he.

“‘Then put in a brook jist in front of it, runnin’ over stones, and foamin’ and a bubblin’ up like any thing.’

“‘It’s in,’ sais he.

“‘Then jab two forked sticks in the ground ten feet apart, this side of the brook,’ sais you, ‘and clap a pole across atween the forks. Is that down?’ sais you.

“‘Yes,’ sais he.

“‘Then,’ sais you, ‘hang a pot on that horizontal pole, make a clear little wood fire onderneath; paint two covered carts near it. Let an old hoss drink at the stream, and two donkeys make a feed off a patch of thistles. Have-you stuck that in?’

“‘Stop a bit,’ says he, ‘paintin’ an’t quite as fast done as writin’. Have a little grain of patience, will you? It’s tall paintin’, makin’ the brush walk at that price. Now there you are,’ sais he. ‘What’s next? But, mind I’ve most filled my canvass; it will cost you a pretty considerable penny, if you want all them critters in, when I come to cypher all the pictur up, and sumtotalize the whole of it.’

“‘Oh! cuss the cost!’ sais you. ‘Do you jist obey orders, and break owners, that’s all you have to do, Old Loyalist.’

“‘Very well,’ sais he, ‘here goes.’

“‘Well, then,’ sais you, ‘paint a party of gipsies there; mind their different coloured clothes, and different attitudes, and different occupations. Here a man mendin’ a harness, there a woman pickin’ a stolen fowl, there a man skinnin’ a rabbit, there a woman with her petticoat up, a puttin’ of a patch in it. Here two boys a fishin’, and there a little gall a playin’ with a dog, that’s a racin’ and a yelpin’, and a barkin’ like mad.’

“‘Well, when he’s done,’ sais you, ‘which pictur do you reckon is the best now, Squire Copely? speak candid for I want to know, and I ask you now as a countryman.’

“‘Well’ he’ll jist up and tell you, ‘Mr. Poker,’ sais he, ‘your fashionable party is the devil, that’s a fact. Man made the town, but God made the country. Your company is as formal, and as stiff, and as oninterestin’ as a row of poplars; but your gipsy scene is beautiful, because it’s nateral. It was me painted old Chatham’s death in the House of Lords; folks praised it a good deal; but it was no great shakes, there was no natur’ in it. The scene was real, the likenesses was good, and there was spirit in it, but their damned uniform toggery, spiled the whole thing—it was artificial, and wanted life and natur. Now, suppose, such a thing in Congress, or suppose some feller skiverd the speaker with a bowie knife as happened to Arkansaw, if I was to paint it, it would be beautiful. Our free and enlightened people is so different, so characteristic and peculiar, it would give a great field to a painter. To sketch the different style of man of each state, so that any citizen would sing right out; Heavens and airth if that don’t beat all! Why, as I am a livin’ sinner that’s the Hoosier of Indiana, or the Sucker of Illinois, or the Puke of Missouri, or the Bucky of Ohio, or the Red Horse of Kentucky, or the Mudhead of Tennesee, or the Wolverine of Michigan or the Eel of New England, or the Corn Cracker of Virginia! That’s the thing that gives inspiration. That’s the glass of talabogus that raises your spirits. There is much of elegance, and more of comfort in England. It is a great and a good country, Mr. Poker, but there is no natur in it.’

“It is as true as gospel,” said Mr. Slick, “I’m tellin’ you no lie. It’s a fact. If you expect to paint them English, as you have the Blue-Noses and us, you’ll pull your line up without a fish, oftener than you are a-thinkin’ on; that’s the reason all our folks have failed. ‘Rush’s book is jist molasses and water, not quite so sweet as ‘lasses, and not quite so good as water; but a spilin’ of both. And why? His pictur was of polished life, where there is no natur. Washington Irving’s book is like a Dutch paintin’, it is good, because it is faithful; the mop has the right number of yarns, and each yarn has the right number of twists, (altho’ he mistook the mop of the grandfather, for the mop of the man of the present day) and the pewter plates are on the kitchen dresser, and the other little notions are all there. He has done the most that could be done for them, but the painter desarves more praise than the subject.

“Why is it every man’s sketches of America takes? Do you suppose it is the sketches? No. Do you reckon it is the interest we create? No. Is it our grand experiments? No. They don’t care a brass button for us, or our country, or experiments nother. What is it then? It is because they are sketches of natur. Natur in every grade and every variety of form; from the silver plate, and silver fork, to the finger and huntin’ knife. Our artificials Britishers laugh at; they are bad copies, that’s a fact; I give them up. Let them laugh, and be darned; but I stick to my natur, and I stump them to produce the like.

