Nature and Human Nature Part 44

He went into the house, and bringing out a pan of oats, and calling him, the horse followed him into the stable, where he was secured. I soon ascertained he was perfectly sound, and that he was an uncommonly fine animal. I sent Sorrow on board for my saddle and bridle, whip and spurs, and desired that the vessel might be warped into the wharf.

When the negro returned, I repeated the terms of the bargain to Jerry, which being a.s.sented to, the animal was brought out into the centre of the field, and while his owner was talking to him, I vaulted into the saddle. At first he seemed very much alarmed, snorting, and blowing violently; he then bounded forward and lashed out with his hind feet most furiously, which was succeeded by alternate rearing, kicking, and backing. I don't think I ever see a critter splurge so badly; at last he ran the whole length of the field, occasionally throwing up his heels very high in the air, and returned unwillingly, stopping every few minutes and plunging outrageously. On the second trial he again ran, and for the first time I gave him both whip and spur, and made him take the fence, and in returning I pushed him in the same manner, making him take the leap as before. Though awkward and ignorant of the meaning of the rein, the animal knew he was in the hands of a power superior to his own, and submitted far more easily than I expected.

When we arrived at the wharf, I removed the saddle, and placing a strong rope round his neck, had it attached to the windla.s.s, not to drag him on board, but to make him feel if he refused to advance that he was powerless to resist, an indispensable precaution in breaking horses. Once and once only he attempted escape; he reared and threw himself, but finding the strain irresistible, he yielded and went on board quietly. Jerry was as delighted to get rid of him as I was to purchase him, and though I knew that seven pounds ten was as much as he could ever realize out of him, I felt I ought to pay him for the hay, and also that I could well afford to give him a little conciliation present; so I gave him two barrels of flour in addition, to enable him to make his peace with his wife, whom he had so grossly insulted by a.s.serting that his vow to heaven was to hug the sh.o.r.e hereafter, and had no reference to her. If I ain't mistaken, Jerry Boudrot, for so I have named the animal after him, will astonish the folks to Slickville; for of all the horses on this continent, to my mind, the real genuine Canadian is the best by all odds.

"Ah! my friend," said Jerry, addressing the horse, "you shall soon be out of sight of land, like your master; but unlike him, I hope you shall never be lost at sea."

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOLDING UP THE MIRROR.

From Halifax to c.u.mberland, Squire, the eastern coast of Nova Scotia presents more harbours fit for the entrance of men-of-war than the whole Atlantic coast of our country from Maine to Mexico. No part of the world I am acquainted with is so well supplied and so little frequented. They are "thar," as we say, but where are the large ships?

growing in the forest I guess. And the large towns? all got to be built I reckon. And the mines? why wanting to be worked. And the fisheries? Well, I'll tell you, if you will promise not to let on about it. We are going to have them by treaty, as we now have them by trespa.s.s. Fact is, we treat with the British and the Indians in the same way. Bully them if we can, and when that won't do, get the most valuable things they have in exchange for trash, like gla.s.s beads and wooden clocks. Still, Squire, there is a vast improvement here, though I won't say there ain't room for more; but there is such a change come over the people, as is quite astonishing. The Blue-nose of 1834 is no longer the Blue-nose of 1854. He is more active, more industrious, and more enterprising. Intelligent the critter always was, but unfortunately he was lazy. He was asleep then, now he is wide awake, and up and doing. He never had no occasion to be ashamed to show himself, for he is a good-looking feller, but he needn't now be no longer skeered to answer to his name, when the muster is come and his'n is called out in the roll, and say, "Here am I, Sirree." A new generation has sprung up, some of the drones are still about the hive, but there is a young vigorous race coming on who will keep pace with the age.

It's a great thing to have a good gla.s.s to look in now and then and see yourself. They have had the mirror held up to them.

Lord, I shall never forget when I was up to Rawdon here once, a countryman came to the inn where I was, to pay me for a clock I had put off on him, and as I was a pa.s.sin' through the entry I saw the critter standin' before the gla.s.s, awfully horrified.

"My good gracious," said he, a talking to himself, "my good gracious, is this you, John Smiler? I havn't seen you before now going on twenty years. Oh, how shockingly you are altered, I shouldn't a known you, I declare."

Now, I have held the mirror to these fellows to see themselves in, and it has scared them so they have shaved slick up, and made themselves look decent. I won't say I made all the changes myself, for Providence scourged them into activity, by sending the weavel into their wheat-fields, the rot into their potatoes, and the drought into their hay crops. It made them scratch round, I tell you, so as to earn their grub, and the exertion did them good. Well, the blisters I have put on their vanity stung 'em so, they jumped high enough to see the right road, and the way they travel ahead now is a caution to snails.

