The Attaché; or, Sam Slick in England — Complete. Thomas Chandler Haliburton

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.

       Table of Contents

      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.