“Oh, Squire, if you ever sketch me, for goodness gracious sake, don’t sketch me as an Attache to our embassy, with the Legation button, on the coat, and black Jube Japan in livery. Don’t do that; but paint me in my old waggon to Nova Scotier, with old Clay before me, you by my side, a segar in my mouth, and natur all round me. And if that is too artificial; oh, paint me in the back woods, with my huntin’ coat on, my leggins, my cap, my belt, and my powder-horn. Paint me with my talkin’ iron in my hand, wipin’ her, chargin’ her, selectin’ the bullet, placin’ it in the greased wad, and rammin’ it down. Then draw a splendid oak openin’ so as to give a good view, paint a squirrel on the tip top of the highest branch, of the loftiest tree, place me off at a hundred yards, drawin’ a bead on him fine, then show the smoke, and young squire squirrel comin’ tumblin’ down head over heels lumpus’, to see whether the ground was as hard as dead squirrels said it was. Paint me nateral, I besech you; for I tell you now, as I told you before, and ever shall say, there is nothin’ worth havin’ or knowin’, or hearin’, or readin’, or seein’, or tastin’, or smellin’, or feelin’ and above all and more than all, nothin’ worth affectionin’ but Natur.

CHAPTER XIV. THE SOCDOLAGER.

As soon as I found my friend Mr. Hopewell comfortably settled in his lodgings, I went to the office of the Belgian Consul and other persons to obtain the necessary passports for visiting Germany, where I had a son at school. Mr. Slick proceeded at the same time to the residence of his Excellency Abednego Layman, who had been sent to this country by the United States on a special mission, relative to the Tariff.

On my return from the city in the afternoon, he told me he had presented his credentials to “the Socdolager,” and was most graciously and cordially received; but still, I could not fail to observe that there was an evident air of disappointment about him.

“Pray, what is the meaning of the Socdolager?” I asked. “I never heard of the term before.”

“Possible!” said he, “never heerd tell of ‘the Socdolager,’ why you don’t say so! The Socdolager is the President of the lakes—he is the whale of the intarnal seas—the Indgians worshipped him once on a time, as the king of fishes. He lives in great state in the deep waters, does the old boy, and he don’t often shew himself. I never see’d him myself, nor any one that ever had sot eyes on him; but the old Indgians have see’d him and know him well. He won’t take no bait, will the Socdolager; he can’t be caught, no how you can fix, he is so ‘tarnal knowin’, and he can’t be speared nother, for the moment he sees aim taken, he ryles the water and is out of sight in no tune. He can take in whole shoals of others hisself, tho’ at a mouthful. He’s a whapper, that’s a fact. I call our Minister here ‘the Socdolager,’ for our diplomaters were never known to be hooked once yet, and actilly beat all natur’ for knowin’ the soundin’s, smellin’ the bait, givin’ the dodge, or rylin’ the water; so no soul can see thro’ it but themselves. Yes, he is ‘a Socdolager,’ or a whale among diplomaters.

“Well, I rigs up this morning, full fig, calls a cab, and proceeds in state to our embassy, gives what Cooper calls a lord’s beat of six thund’rin’ raps of the knocker, presents the legation ticket, and was admitted to where ambassador was. He is a very pretty man all up his shirt, and he talks pretty, and smiles pretty, and bows pretty, and he has got the whitest hand you ever see, it looks as white, as a new bread and milk poultice. It does indeed.

“‘Sam Slick,’ sais he, ‘as I’m alive. Well, how do you do, Mr. Slick? I am ‘nation glad to see you, I affection you as a member of our legation. I feel kinder proud to have the first literary man of our great nation as my Attache.’

“‘Your knowledge of human natur, (added to your’n of soft sawder,’ sais I,) ‘will raise our great nation, I guess, in the scale o’ European estimation.’

“He is as sensitive as a skinned eel, is Layman, and he winced at that poke at his soft sawder like any thing, and puckered a little about the mouth, but he didn’t say nothin’, he only bowed. He was a Unitarian preacher once, was Abednego, but he swapt preachin’ for politics, and a good trade he made of it too; that’s a fact.

“‘A great change,’ sais I, ‘Abednego, since you was a preachin’ to Connecticut and I was a vendin’ of clocks to Nova Scotia, ain’t it? Who’d a thought then, you’d a been “a Socdolager,” and me your “pilot fish,” eh!’

“It was a raw spot, that, and I always touched him on it for fun.