Now, if it was you who had done your country this sarvice, you would have spoke as mealy-mouthed of it as if b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in it. "I flatter myself," you would have said, "I had some little small share in it." "I have lent my feeble aid." "I have contributed my poor mite," and so on, and looked as meek and felt as proud as a Pharisee.

Now, that's not my way. I hold up the mirror, whether when folks see themselves in it they see me there or not. The value of a gla.s.s is its truth. And where colonists have suffered is from false reports, ignorance, and misrepresentation. There is not a word said of them that can be depended on. Missionary returns of all kinds are coloured and doctored to suit English subscribing palates, and it's a pity they should stand at the head of the list. British travellers distort things the same way. They land at Halifax, where they see the first contrast between Europe and America, and that contrast ain't favourable, for the town is dingy lookin' and wants paint, and the land round it is poor and stony. But that is enough, so they set down and abuse the whole country, stock and fluke, and write as wise about it as if they had seen it all instead of overlooking one mile from the deck of a steamer. The military enjoy it beyond anything, and are far more comfortable than in soldiering in England; but it don't do to say so, for it counts for foreign service, and like the witnesses at the court-marshall at Windsor, every feller sais, Non mi ricordo.

Governors who now-a-days have nothing to do, have plenty of leisure to write, and their sufferings are such, their pens are inadequate to the task. They are very much to be pitied.

Well, colonists on the other hand seldom get their noses out of it.

But if provincials do now and then come up on the other side of the big pond, like deep sea-fish rising to the surface, they spout and blow like porpoises, and try to look as large as whales, and people only laugh at them. Navy officers extol the harbour and the market, and the kindness and hospitality of the Haligonians, but that is all they know, and as far as that goes they speak the truth. It wants an impartial friend like me to hold up the mirror, both for their sakes and the Downing Street officials too. Is it any wonder then that the English don't know what they are talking about? Did you ever hear of the devil's advocate? a nickname I gave to one of the understrappers of the Colonial office, an ear mark that will stick to the feller for ever! Well, when they go to make a saint at Rome, and canonize some one who has been dead so long he is in danger of being forgot, the cardinals hold a sort of court-martial on him, and a man is appointed to rake and sc.r.a.pe all he can agin him, and they listen very patiently to all he has to say, so as not to do things in a hurry. He is called "the devil's advocate," but he never gained a cause yet. The same form used to be gone through at Downing Street, by an underling, but he always gained his point. The nickname of the "devil's advocate" that I gave him did his business for him, he is no longer there now.

The British cabinet wants the mirror held up to them, to show them how they look to others. Now, when an order is transmitted by a minister of the crown, as was done last war, to send all Yankee prisoners to the fortress of Louisburg for safe keeping, when that fortress more than sixty years before had been effectually razed from the face of the earth by engineer officers sent from England for the purpose, why it is natural a colonist should laugh, and say Capital! only it is a little too good; and when another minister says, he can't find good men to be governors, in order to defend appointments that his own party say are too bad, what language is strong enough to express his indignation? Had he said openly and manly, We are so situated, and so bound by parliamentary obligations, we not only have to pa.s.s over the whole body of provincials themselves, who have the most interest and are best informed in colonial matters, but we have to appoint some people like those to whom you object, who are forced upon us by hollerin' their daylights out for us at elections, when we would gladly select others, who are wholly unexceptionable, and their name is legion; why, he would have pitied his condition, and admired his manliness. If this sweeping charge be true, what an encomium it is upon the Dalhousies, the Gosfords, the Durhams, Sydenhams, Metcalfs, and Elgins, that they were chosen because suitable men could not be found if not supported by party. All that can be said for a minister who talks such stuff, is that a man who knows so little of London as to be unable to find the shortest way home, may easily lose himself in the wilds of Canada.

Now we licked the British when we had only three millions of people including n.i.g.g.e.rs, who are about as much use in a war as crows that feed on the slain, but don't help to kill 'em. We have "run up" an empire, as we say of a "wooden house," or as the gall who was asked where she was raised, said "She warn't raised, she growed up." We have shot up into manhood afore our beards grew, and have made a nation that ain't afeard of all creation. Where will you find a nation like ours? Answer me that question, but don't reply as an Irishman does by repeating it,--"Is it where I will find one, your Honour?"

