YANKEES.
An acquaintance once explained to me the prejudice against Yankees by telling me how, about fifty years ago or longer, the tin-peddlers travelled among the innocent Dutch people, cheating the farmers and troubling the daughters. They were (says he) tricky, smart, and good-looking. They could tell a good yarn, and were very amusing, and the goodly hospitable farmers would take them into their houses and entertain them, and receive a little tin-ware in payment.
A lawyer in Easton, from the State of New York, says that he never saw so large a body of people so honestly inclined as the Pennsylvania Germans. He speaks from a knowledge of the people of Northampton and Lehigh. They have an especial dread of the people of New England and New York, from their having been so terribly victimized by patent-rights’ men. He adds that they are not a reading people, but by their careful and slow manner of getting along they really accomplish more than the people of New England and New York, who, he says, make a great display, and then frequently compromise with their creditors by paying fifteen or twenty cents on the dollar. A person present added of these Pennsylvania Germans that they never headed any great moral reforms and never drowned witches.
Another thinks that in his youth the Yankee drovers in Lehigh County were respected for their acuteness. He adds, however, that when the “Dutch” call a man a Yankee, it is not near so opprobrious as to call him a Jew. “But,” says another, “when a Yankee comes to Reading with patent rights and inventions they point and say, ‘Do geht en Yoot.’” (There goes a Jew.) Dr. L., of Lebanon County, says that the “Dutch” idea of a Yankee is not of one who starts out to cheat for the pleasure of cheating, but of one who prefers to make his living by his wits rather than by hard labor. He starts with the idea of making money easily, and does not care much finally about the honesty of his proceedings.
In the market at York a learned man of New England origin asked a farmer, “What is the price of your apples,—twenty-five cents?” “Yes, you can have them for that; but I wouldn’t let Kochersperger have them for a quarter,—he’s a Yankee.”