“‘Sam,’ said he, and his face fell like an empty puss, when it gets a few cents put into each eend on it, the weight makes it grow twice as long in a minute. ‘Sam,’ said he, ‘don’t call me that are, except when we are alone here, that’s a good soul; not that I am proud, for I am a true Republican;’ and he put his hand on his heart, bowed and smiled hansum, ‘but these people will make a nickname of it, and we shall never hear the last of it; that’s a fact. We must respect ourselves, afore others will respect us. You onderstand, don’t you?’

“‘Oh, don’t I,’ sais I, ‘that’s all? It’s only here I talks this way, because we are at home now; but I can’t help a thinkin’ how strange things do turn up sometimes. Do you recollect, when I heard you a-preachin’ about Hope a-pitchin’ of her tent on a hill? By gosh, it struck me then, you’d pitch, your tent high some day; you did it beautiful.’

“He know’d I didn’t like this change, that Mr. Hopewell had kinder inoculated me with other guess views on these matters, so he began to throw up bankments and to picket in the ground, all round for defence like.

“‘Hope,’ sais he, ‘is the attribute of a Christian, Slick, for he hopes beyond this world; but I changed on principle.’

“‘Well,’ sais I, ‘I changed on interest; now if our great nation is backed by principal and interest here, I guess its credit is kinder well built. And atween you and me, Abednego, that’s more than the soft-horned British will ever see from all our States. Some on ‘em are intarmined to pay neither debt nor interest, and give nothin’ but lip in retarn.’

“‘Now,’ sais he, a pretendin’ to take no notice of this,’ you know we have the Voluntary with us, Mr. Slick.’ He said “Mister” that time, for he began to get formal on puppus to stop jokes; but, dear me, where all men are equal what’s the use of one man tryin’ to look big? He must take to growin’ agin I guess to do that. ‘You know we have the Voluntary with us, Mr. Slick,’ sais he.

“‘Jist so,’ sais I.

“‘Well, what’s the meanin’ of that?’

“‘Why,’ sais I, ‘that you support religion or let it alone, as you like; that you can take it up as a pedlar does his pack, carry it till you are tired, then lay it down, set on it, and let it support you.”

“‘Exactly,’ sais he; ‘it is voluntary on the hearer, and it’s jist so with the minister, too; for his preachin’ is voluntary also. He can preach or lot it alone, as he likes. It’s voluntary all through. It’s a bad rule that won’t work both ways.’

“‘Well,’ says I, ‘there is a good deal in that, too.’ I said that just to lead him on.

“‘A good deal!’ sais he, ‘why it’s every thing. But I didn’t rest on that alone; I propounded this maxim to myself. Every man, sais I, is bound to sarve his fellow citizens to his utmost. That’s true; ain’t it, Mr. Slick?’

“‘Guess so,’ sais I.

“‘Well then, I asked myself this here question: Can I sarve my fellow citizens best by bein’ minister to Peach settlement, ‘tendin’ on a little village of two thousand souls, and preachin’ my throat sore, or bein’ special minister to Saint Jimses, and sarvin’ our great Republic and its thirteen millions? Why, no reasonable man can doubt; so I give up preachin’.’

“‘Well,’ sais I, ‘Abednego, you are a Socdolager, that’s a fact; you are a great man, and a great scholard. Now a great scholard, when he can’t do a sum the way it’s stated, jist states it so—he can do it. Now the right way to state that sum is arter this fashion: “Which is best, to endeavour to save the souls of two thousand people under my spiritual charge, or let them go to Old Nick and save a piece of wild land in Maine, get pay for an old steamer burnt to Canada, and uphold the slave trade for the interest of the States.’

“‘That’s specious, but not true,’ said he; ‘but it’s a matter rather for my consideration than your’n,’ and he looked as a feller does when he buttons his trowsers’ pocket, as much as to say, you have no right to be a puttin’ of your pickers and stealers in there, that’s mine. ‘We will do better to be less selfish,’ said he, ‘and talk of our great nation.’

“‘Well,’ says I, ‘how do we stand here in Europe? Do we maintain the high pitch we had, or do we sing a note lower than we did?’

“Well, he walked up and down the room, with his hands onder his coat-tails, for ever so long, without a sayin’ of a word. At last, sais he, with a beautiful smile that was jist skin deep, for it played on his face as a cat’s-paw does on the calm waters, ‘What was you a sayin.’ of, Mr. Slick?’ saw he.

“‘What’s our position to Europe?’ sais I, ‘jist now; is it letter A, No. 1?’