Minister used to talk of some old chap, that killed a dragon and planted his teeth, and armed men sprung up. As soon as we whipped the British we sowed their teeth, and full-grown c.o.o.ns growed right out of the earth. Lord bless you, we have fellows like Crocket, that would sneeze a man-of-war right out of the water.

We have a right to brag, in fact it ain't braggin', its talking history, and cramming statistics down a fellow's throat, and if he wants tables to set down to, and study them, there's the old chairs of the governors of the thirteen united universal worlds of the old States, besides the rough ones of the new States to sit on, and canvas-back ducks, blue-point oysters, and, as Sorrow says, "hogs and dogs," for soup and pies, for refreshment from labour, as Freemasons say. Brag is a good dog, and Holdfast is a better one, but what do you say to a cross of the two?--and that's just what we are. An English statesman actually thinks n.o.body knows anything but himself. And his conduct puts folks both on the defensive and offensive. He eyes even an American all over as much as to say, Where the plague did you originate, what field of cotton or tobacco was you took from? and if a Canadian goes to Downing Street, the secretary starts as much as to say, I hope you han't got one o' them rotten eggs in your hand you pelted Elgin with. Upon my soul, it wern't my fault, his indemnifyin'

rebels, we never encourage traitors except in Spain, Sicily, Hungary, and places we have nothin' to do with. He brags of purity as much as a dirty piece of paper does, that it was originally clean.

"We appreciate your loyalty most fully, I a.s.sure you," he says. "When the militia put down the rebellion, without efficient aid from the military, parliament would have pa.s.sed a vote of thanks to you for your devotion to our cause, but really we were so busy just then we forgot it. Put that egg in your pocket, that's a good fellow, but don't set down on it, or it might stain the chair, and folks might think you was frightened at seeing so big a man as me;" and then he would turn round to the window and laugh.

Whoever brags over me gets the worst of it, that's a fact. Lord, I shall never forget a rise I once took out of one of these magnetized officials, who know all about the colonies, tho' he never saw one. I don't want any man to call me coward, and say I won't take it parsonal. There was a complaint made by some of our folks against the people of the Lower provinces seizing our coasters under pretence they were intrudin' on the fisheries. Our emba.s.sador was laid up at the time with rheumatism, which he called gout, because it sounded diplomatic. So says he, "Slick, take this letter and deliver it to the minister, and give him some verbal explanations."

Well, down I goes, was announced and ushered in, and when he saw me, he looked me all over as a tailor does a man before he takes his measure. It made me hoppin' mad I tell you, for in a general way I don't allow any man to turn up his nose at me without having a shot at it. So when I sat down I spit into the fire, in a way to put it out amost, and he drew back and made a face, a leettle, just a leettle uglier than his natural one was.

"Bad habit," sais I, "that'of spittin', ain't it?" lookin' up at him as innocent as you please, and makin' a face exactly like his.

"Very," said he, and he gave a shudder.

Sais I, "I don't know whether you are aware of it or not, but most bad habits are catching."

"I should hope not," said he, and he drew a little further off.

"Fact," sais I; "now if you look long and often at a man that winks, it sets you a winkin'. If you see a fellow with a twitch in his face, you feel your cheek doin' the same, and stammerin' is catching too.

Now I caught that habit at court, since I came to Europe. I dined wunst with the King of Prussia, when I was with our emba.s.sador on a visit at Berlin, and the King beats all natur in spittin', and the noise he makes aforehand is like clearin' a grate out with a poker, it's horrid. Well, that's not the worst of it, he uses that ugly German word for it, that vulgarians translate 'spitting.' Now some of our western people are compelled to chew a little tobacco, but like a broker tasting cheese, when testing wine, it is only done to be able to judge of the quality of the article, but even them unsophisticated, free, and enlightened citizens have an innate refinement about them.

They never use that nasty word 'spitting,' but call it 'expressing the ambia.' Well, whenever his Majesty crosses my mind, I do the same out of clear sheer disgust. Some o' them sort of uppercrust people, I call them big bugs, think they can do as they like, and use the privilege of indulging those evil habits. When folks like the king do it, I call them 'High, low, jack, and the game.'"

Well, the stare he gave me would have made you die a larfin'. I never saw a man in my life look so skeywonaky. He knew it was true that the king had that custom, and it dumb-foundered him. He looked at me as much as to say, "Well, that is capital; the idea of a Yankee, who spits like a garden-engine, swearing it's a bad habit he larned in Europe, and a trick he got from dining with a king, is the richest thing I ever heard in my life. I must tell that to Palmerston."

But I didn't let him off so easy. In the course of talk, sais he:

"Mr Slick, is it true that in South Carolina, if a free n.i.g.g.e.r, on board of one of our vessels, lands there, he is put into jail until the ship sails?" and he looked good, as much as to say, "Thank heaven I ain't like that republican."

