The Clockmaker Part 5

"People talk an everlastin' sight of nonsense about wine, women and horses. I've bought and sold 'em all, I've traded in all of them, and I tell you, there ain't one in a thousand that knows a grain about either on 'em. You hear folks say, oh, such a man is an ugly-grained critter--he'll break his wife's heart; jist as if a woman's heart was as brittle as a pipe stalk. The female heart, as far as my experience goes, is jist like a new India rubber shoe; you may pull and pull at it, till it stretches out a yard long, and then let go, and it will fly right back to its old shape. Their hearts are made of stout leather, I tell you; there's a plaguy sight of wear in 'em.

"I never knowed but one case of a broken heart, and that was in t'other s.e.x, one Washington Banks. He was a sneezer. He was tall enough to spit down on the heads of your grenadiers, and near about high enough to wade across Charlestown River, and as strong as a towboat. I guess he was somewhat less than a foot longer than the moral law and catechism too. He was a perfect pictur' of a man; you couldn't falt him in no particular; he was so just a made critter; folks used to run to the winder when he pa.s.sed, and say 'There goes Washington Banks, bean't he lovely?' I do believe there wasn't a gal in the Lowell factories, that warn't in love with him. Sometimes, at intermission, on Sabbath day, when they all came out together (an amazin' hansom sight too, near about a whole congregation of young gals), Banks used to say, 'I vow, young ladies, I wish I had five hundred arms to reciprocate one with each of you; but I reckon I have a heart big enough for you all; it's a whapper, you may depend, and every mite and morsel of it at your service.' Well, how you do act, Mr. Banks, half a thousand little clipper-clapper tongues would say, all at the same time, and their dear little eyes sparklin', like so many stars twinklin' of a frosty night.

"Well, when I last seed him, he was all skin and bone, like a horse turned out to die. He was teetotally defleshed, a mere walkin'

skeleton. 'I am dreadful sorry,' says I, 'to see you, Banks, lookin'

so peecked; why you look like a sick turkey hen, all legs; what on airth ails you?' 'I'm dyin',' says he, 'of a broken heart.' 'What,'

says I, 'have the gals been jiltin' you?' 'No, no,' says he, 'I bean't such a fool as that neither.' 'Well,' says I, 'have you made a bad speculation?' 'No,' says he, shakin' his head, 'I hope I have too much clear grit in me to take on so bad for that.' 'What under the sun, is it, then?' said I. 'Why,' says he, 'I made a bet the fore part of summer with Leftenant Oby Knowles, that I could shoulder the best bower of the Const.i.tution frigate. I won my bet, but the Anchor was so eternal heavy it broke my heart.' Sure enough he did die that very fall, and he was the only instance I ever heerd tell of a broken heart."

No. XI

c.u.mberland Oysters Produce Melancholy Forebodings.

The "soft sawder" of the Clockmaker had operated effectually on the beauty of Amherst, our lovely hostess of Pugwash's inn: indeed, I am inclined to think, with Mr. Slick, that "the road to a woman's heart lies through her child," from the effect produced upon her by the praises bestowed on her infant boy.

I was musing on this feminine susceptibility to flattery, when the door opened, and Mrs. Pugwash entered, dressed in her sweetest smiles and her best cap, an auxiliary by no means required by her charms, which, like an Italian sky, when unclouded, are unrivalled in splendour. Approaching me, she said, with an irresistible smile, "Would you like Mr. ---" (Here there was a pause, a hiatus, evidently intended for me to fill up with my name; but that no person knows, nor do I intend they shall; at Medley's Hotel, in Halifax, I was known as the stranger in No. 1. The attention that incognito procured for me, the importance it gave me in the eyes of the master of the house, its lodgers and servants, is indescribable. It is only great people who travel incog. State travelling is inconvenient and slow; the constant weight of form and etiquette oppresses at once the strength and the spirits. It is pleasant to travel un.o.bserved, to stand at ease, or exchange the full suit for the undress coat and fatigue jacket. Wherever too there is mystery there is importance; there is no knowing for whom I may be mistaken; but let me once give my humble cognomen and occupation, and I sink immediately to my own level, to a plebeian station and a vulgar name; not even my beautiful hostess, nor my inquisitive friend, the Clockmaker, who calls me "Squire," shall extract that secret!) "Would you like, Mr. ---"

"Indeed, I would," said I, "Mrs. Pugwash; pray be seated, and tell me what it is."