“‘Oh!’ sais he, and he walked up and down agin, cypherin’ like to himself; and then says he, ‘I’ll tell you; that word Socdolager, and the trade of preachin’, and clockmakin’, it would be as well to sink here; neither on ‘em convene with dignity. Don’t you think so?’

“‘Sartainly,’ sais I; ‘it’s only fit for talk over a cigar, alone. It don’t always answer a good, purpose to blart every thing out. But our position,’ says I, among the nations of the airth, is it what our everlastin’ Union is entitled to?’

“‘Because,’ sais he, ‘some day when I am asked out to dinner, some wag or another of a lord will call me parson, and ask me to crave a blessin’, jist to raise the larf agin me for havin’ been a preacher.’

“‘If he does,’ sais I,’ jist say, my Attache does that, and I’ll jist up first and give it to him atween the two eyes; and when that’s done, sais you, my Lord, that’s your grace afore meat; pr’aps your lordship will return thanks arter dinner. Let him try it, that’s all. But our great nation,’ sais I, ‘tell me, hante that noble stand we made on the right of sarch, raised us about the toploftiest?’

“‘Oh,’ says he ‘right of sarch! right of sarch! I’ve been tryin’ to sarch my memory, but can’t find it. I don’t recollect that sarmont about Hope pitchin’ her tent on the hill. When was it?’

“‘It was afore the juvenile-united-democratic-republican association to Funnel Hall,’ sais I.

“‘Oh,’ says he, ‘that was an oration—it was an oration that.’

“Oh!” sais I, “we won’t say no more about that; I only meant it as a joke, and nothin’ more. But railly now, Abednego, what is the state of our legation?”

“‘I don’t see nothin’ ridikilous,’ sais he, ‘in that are expression, of Hope pitchin’ her tent on a hill. It’s figurativ’ and poetic, but it’s within the line that divides taste from bombast. Hope pitchin’ her tent on a hill! What is there to reprehend in that?’

“Good airth and seas,’ sais I, ‘let’s pitch Hope, and her tent, and the hill, all to Old Nick in a heap together, and talk of somethin’ else. You needn’t be so perkily ashamed of havin’ preached, man. Cromwell was a great preacher all his life, but it didn’t spile him as a Socdolager one bit, but rather helped him, that’s a fact. How ‘av we held our footin’ here?’

“‘Not well, I am grieved to say,’ sais he; ‘not well. The failure of the United States’ Bank, the repudiation of debts by several of our States, the foolish opposition we made to the suppression of the slave-trade, and above all, the bad faith in the business of the boundary question has lowered us down, down, e’en a’most to the bottom of the shaft.’

“‘Abednego,’ sais I, ‘we want somethin’ besides boastin’ and talkin’ big; we want a dash—a great stroke of policy. Washington hanging Andre that time, gained more than a battle. Jackson by hanging Arbuthnot and Anbristher, gained his election. M’Kennie for havin’ hanged them three citizens will be made an admiral of yet, see if he don’t. Now if Captain Tyler had said, in his message to Congress, ‘Any State that repudiates its foreign debts, we will first fine it in the whole amount, and then cut it off from our great, free, enlightened, moral and intellectual republic, he would have gained by the dash his next election, and run up our flag to the mast-head in Europe. He would have been popular to home, and respected abroad, that’s as clear as mud,’

“‘He would have done right, Sir, if he had done that,’ said Abednego, ‘and the right thing is always approved of in the eend, and always esteemed all through the piece. A dash, as a stroke of policy,’ said he, ‘has sometimes a good effect. General Jackson threatening France with a war, if they didn’t pay the indemnity, when he knew the King would make ‘em pay it whether or no, was a masterpiece; and General Cass tellin’ France if she signed the right of sarch treaty, we would fight both her and England together single-handed, was the best move on the political chess-board, this century. All these, Sir, are very well in their way, to produce an effect; but there’s a better policy nor all that, a far better policy, and one, too, that some of our States and legislators, and presidents, and Socdolagers, as you call ‘em, in my mind have got to larn yet, Sam.’

“‘What’s that?’ sais I. “For I don’t believe in my soul there is nothin’ a’most our diplomaters don’t know. They are a body o’ men that does honour to our great nation. What policy are you a indicatin’ of?’

“‘Why,’ sais he, ‘that honesty is the best policy.’

