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The brigade to which the 200th Ind. belonged was to march in the rear of the long procession that day. This was lucky for Si, as it gave him an hour or two more than he would otherwise have had to get hitched up. But all the same he thought he would begin early, so as to be on hand with his team in good time. "Want any help?" asked Shorty. "No," said Si; "I can hitch 'em up slick's a whistle.
Slick's Opinion of the British. "What success had you," said I, "in the sale of your clocks among the Scotch in the eastern part of the Province? Do you find them as gullible as the Bluenoses?" "Well," said he, "you have heerd tell that a Yankee never answers one question, without axing another, haven't you?
"Come, come, Mr. Slick," said I, rising and lighting my bed-room candle, "it is now high time to bid you good night, for you are beginning to talk Bunkum." Mr. Slick's character, like that of many of his countrymen, is not so easily understood as a person might suppose. We err more often than we are aware of, when we judge of others by ourselves.
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.
By a skilful manoeuvre, he decoyed the man-of-war, in the eagerness of the chase, on to a sand-bar, when he dexterously slipt through a narrow passage between two islands, and keeping one of them in a line between the "Black Hawk" and her pursuer, so as to be out of the reach of her guns, he steered for the eastern shore of Nova Scotia, and was soon out of sight of the islands behind which his enemy lay embedded in the sand; from this point the narrative is resumed in Mr Slick's own words.1
Slick says, that if Sir James Graham had consulted him, he could have shown him how to carry the educational clauses of his favourite bill This, perhaps, is rather an instance of Mr. Slick's vanity, than a proof of his sagacity.
If silly people take you for me, and put my braggin' on your shoulders, why jist say, 'You might be mistakened for a worse fellow than he is, that's all. Yes, yes, let my talk remain 'down-east talk,'1 and my writin' remain clear of cant terms when you find it so. 1 It must not be inferred from this expression that Mr Slick's talk is all "pure down-east dialect."
The Yankee dialect is Mr. Jonathan Slick's principal element of wit; his second is the onion. The book is redolent of onions. That odorous vegetable breathes from every page. A woman weeps, and onions are invoked to lend aromatic fragrance to a stale comparison.
After all they were but novices, and he would win their money, he only regretted that the bet had not been heavier. "Twenty minutes had fairly passed, when Slick's own little boy entered the room. `Pa, said he, `there is a gemman what wants you below in the bar. "`Another trick, thought the landlord; `they shan't have me, though.
The next time, if he axes me, I'll talk plain, and jist tell him what I do think; but still, if he reads that riddle right, he may larn a good deal, too, from the story of "the Gander Pulling," mayn't he?" The foregoing sketch exhibits a personal trait in Mr. Slick's character, the present a national one.
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