"Would you like a dish of superior s.h.i.ttyacks for supper?"

"Indeed I would," said I, again laughing; "but pray tell me what it is?"

"Laws me!" said she with a stare, "where have you been all your days, that you never heerd of our s.h.i.ttyack oysters? I thought everybody had heerd of them."

"I beg pardon," said I, "but I understood at Halifax, that the only oysters in this part of the world were found on the sh.o.r.es of Prince Edward Island."

"Oh! dear no," said our hostess, "they are found all along the coast from s.h.i.ttyack, through Bay of Vartes, away up to Rams.h.a.g. The latter we seldom get, though the best; there is no regular conveyance, and when they do come, they are generally sh.e.l.led and in kegs, and never in good order. I have not had a real good Rams.h.a.g in my house these two years, since Governor Maitland was here; he was amazin' fond of them, and lawyer Talkemdeaf sent his carriage there on purpose to procure them fresh for him. Now we can't get them, but we have the s.h.i.ttyacks in perfection; say the word, and they shall be served up immediately."

A good dish and an unexpected dish is most acceptable, and certainly my American friend and myself did ample justice to the oysters, which, if they have not so cla.s.sical a name, have quite as good a flavour as their far famed brethren of Milton. Mr. Slick ate so heartily, that when he resumed his conversation, he indulged in the most melancholy forebodings.

"Did you see that 'ere n.i.g.g.e.r," said he, "that removed the oyster sh.e.l.ls? well, he's one of our Chesapickers, one of General Cuffy's slaves. I wish Admiral c.o.c.kburn had a taken them all off our hands at the same time. We made a pretty good sale of them 'ere black cattle, I guess, to the British; I wish we were well rid of 'em all. The blacks and the whites in the States show their teeth and snarl, they are jist ready to fall to. The Protestants and Catholics begin to lay back their ears, and turn tail for kickin'. The Abolitionists and Planters are at it like two bulls in a pastur'. Mob-law and Lynch-law are working like yeast in a barrel, and frothing at the bung hole.

Nullification and Tariff are like a charcoal pit, all covered up, but burning inside, and sending out smoke at every crack, enough to stifle a horse. General Government and State Government every now and then square off and sparr, and the first blow given will bring a genuine set-to. Surplus Revenue is another bone of contention; like a shin of beef thrown among a pack of dogs, it will set the whole on 'em by the ears.

"You have heerd tell of cotton rags dipped in turpentine, havn't you, how they produce combustion? Well, I guess we have the elements of spontaneous combustion among us in abundance; when it does break out, if you don't see an eruption of human gore, worse than Etna lava, then I'm mistaken. There'll be the very devil to pay, that's a fact. I expect the blacks will butcher the Southern whites, and the Northerners will have to turn out and butcher them again; and all this shoot, hang, cut, stab, and burn business will sweeten our folks' temper, as raw meat does that of a dog--it fairly makes me sick to think on it. The explosion may clear the air again, and all be tranquil once more, but it's an even chance if it don't leave us the three steamboat options: to be blown sky high, to be scalded to death, or drowned."

"If this sad picture you have drawn be indeed true to nature, how does your country," said I, "appear so attractive, as to draw to it so large a portion of our population?"