“When I heerd him say that, I springs right up on eend, like a rope dancer. ‘Give me your hand, Abednego,’ sais I; ‘you are a man, every inch of you,’ and I squeezed it so hard, it made his eyes water. ‘I always knowed you had an excellent head-piece,’ sais I, ‘and now I see the heart is in the right place too. If you have thrown preachin’ overboard, you have kept your morals for ballast, any how. I feel kinder proud of you; you are jist a fit representative for our great nation. You are a Socdolager, that’s a fact. I approbate your notion; it’s as correct as a bootjack. For nations or individuals, it’s all the same, honesty is the best policy, and no mistake. That,’ sais I, ‘is the hill, Abednego, for Hope to pitch her tent on, and no mistake,’ and I put my finger to my nose, and winked.

“‘Well,’ sais he, ‘it is; but you are a droll feller, Slick, there is no standin’ your jokes. I’ll give you leave to larf if you like, but you must give me leave to win if I can. Good bye. But mind, Sam, our dignity is at stake. Let’s have no more of Socdolagers, or Preachin’, or Clockmakin’, or Hope pitchin’ her tent. A word to the wise. Good bye.’

“Yes,” said Mr. Slick, “I rather like Abednego’s talk myself. I kinder think that it will be respectable to be Attache to such a man as that. But he is goin’ out of town for some time, is the Socdolager. There is an agricultural dinner, where he has to make a conciliation speech; and a scientific association, where there is a piece of delicate brag and a bit of soft sawder to do, and then there are visits to the nobility, peep at manufactures, and all that sort of work, so he won’t be in town for a good spell, and until then, I can’t go to Court, for he is to introduce me himself. Pity that, but then it’ll give me lots o’ time to study human natur, that is, if there is any of it left here, for I have some doubts about that. Yes, he is an able lead horse, is Abednego; he is a’most a grand preacher, a good poet, a first chop orator, a great diplomater, and a top sawyer of a man, in short—he is a Socdolager.”

CHAPTER XV. DINING OUT.

My visit to Germany was protracted beyond the period I had originally designed; and, during my absence, Mr. Slick had been constantly in company, either “dining out” daily, when in town, or visiting from one house to another in the country.

I found him in great spirits. He assured me he had many capital stories to tell me, and that he rather guessed he knew as much of the English, and a leetle, jist a leetle, grain more, p’raps, than they knew of the Yankees.

“They are considerable large print are the Bull family,” said he; “you can read them by moonlight. Indeed, their faces ain’t onlike the moon in a gineral way; only one has got a man in it, and the other hain’t always. It tante a bright face; you can look into it without winkin’. It’s a cloudy one here too, especially in November; and most all the time makes you rather sad and solemncoly. Yes, John is a moony man, that’s a fact, and at the full a little queer sometimes.

“England is a stupid country compared to our’n. There it no variety where there it no natur. You have class variety here, but no individiality. They are insipid, and call it perlite. The men dress alike, talk alike, and look as much alike as Providence will let ‘em. The club-houses and the tailors have done a good deal towards this, and so has whiggism and dissent; for they have destroyed distinctions.

“But this is too deep for me. Ask Minister, he will tell you the cause; I only tell you the fact.

“Dinin’ out here, is both heavy work, and light feedin’. It’s monstrous stupid. One dinner like one rainy day (it’s rained ever since I been here a’most), is like another; one drawin’-room like another drawin’-room; one peer’s entertainment, in a general way, is like another peer’s. The same powdered, liveried, lazy, idle, good-for-nothin’, do-little, stand-in-the-way-of-each-other, useless sarvants. Same picturs, same plate, same fixin’s, same don’t-know-what-to-do-with-your-self-kinder-o’-lookin’-master. Great folks are like great folks, marchants like marchants, and so on. It’s a pictur, it looks like life, but’ it tante. The animal is tamed here; he is fatter than the wild one, but he hante the spirit.

“You have seen-Old Clay in a pastur, a racin’ about, free from harness, head and tail up, snortin’, cavortin’, attitudinisin’ of himself. Mane flowin’ in the wind, eye-ball startin’ out, nostrils inside out a’most, ears pricked up. A nateral hoss; put him in a waggon, with a rael spic and span harness, all covered over with brass buckles and brass knobs, and ribbons in his bridle, rael jam. Curb him up, talk Yankee to him, and get his ginger up. Well, he looks well; but he is ‘a broke hoss.’ He reminds you of Sam Slick; cause when you see a hoss, you think of his master: but he don’t remind you of the rael ‘Old Clay,’ that’s a fact.