"It is," said I. "We consider a free n.i.g.g.e.r and a free Englishman on a parr; we imprison a free black, lest he should corrupt our slaves. The Duke of Tuscany imprisons a free Englishman, if he has a Bible in his possession, lest he should corrupt his slaves. It's upon the principle, that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."

He didn't pursue the subject.

That's what I call brag for brag. We never allow any created critter, male or female, to go a-head of us in anything. I heard a lady say to emba.s.sador's wife once, in answer to her question, "how she was?"

"Oh, I am in such rude health, I have grown quite indecently stout."

Emba.s.sadress never heard them slang words before (for even high life has its slang), but she wouldn't be beat.

"Oh," said she, "all that will yield to exercise. Before I was married I was the rudest and most indecent gall in all Connecticut."

Well, an Irishman, with his elbow through his coat, and his shirt, if he has one, playing diggy-diggy-doubt from his trowsers, flourishes his shillalah over his head, and brags of the "Imirald Isle," and the most splindid pisantry in the world; a Scotchman boasts, that next to the devil and the royal owner of Etna, he is the richest proprietor of sulphur that ever was heard of; while a Frenchman, whose vanity exceeds both, has the modesty to call the English a nation of shopkeepers, the Yankees, canaille, and all the rest of the world beasts. Even John Chinaman swaggers about with his three tails, and calls foreigners "Barbarians." If we go a-head and speak out, do you do so, too. You have a right to do so. Hold the mirror to them, and your countrymen, too. It won't lie, that's a fact. They require it, I a.s.sure you. The way the just expectations of provincials have been disappointed, the loyal portion depressed, the turbulent petted, and the manner the feelings of all disregarded, the contempt that has accompanied concessions, the neglect that has followed devotion and self-sacrifice, and the extraordinary manner the just claims of the meritorious postponed to parliamentary support, has worked a change in the feelings of the people that the Downing Street officials cannot understand, or surely they would pursue a different course. They want to have the mirror held up to them.

I know they feel sore here about the picture my mirror gives them, and it's natural they should, especially comin' from a Yankee; and they call me a great bragger. But that's nothin' new; doctors do the same when a feller cures a poor wretch they have squeezed like a sponge, ruinated, and given up as past hope. They sing out Quack. But I don't care; I have a right to brag nationally and individually, and I'd be no good if I didn't take my own part. Now, though I say it that shouldn't say it, for I ain't afraid to speak out, the sketches I send you are from life; I paint things as you will find them and know them to be. I'll take a bet of a hundred dollars, ten people out of twelve in this country will recognise Jerry Boudrot's house who have never entered it, but who have seen others exactly like it, and will say, "I know who is meant by Jerry and his daughter and wife; I have often been there; it is at Clare or Arichat or Pumnico, or some such place or another."

Is that braggin'? Not a bit; it's only the naked fact. To my mind there is no vally in a sketch if it ain't true to nature. We needn't go searching about for strange people or strange things; life is full of them. There is queerer things happening every day than an author can imagine for the life of him. It takes a great many odd people to make a world, that's a fact. Now, if I describe a house that has an old hat in one window, and a pair of trousers in another, I don't stop to turn glazier, take 'em out and put whole gla.s.s in, nor make a garden where there is none, and put a large tree in the foreground for effect; but I take it as I find it, and I take people in the dress I find 'em in, and if I set 'em a talkin' I take their very words down.

Nothing gives you a right idea of a country and its people like that.

There is always some interest in natur, where truly depicted. Minister used to say that some author (I think he said it was old Dictionary Johnson) remarked, that the life of any man, if wrote truly, would be interesting. I think so too; for every man has a story of his own, adventures of his own, and some things have happened to him that never happened to anybody else. People here abuse me for all this, they say, after all my boastin' I don't do 'em justice. But after you and I are dead and gone, and things have been changed, as it is to be hoped they will some day or another for the better, unless they are like their Acadian French neighbours, and intend to remain just as they are for two hundred and fifty years, then these sketches will be curious; and, as they are as true to life as a Dutch picture, it will be interestin'

to see what sort of folks were here in 1854, how they lived, and how they employed themselves, and so on.

Now it's more than a hundred years ago since Smollett wrote, but his men and women were taken from real life, his sailors from the navy, his attorneys from the jails and criminal courts, and his fops and fine ladies from the herd of such cattle that he daily met with. Well, they are read now; I have 'em to home, and laugh till I cry over them.