"It ain't its attraction," said the Clockmaker; "it's nothin' but its power of suction; it is a great whirlpool--a great vortex--it drags all the straw and chips, and floatin' sticks, drift-wood and trash into it. The small crafts are sucked in, and whirl round and round like a squirrel in a cage--they'll never come out. Bigger ones pa.s.s through at certain times of tide, and can come in and out with good pilotage, as they do at h.e.l.l Gate up the Sound."

"You astonish me," said I, "beyond measure; both your previous conversations with me, and the concurrent testimony of all my friends who have visited the States, give a different view of it."

"YOUR FRIENDS!" said the Clockmaker, with such a tone of ineffable contempt, that I felt a strong inclination to knock him down for his insolence, "your friends! Ensigns and leftenants, I guess, from the British marchin' regiments in the Colonies, that run over five thousand miles of country in five weeks, on leave of absence, and then return, lookin' as wise as the monkey that had seen the world.

When they get back they are so chock full of knowledge of the Yankees, that it runs over of itself, like a Hogshead of mola.s.ses rolled about in hot weather--a white froth and sc.u.m bubbles out of the bung; wishy-washy trash they call tours, sketches, travels, letters, and what not; vapid stuff, jist sweet enough to catch flies, c.o.c.kroaches, and half-fledged gals. It puts me in mind of my French.

I larnt French at night school one winter, of our minister, Joshua Hopewell (he was the most larned man of the age, for he taught himself e'enamost every language in Europe); well, next spring, when I went to Boston, I met a Frenchman, and I began to jabber away French to him: 'Polly woes a french say,' says I. 'I don't understand Yankee yet,' says he. 'You don't understand!' says I, 'why it's French. I guess you didn't expect to hear such good French, did you, away down east here? But we speak it real well, and it's generally allowed we speak English, too, better than the British.' 'Oh,' says he, 'you one very droll Yankee, dat very good joke, Sare; you talk Indian and call it French.' 'But,' says I, 'Mister Mount shear; it is French, I vow; real merchantable, without wainy edge or shakes--all clear stuff; it will pa.s.s survey in any market--it's ready stuck and seasoned.' 'Oh, very like,' says he, bowin' as polite as a black waiter at New OrLEENS, 'very like, only I never heerd it afore; oh, very good French dat--CLEAR STUFF, no doubt, but I no understand--it's all my fault, I dare say, Sare.'

"Thinks I to myself, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse. I see how the cat jumps--Minister knows so many languages he hain't been particular enough to keep 'em in separate parcels and mark 'em on the back, and they've got mixed, and sure enough I found my French was so overrun with other sorts, that it was better to lose the whole crop than to go to weedin', for as fast as I pulled up any strange seedlin', it would grow right up agin as quick as wink, if there was the least bit of root in the world left in the ground, so I let it all rot on the field.

"There is no way so good to larn French as to live among 'em, and if you WANT TO UNDERSTAND US, YOU MUST LIVE AMONG US, TOO; your Halls, Hamiltons, and De Rouses, and such critters, what can they know of us? Can a chap catch a likeness flyin' along a railroad? Can he even see the feature? Old Admiral Anson once axed one of our folks afore our glorious Revolution (if the British had a known us a little grain better at that time, they wouldn't have got whipped like a sack as they did then), where he came from. 'From the Chesapeeke,' said he.

'Aye, aye,' said the Admiral, 'from the West Indies.' 'I guess,' said the Southaner, 'you may have been clean round the world, Admiral, but you have been plaguy little in it, not to know better nor that.'

"I shot a wild goose at River Philip last year, with the rice of Varginny fresh in his crop; he must have cracked on near about as fast as them other geese, the British travellers. Which know'd the most of the country they pa.s.sed over, do you suppose? I guess it was much of a muchness--near about six of one and a half dozen of t'other; two eyes ain't much better than one, if they are both blind.