“Take a day here, now in town; and they are so identical the same, that one day sartificates for another. You can’t get out a bed afore twelve, in winter, the days is so short, and the fires ain’t made, or the room dusted, or the breakfast can’t be got, or sunthin’ or another. And if you did, what’s the use? There is no one to talk to, and books only weaken your understandin’, as water does brandy. They make you let others guess for you, instead of guessin’ for yourself. Sarvants spile your habits here, and books spite your mind. I wouldn’t swap ideas with any man. I make my own opinions, as I used to do my own clocks; and I find they are truer than other men’s. The Turks are so cussed heavy, they have people to dance for ‘em; the English are wus, for they hire people to think for ‘em. Never read a book, Squire, always think for yourself.

“Well, arter breakfast, it’s on hat and coat, ombrella in hand, (don’t never forget that, for the rumatiz, like the perlice, is always on the look out here, to grab hold of a feller,) and go somewhere where there is somebody, or another, and smoke, and then wash it down with a sherry-cobbler; (the drinks ain’t good here; they hante no variety in them nother; no white-nose, apple-jack, stone-wall, chain-lightning, rail-road, hail-storm, ginsling-talabogus, switchel-flip, gum-ticklers, phlem-cutters, juleps, skate-iron, cast-steel, cock-tail, or nothin’, but that heavy stupid black fat porter;) then down to the coffee-house, see what vessels have arrived, how markets is, whether there is a chance of doin’ any thin’ in cotton or tobacco, whose broke to home, and so on. Then go to the park, and see what’s a goin’ on there; whether those pretty critturs, the rads are a holdin’ a prime minister ‘parsonally responsible,’ by shootin’ at him; or whether there is a levee, or the Queen is ridin’ out, or what not; take a look at the world, make a visit or two to kill time, when all at once it’s dark. Home then, smoke a cigar, dress for dinner, and arrive at a quarter past seven.

“Folks are up to the notch here when dinner is in question, that’s a fact, fat, gouty, broken-winded, and foundered as they be. It’s rap, rap, rap, for twenty minutes at the door, and in they come, one arter the other, as fast as the sarvants can carry up their names. Cuss them sarvants! it takes seven or eight of ‘em to carry a man’s name up stairs, they are so awful lazy, and so shockin’ full of porter. If a feller was so lame he had to be carried up himself, I don’t believe on my soul, the whole gang of them, from the Butler that dresses in the same clothes as his master, to Boots that ain’t dressed at all, could make out to bowse him up stairs, upon my soul I don’t.

“Well, you go in along with your name, walk up to old aunty, and make a scrape, and the same to old uncle, and then fall back. This is done as solemn, as if a feller’s name was called out to take his place in a funeral; that and the mistakes is the fun of it. There is a sarvant at a house I visit at, that I suspicion is a bit of a bam, and the critter shows both his wit and sense. He never does it to a ‘somebody,’ ‘cause that would cost him his place, but when a ‘nobody’ has a droll name, he jist gives an accent, or a sly twist to it, that folks can’t help a larfin’, no more than Mr. Nobody can feelin’ like a fool. He’s a droll boy, that; I should like to know him.

“Well, arter ‘nouncin’ is done, then comes two questions—do I know anybody here? and if I do, does he look like talk or not? Well, seein’ that you have no handle to your name, and a stranger, it’s most likely you can’t answer these questions right; so you stand and use your eyes, and put your tongue up in its case till it’s wanted. Company are all come, and now they have to be marshalled two and two, lock and lock, and go into the dinin’-room to feed.

“When I first came I was nation proud of that title, ‘the Attache;’ now I am happified it’s nothin’ but ‘only an Attache,’ and I’ll tell you why. The great guns, and big bugs, have to take in each other’s ladies, so these old ones have to herd together. Well, the nobodies go together too, and sit together, and I’ve observed these nobodies are the pleasantest people at table, and they have the pleasantest places, because they sit down with each other, and are jist like yourself, plaguy glad to get some one to talk to. Somebody can only visit somebody, but nobody can go anywhere, and therefore nobody sees and knows twice as much as somebody does. Somebodies must be axed, if they are as stupid as a pump; but nobodies needn’t, and never are, unless they are spicy sort o’ folks, so you are sure of them, and they have all the fun and wit of the table at their eend, and no mistake.

“I wouldn’t take a title if they would give it to me, for if I had one, I should have a fat old parblind dowager detailed on to me to take in to dinner; and what the plague is her jewels and laces, and silks and sattins, and wigs to me? As it is, I have a chance to have a gall to take in that’s a jewel herself—one that don’t want no settin’ off, and carries her diamonds in her eyes, and so on. I’ve told our minister not to introduce me as an Attache no more, but as Mr. Nobody, from the State of Nothin’, in America, that’s natur agin.