Why? Because natur is the same always. Although we didn't live a hundred years ago, we can see how the folks of that age did; and, although society is altered, and there are no Admiral Benbows, nor Hawser Trunnions, and folks don't travel in vans with canvas covers, or wear swords, and frequent taverns, and all that as they used to did to England; still it's a pictur of the times, and instructin' as well as amusin'. I have learned more how folks dressed, talked, and lived, and thought, and what sort of critters they were, and what the state of society, high and low, was then, from his books and Fielding's than any I know of. They are true to life, and as long as natur remains the same, which it always will, they will be read. That's my idea at least.

Some squeamish people turn up the whites of their peepers at both those authors and say they are coa.r.s.e. How can they be otherwise?

society was coa.r.s.e. There are more veils worn now, but the devil still lurks in the eye under the veil. Things ain't talked of so openly, or done so openly, in modern as in old times. There is more concealment; and concealment is called delicacy. But where concealment is, the pa.s.sions are excited by the difficulties imposed by society. Barriers are erected too high to scale, but every barrier has its wicket, its latch key, and its private door. Natur is natur still, and there is as much of that that is condemned in his books now, as there was then.

There is a horrid sight of hypocrisy now, more than there was one hundred years ago; vice was audacious then, and scared folks. It ain't so bold at present as it used to did to be; but if it is forbid to enter the drawing-room, the back staircase is still free. Where there is a will there is a way, and always will be. I hate pretence, and, above all, mock modesty; it's a bad sign.

I knew a clergyman to home a monstrous pious man, and so delicate-minded, he altered a great many words and pa.s.sages in the Church Service, he said he couldn't find it in his heart to read them out in meetin', and yet that fellow, to my sartain knowledge, was the greatest scamp in private life I ever knew. Gracious knows, I don't approbate coa.r.s.eness, it shocks me, but narvous sensibility makes me sick. I like to call things by their right names, and I call a leg a leg, and not a larger limb; a shirt a shirt, though it is next the skin, and not a linen vestment; and a stocking a stocking, though it does reach up the leg, and not a silk hose; and a garter a garter, though it is above the calf, and not an elastic band or a hose suspender. A really modest woman was never squeamish. Fastidiousness is the envelope of indelicacy. To see harm in ordinary words betrays a knowledge, and not an ignorance of evil.

But that is neither here nor there, as I was sayin', when you are dead and gone these Journals of mine which you have edited, when mellowed by time, will let the hereafter-to-be Blue-noses, see what the has-been Nova Scotians here from '34 to '54 were. Now if something of the same kind had been done when Halifax was first settled a hundred years ago, what strange c.o.o.ns the old folks would seem to us. That state of society has pa.s.sed away, as well as the actors. For instance, when the militia was embodied to do duty so late as the Duke of Kent's time, Ensign Lane's name was called on parade. "Not here," said Lieutenant Grover, "he is mending Sargent Street's breeches."

Many a queer thing occurred then that would make a queer book, I a.s.sure you. There is much that is characteristic both to be seen and heard in every harbour in this province, the right way is to jot all down. Every place has its standing topic. At Windsor it is the gypsum trade, the St John's steamer, the Halifax coach, and a new house that is building. In King's County it is export of potatoes, bullocks, and horses. At Annapolis, cord, wood, oars, staves, shingles, and agricultural produce of all kinds. At Digby, smoked herrings, fish weirs, and St John markets. At Yarmouth, foreign freights, berthing, rails, cat-heads, lower cheeks, wooden bolsters, and the crown, palm, and shank of anchors. At Shelburne, it is divided between fish, lumber, and the price of vessels. At Liverpool, ship-building, deals, and timber, knees, transums, and futtucks, pintles, keelsons, and moose lines. At Lunenburg, Jeddore, and Chesencook, the state of the market at the capital. At the other harbours further to the eastward, the coal trade and the fisheries engross most of the conversation. You hear continually of the fall run and the spring catch of mackerel that set in but don't stop to bait. The remarkable discovery of the French coasters, that was made fifty years ago, and still is as new and as fresh as ever, that when fish are plenty there is no salt, and when salt is abundant there are no fish, continually startles you with its novelty and importance. While you are both amused and instructed by learning the meaning of coal cakes, Albion tops, and what a Chesencooker delights in, "slack;" you also find out that a hundred tons of coal at Sydney means when it reaches Halifax one hundred and fifteen, and that West India, Mediterranean, and Brazilian fish are actually made on these sh.o.r.es. These local topics are greatly diversified by politics, which, like crowfoot and white-weed, abound everywhere.