"No, if you want to know all about us and the Bluenoses (a pretty considerable share of Yankee blood in them too, I tell you; the old stock comes from New England, and the breed is tolerable pure yet, near about one half apple sarce, and t'other half mola.s.ses, all except to the East'ard, where there is a cross of the Scotch), jist ax me and I'll tell you candidly. I'm not one of them that can't see no good points in my neighbour's critter, and no bad ones in my own; I've seen too much of the world for that, I guess. Indeed, in a general way, I praise other folks' beasts, and keep dark about my own. Says I, when I meet Bluenose mounted, 'that's a real smart horse of your'n, put him out, I guess he'll trot like mad.' Well, he lets him have the spur, and the critter does his best, and then I pa.s.s him like a streak of lightning with mine. The feller looks all taken aback at that. 'Why,' says he, 'that's a real clipper of your'n, I vow.' 'Middlin',' says I (quite cool, as if I had heard that 'ere same thing a thousand times), 'he's good enough for me, jist a fair trotter, and nothin' to brag of. That goes near about as far agin in a general way, as a crackin' and a boastin' does. Never TELL folks you can go a head on 'em, but DO it; it spares a great deal of talk, and helps them to save their breath to cool their broth.

"No, if you want to know the inns and the outs of the Yankees--I've wintered them and summered them; I know all their points, shape, make and breed; I've tried 'em alongside of other folks, and I know where they fall short, where they mate 'em, and where they have the advantage, about as well as some who think they know a plaguy sight more. It ain't them that stare the most, that see the best always, I guess. Our folks have their faults, and I know them (I warn't born blind, I reckon), but your friends, the tour writers, are a little grain too hard on us. Our old n.i.g.g.e.r wench had several dirty, ugly-lookin' children, and was proper cross to 'em. Mother used to say, 'Juno, it's better never to wipe a child's nose at all, I guess, than to wring it off.'"

No. XII

The American Eagle.

"Jist look out of the door," said the Clockmaker, "and see what a beautiful night it is, how calm, how still, how clear it is; bean't it lovely? I like to look up at them 'ere stars, when I am away from home; they put me in mind of our national flag, and it is generally allowed to be the first flag in the univa.r.s.e now. The British can whip all the world, and we can whip the British. It's near about the prettiest sight I know of, is one of our first cla.s.s Frigates, manned with our free and enlightened citizens all ready for sea; it's like the great American Eagle, on its perch, balancing itself for a start on the broad expanse of blue sky, afeared of nothin' of its kind, and president of all it surveys. It was a good emblem that we chose, warn't it?"

There was no evading so direct, and at the same time, so conceited an appeal as this. "Certainly," said I, "the emblem was well chosen.

I was particularly struck with it on observing the device on your naval b.u.t.tons during the last war--an eagle with an anchor in its claws. That was a natural idea, taken from an ordinary occurrence: a bird purloining the anchor of a frigate--an article so useful and necessary for the food of its young. It was well chosen, and exhibited great taste and judgment in the artist. The emblem is more appropriate than you are aware of--boasting of what you cannot perform--grasping at what you cannot attain--an emblem of arrogance and weakness--of ill-directed ambition and vulgar pretension."

"It's a common phrase," said he with great composure, "among seamen, to say 'd.a.m.n your b.u.t.tons,' and I guess it's natural for you to say so of the b.u.t.tons of our navals; I guess you have a right to that 'ere oath. It's a sore subject, that, I reckon, and I believe I hadn't ought to have spoken of it to you at all. Brag is a good dog, but hold fast is a better one."

He was evidently annoyed, and with his usual dexterity gave vent to his feelings by a sally upon the Bluenoses, who he says are a cross of English and Yankee, and therefore first cousins to us both.

"Perhaps," said he, "that 'ere Eagle might with more propriety have been taken off as perched on an anchor, instead of holding it in his claws, and I think it would have been more nateral; but I suppose it was some stupid foreign artist that made that 'ere blunder, I never seed one yet that was equal to our'n. If that Eagle is represented as trying what he can't do, it's an honourable ambition arter all, but these Bluenoses won't try what they can do. They put me in mind of a great big hulk of a horse in a cart, that won't put his shoulder to the collar at all for all the lambastin' in the world, but turns his head round and looks at you, as much as to say, 'what an everlastin'

heavy thing an empty cart is, isnt it?' An Owl should be their emblem, and the motto, 'He sleeps all the days of his life.' The whole country is like this night; beautiful to look at, but silent as the grave--still as death, asleep, becalmed.