“But to get back to the dinner. Arter you are in marchin’ order, you move in through two rows of sarvants in uniform. I used to think they was placed there for show, but it’s to keep the air off of folks a goin’ through the entry, and it ain’t a bad thought, nother.

“Lord, the first time I went to one o’ these grand let offs I felt kinder skeery, and as nobody was allocated to me to take in, I goes in alone, not knowin’ where I was to settle down as a squatter, and kinder lagged behind; when the butler comes and rams a napkin in my hand, and gives me a shove, and sais he, ‘Go and stand behind your master, sir,’ sais he. Oh Solomon! how that waked me up. How I curled inwardly when he did that. ‘You’ve mistaken the child,’ sais I mildly, and I held out the napkin, and jist as he went to take it, I gave him a sly poke in the bread basket, that made him bend forward and say ‘eugh.’ ‘Wake Snakes, and walk your chalks,’ sais I, ‘will you?’ and down I pops on the fust empty chair. Lord, how white he looked about the gills arterwards; I thought I should a split when I looked at him. Guess he’ll know an Attache when he sees him next time.

“Well, there is dinner. One sarvice of plate is like another sarvice of plate, any one dozen of sarvants are like another dozen of sarvants, hock is hock, and champaigne is champaigne—and one dinner is like another dinner. The only difference is in the thing itself that’s cooked. Veal, to be good, must look like any thing else but veal; you mustn’t know it when you see it, or it’s vulgar; mutton must be incog. too; beef must have a mask on; any thin’ that looks solid, take a spoon to; any thin’ that looks light, cut with a knife; if a thing looks like fish, you may take your oath it is flesh; and if it seems rael flesh, it’s only disguised, for it’s sure to be fish; nothin’ must be nateral, natur is out of fashion here. This is a manufacturin’ country, everything is done by machinery, and that that ain’t must be made to look like it; and I must say, the dinner machinery is parfect.

“Sarvants keep goin’ round and round in a ring, slow, but sartain, and for ever, like the arms of a great big windmill, shovin’ dish after dish, in dum show, afore your nose, for you to see how you like the flavour; when your glass is empty it’s filled; when your eyes is off your plate, it’s off too, afore you can say Nick Biddle.

“Folks speak low here; steam is valuable, and noise onpolite. They call it a “subdued tone.” Poor tame things, they are subdued, that’s a fact; slaves to an arbitrary tyrannical fashion that don’t leave ‘em no free will at all. You don’t often speak across a table any more nor you do across a street, but p’raps Mr. Somebody of West Eend of town, will say to a Mr. Nobody from West Eend of America: ‘Niagara is noble.’ Mr. Nobody will say, ‘Guess it is, it got its patent afore the “Norman Conquest,” I reckon, and afore the “subdued tone” come in fashion.’ Then Mr. Somebody will look like an oracle, and say, ‘Great rivers and great trees in America. You speak good English.’ And then he will seem surprised, but not say it, only you can read the words on his face, ‘Upon my soul, you are a’most as white as us.’

“Dinner is over. It’s time for ladies to cut stick. Aunt Goosey looks at the next oldest goosey, and ducks her head, as if she was a goin’ through a gate, and then they all come to their feet, and the goslins come to their feet, and they all toddle off to the drawin’ room together.

“The decanters now take the “grand tour” of the table, and, like most travellers, go out with full pockets, and return with empty ones. Talk has a pair of stays here, and is laced up tight and stiff. Larnin’ is pedantic; politics is onsafe; religion ain’t fashionable. You must tread on neutral ground. Well, neutral ground gets so trampled down by both sides, and so plundered by all, there ain’t any thing fresh or good grows on it, and it has no cover for game nother.

“Housundever, the ground is tried, it’s well beat, but nothin’ is put up, and you get back to where you started. Uncle Gander looks at next oldest gander hard, bobs his head, and lifts one leg, all ready for a go, and says, ‘Will you take any more wine?’ ‘No, sais he, ‘but I take the hint, let’s jine the ladies.’

“Well, when the whole flock is gathered in the goose pastur, the drawin’-room, other little flocks come troopin’ in, and stand, or walk, or down on chairs; and them that know each other talk, and them that don’t twirl their thumbs over their fingers; and when they are tired of that, twirl their fingers over their thumbs. I’m nobody, and so I goes and sets side-ways on an ottarman, like a gall on a side-saddle, and look at what’s afore me. And fust I always look at the galls.