"If the sea was always calm," said he, "it would pyson the univa.r.s.e; no soul could breathe the air, it would be so uncommon bad. Stagnant water is always unpleasant, but salt water when it gets tainted beats all natur'; motion keeps it sweet and wholesome, and that our minister used to say is one of the 'wonders of the great deep.' This province is stagnant; it ain't deep like still water neither, for it's shaller enough, gracious knows, but it is motionless, noiseless, lifeless. If you have ever been to sea, in a calm, you'd know what a plaguy tiresome thing it is for a man that's in a hurry. An everlastin' flappin' of the sails, and a creakin' of the boombs, and an onsteady pitchin' of the ship, and folks lyin' about dozin' away their time, and the sea a-heavin' a long heavy swell, like the breathin' of the chist of some great monster asleep. A pa.s.senger wonders the sailors are so plagy easy about it, and he goes a-lookin'

out east, and a-spyin' out west, to see if there's any chance of a breeze, and says to himself 'Well, if this ain't dull music it's a pity.' Then how streaked he feels when he sees a steamboat a-clippin'

it by him like mad, and the folks on board pokin' fun at him, and askin' him if he has any word to send to home. 'Well,' he says, 'if any soul ever catches me on board a sail vessel again, when I can go by steam, I'll give him leave to tell me of it, that's a fact.'

"That's partly the case here. They are becalmed, and they see us going ahead on them, till we are e'enamost clean out of sight; yet they hain't got a steamboat, and they hain't got a railroad; indeed, I doubt if one half on 'em ever seed or heerd tell of one or t'other of them. I never seed any folks like 'em except the Indians, and they won't even so much as look--they havn't the least morsel of curiosity in the world; from which one of our Unitarian preachers (they are dreadful hands at DOUBTIN' them. I don't DOUBT but some day or another, they will DOUBT whether everything ain't a DOUBT), in a very learned work, doubts whether they were ever descended from Eve at all. Old marm Eve's children, he says, are all lost, it is said, in consequence of TOO MUCH curiosity, while these copper coloured folks are lost from havin' TOO LITTLE little. How can they be the same?

Thinks I, that may be logic, old Dubersome, but it ain't sense, don't extremes meet? Now these Bluenoses have no motion in 'em, no enterprise, no spirit, and if any critter shows any symptoms of activity, they say he is a man of no judgment, he's speculative, he's a schemer, in short he's mad. They vegitate like a lettuce plant in sa.r.s.e garden, they grow tall and, spindlin', run to seed right off, grow as bitter as gaul and die."

"A gal once came to our minister to hire as a house-help; says she, 'Minister, I suppose you don't want a young lady to do chamber business and breed worms do you? For I've half a mind to take a spell of livin' out.' She meant," said the Clockmaker, "house work and rearing silk-worms. 'My pretty maiden,' says he, a-pattin' her on the cheek (for I've often observed old men always talk kinder pleasant to young women), 'my pretty maiden where was you brought up?' 'Why,'

says she, 'I guess I warn't brought up at all, I growed up.' 'Under what platform,' says he (for he was very particular that all his house-helps should go to his meetin'), 'under what Church platform?'

'Church platform!' says she, with a toss of her head, like a young colt that's got a check of the curb, 'I guess I warn't raised under a platform at all, but in as good a house as your'n, grand as you be.'