“Now, this I will say, they are amazin’ fine critters are the women kind here, when they are taken proper care of. The English may stump the univarse a’most for trainin’ hosses and galls. They give ‘em both plenty of walkin’ exercise, feed ‘em regular, shoe ‘em well, trim ‘em neat, and keep a beautiful skin on ‘em. They keep, ‘em in good health, and don’t house ‘em too much. They are clippers, that’s a fact. There is few things in natur, equal to a hoss and a gall, that’s well trained and in good condition. I could stand all day and look at ‘em, and I call myself a considerable of a judge. It’s singular how much they are alike too, the moment the trainin’ is over or neglected, neither of ‘em is fit to be seen; they grow out of shape, and look coarse.

“They are considerable knowin’ in this kind o’ ware too, are the English; they vamp ‘em up so well, it’s hard to tell their age, and I ain’t sure they don’t make ‘em live longer, than where the art ain’t so well practised. The mark o’ mouth is kept up in a hoss here by the file, and a hay-cutter saves his teeth, and helps his digestion. Well, a dentist does the same good turn for a woman; it makes her pass for several years younger; and helps her looks, mends her voice, and makes her as smart as a three year old.

“What’s that? It’s music. Well, that’s artificial too, it’s scientific they say, it’s done by rule. Jist look at that gall to the piany: first comes a little Garman thunder. Good airth and seas, what a crash! it seems as if she’d bang the instrument all to a thousand pieces. I guess she’s vexed at somebody and is a peggin’ it into the piany out of spite. Now comes the singin’; see what faces she makes, how she stretches her mouth open, like a barn door, and turns up the white of her eyes, like a duck in thunder. She is in a musical ecstasy is that gall, she feels good all over, her soul is a goin’ out along with that ere music. Oh, it’s divine, and she is an angel, ain’t she? Yes, I guess she is, and when I’m an angel, I will fall in love with her; but as I’m a man, at least what’s left of me, I’d jist as soon fall in love with one that was a leetle, jist a leetle more of a woman, and a leetle, jist a leetle less of an angel. But hullo! what onder the sun is she about, why her voice is goin’ down her own throat, to gain strength, and here it comes out agin as deep toned as a man’s; while that dandy feller along side of her, is singin’ what they call falsetter. They’ve actilly changed voices. The gall sings like a man, and that screamer like a woman. This is science: this is taste: this is fashion; but hang me if it’s natur. I’m tired to death of it, but one good thing is, you needn’t listen without you like, for every body is talking as, loud as ever.

“Lord, how extremes meet sometimes, as Minister says. Here, how, fashion is the top of the pot, and that pot hangs on the highest hook on the crane. In America, natur can’t go no farther; it’s the rael thing. Look at the women kind, now. An Indgian gall, down South, goes most naked. Well, a splendiferous company gall, here, when she is full dressed is only half covered, and neither of ‘em attract you one mite or morsel. We dine at two and sup at seven; here they lunch at two, and dine at seven. The words are different, but they are identical the same. Well, the singin’ is amazin’ like, too. Who ever heerd them Italian singers recitin’ their jabber, showin’ their teeth, and cuttin’ didoes at a great private consart, that wouldn’t take his oath he had heerd niggers at a dignity ball, down South, sing jist the same, and jist as well. And then do, for goodness’ gracious’ sake, hear that great absent man, belongin’ to the House o’ Commons, when the chaplain says ‘Let us pray!’ sing right out at once, as if he was to home, ‘Oh! by all means,’ as much as to say, ‘me and the powers above are ready to hear you; but don’t be long about it.’

“Ain’t that for all the world like a camp-meetin’, when a reformed ring-tail roarer calls out to the minister, ‘That’s a fact, Welly Fobus, by Gosh; amen!’ or when preacher says, ‘Who will be saved?’ answers, ‘Me and the boys, throw us a hen-coop; the galls will drift down stream on a bale o’ cotton.’ Well then, our very lowest, and their very highest, don’t always act pretty, that’s a fact. Sometimes ‘they repudiate.’ You take, don’t you?

“There is another party to-night; the flock is a thinnin’ off agin; and as I want a cigar most amazin’ly, let’s go to a divan, and some other time, I’ll tell you what a swoiree is. But answer me this here question now, Squire: when this same thing is acted over and over, day after day, and no variation, from July to etarnity, don’t you think you’d get a leetle—jist a leetle more tired of it every day, and wish for natur once more. If you wouldn’t I would, that’s all.”

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