'You said well,' said the old minister, quite shocked, 'when you said you growed up, dear, for you have grown up in great ignorance.' 'Then I guess you had better get a lady that knows more than me,' says she, 'that's flat. I reckon I am every bit and grain as good as you be. If I don't understand a b.u.m-byx (silk-worm), both feedin', breedin', and rearin', then I want to know who does, that's all; church platform indeed!' says she; 'I guess you were raised under a gla.s.s frame in March, and transplanted on Independence day, warn't you?' And off she sot, lookin' as scorney as a London lady, and leavin' the poor minister standin' starin' like a stuck pig. 'Well, well,' says he, a-liftin' up both hands, and turnin' up the whites of his eyes like a duck in thunder, 'if that don't bang the bush! It fearly beats sheep shearin' arter the blackberry bushes have got the wool. It does, I vow; them are the tares them Unitarians sow in our grain fields at night; I guess they'll ruinate the crops yet, and make the grounds so everlastin' foul; we'll have to pare the sod and burn it, to kill the roots. Our fathers sowed the right seed here in the wilderness, and watered it with their tears, and watched over it with fastin' and prayer, and now it's fairly run out, that's a fact, I snore. It's got choked up with all sorts of trash in, natur', I declare. Dear, dear, I vow I never seed the beat o' that in all my born days.'

"Now the Bluenoses are like that 'ere gal; they have grown up, and grown up in ignorance of many things they hadn't ought not to know; and it's as hard to teach grown-up folks as it is to break a six-year-old horse; and they do rile one's temper so--they act so ugly that it tempts one sometimes to break their confounded necks; it's near about as much trouble as it's worth."

"What remedy is there for all this supineness," said I; "how can these people be awakened out of their ignorant slothfulness, into active exertion?"

"The remedy," said Mr. Slick, "is at hand--it is already workin' its own cure. They must recede before our free and enlightened citizens like the Indians; our folks will buy them out, and they must give place to a more intelligent and ac-TIVE people. They must go to the lands of Labrador, or be located back of Canada; they can hold on there a few years, until the wave of civilization reaches them, and then they must move again, as the savages do. It is decreed; I hear the bugle of destiny a-soundin' of their retreat, as plain as anything. Congress will give them a concession of land, if they pet.i.tion, away to Alleghany's backside territory, and grant them relief for a few years; for we are out of debt, and don't know what to do with our surplus revenue. The only way to shame them, that I know, would be to sarve them as Uncle Enoch sarved a neighbour of his in Varginny.

"There was a lady that had a plantation near hand to his'n, and there was only a small river atwixt the two houses, so that folks could hear each other talk across it. Well, she was a dreadful cross-grained woman, a real catamount, as savage as a she bear that has cubs, an old farrow critter, as ugly as sin, and one that both hooked and kicked too--a most particular onmarciful she-devil, that's a fact. She used to have some of her n.i.g.g.e.rs tied up every day, and flogged uncommon severe, and their screams and screeches were horrid--no soul could stand it; nothin' was heerd all day, but 'Oh Lord Missus! Oh Lord Missus!' Enoch was fairly sick of the sound, for he was a tender-hearted man, and says he to her one day, 'Now do marm find out some other place to give your cattle the cowskin, for it worries me to hear 'em take on so dreadful bad; I can't stand it, I vow; they are flesh and blood as well as we be, though the meat is a different colour.' But it was no good; she jist up and told him to mind his own business, and she guessed she'd mind her'n. He was determined to shame her out of it; so one mornin' after breakfast he goes into the cane field, and says he to Lavender, one of the black overseers, 'Muster up the whole gang of slaves, every soul, and bring 'em down to the whippin' post, the whole stock of them, bulls, cows and calves.' Well, away goes Lavender, and drives up all the n.i.g.g.e.rs.

'Now you catch it,' says he, 'you lazy villains; I tole you so many a time--I tole you Ma.s.sa he lose all patience wid you, you good-for-nothin' rascals. I grad, upon my soul, I werry grad; you mind now what old Lavender say anoder time.' The black overseers are always the most cruel," said the Clockmaker; "they have no sort of feeling for their own people.