Nature and Human Nature

by Thomas Chandler Haliburton

The fact is, Squire, that neither the doctor nor Cutler knew, that to avoid falling under the circumstances I was placed in, and to escape without capsizing the canoe, was a feat that no man, but one familiar with the management of those fragile barks, and a good swimmer, too, can perform. Peter was aware of it, and appreciated it; but the other two seemed disposed to cut their jokes upon me; and them that do that, generally find, in the long run, I am upsides with them, that’s a fact. A cat and a Yankee always come on their feet, pitch them up in the air as high and as often as you please.

“Now for it,” said I, and away we went at a 2.30 pace, as we say of our trotting horses. Cutler and the doctor cheered us as we went; and Peter, as the latter told me afterwards, said: “A man who can dwell like an otter, on both land and sea, has two lives.” I indorse that saw, he made it himself; it’s genuine, and it was like a trapper’s maxim. Warn’t it?

As soon as I landed I cut off for the house, and in no time rigged up in a dry suit of our host’s, and joined the party, afore they knew where they were. I put on a face as like the doctor’s as two clocks of mine are to each other. I didn’t do it to make fun of him, but out of him. Oh, they roared again, and the doctor joined in it as heartily as any of them, though he didn’t understand the joke. But Peter didn’t seem to like it. He had lived so much among the Indians, and was so accustomed to their way of biling things down to an essence, that he spoke in proverbs, or wise saws. Says he to me, with a shake of his head, “a mocking bird has no voice of its own.” It warn’t a bad sayin’, was it? I wish I had noted more of them, for though I like ’em, I am so yarney, I can’t make them as pithey as he did. I can’t talk short-hand, and I must say I like condensation. Now, brevity is the only use to individuals there is in telegraphs. There is very little good news in the world for any of us; and bad news comes fast enough. I hate them myself. The only good there is in ’em, is to make people write short; for if you have to pay for every word you use, you won’t be extravagant in ’em, there is no mistake.

Telegraphs ruin intellect; they reduce a wise man to the level of a fool; and fifty years hence there won’t be a sensible trader left. For national purposes they are very well, and government ought to have kept them to themselves, for those objects; but they play the devil with merchants. There is no room for the exercise of judgment. It’s a dead certainty now. Flour is eight dollars in England; well, every one knows that, and the price varies, and every one knows that also, by telegraph. Before that, a judgmatical trader took his cigar in his mouth, sat down, and calculated. Crops short, Russian war, blockade, and so on. Capital will run up prices, till news of new harvest are known; and then they will come down by the run. He deliberates, reasons, and decides. Now, the last Liverpool paper gives the price current. It advises all, and governs all. Any blockhead can be a merchant now. Formerly, they poked sapey-headed goneys into Parliament, to play dummey; or into the army and navy, the church, and the colonial office. But they kept clever fellows for law, special commissioners, the stage, the “Times,” the “Chronicle,” and such like able papers, and commerce; and men of middlin’ talents were resarved for doctors, solicitors, Gretna Green, and so on.

But the misfortinate prince-merchants now will have to go to the bottom of the list with tradesmen and retailers. They can’t have an opinion of their own, the telegraph will give it. The latest quotations, as they call them, come to them, they know that iron is firm, and timber giving way, that lead is dull and heavy, and coal gone to blases, while the stocks are rising and vessels sinking, all the rest they won’t trouble their heads about. The man who trades with Cuba, won’t care about Sinope, and it’s too much trouble to look for it on the map. While the Black Sea man won’t care about Toronto, or whether it is in Nova Scotia or Vermont, in Canada or California. There won’t soon be a merchant that understands geography.

But what is wuss, half the time the news is false, and if it hadn’t been for that, old Hemp and Iron would have made a fortune. And if it is true, it’s worse still, for he would have acted on his own judgment if he hadn’t heard it, and circumstances would have altered as they always are doing every day, and he would have made a rael hit. Oh, I hate them. And besides this, they have spoiled them by swearing the operators. An oath gives them fellows such an itch to blart, that though they don’t inform, they let the cat out of the bag, and that is as bad. Tell you what, I wouldn’t like to confess by telegraph. If I am courting a gall and she sais all right, why then my fun is spoiled, for when a thing is settled, all excitement is gone, and if I am refused, the longer I am in ignorance the better. It is wiser to wait, as the Frenchman did at Clare, who sat up three nights to see how the letters passed over the wires. Well, if I am married, I have to report progress, and logbooks are always made up before or afterwards. It’s apt to injure my veracity. In short, you know what I mean, and I needn’t follow it out, for a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.

But the Lord have mercy on merchants, any fool will get along as well as the best of them now. Dear me, I recollect a man they poked fun at once at Salem. They induced him by way of a rise, to ship a cargo of blankets and warming-pans to the West Indies. Well, he did so, and made a good speck, for the pans were bought for dippers, and the blankets for strainers. Yes, telegraphs will reduce merchants to the level of that fellow Isaac Oxter.

But I must look for the trail again, or I shall forget my story.

I think I left off where I got back in the canoe, and joined the party in the boat. Well, we then proceeded like the off and near ox, pulling from rather than to each other, but still keeping neck and neck as it were. In this manner we proceeded to the head of the lake, and then as we returned steered for a small wooded island in the centre, where I proposed to land and rest awhile, for this beautiful sheet of water was of considerable extent. As we approached it, Peter again struck up his pipes, and shortly afterwards a noble male moose, as much terrified by the noise as McDonald said Canada wolves were, broke cover, and swam for the main land. The moose frequently select such places to secure their young from the bears, who are their greatest enemies, and find an easy prey in their helpless calves. It is not improbable that the female still remained, and that this act of gallantry in the buck was intended to withdraw attention from her, and thus save her from pursuit. I had no bullets with me, and my gun was only loaded with duck-shot. To discharge that at him, would have been a wanton act of cruelty, as at most it could only inflict upon him painful wounds. In this emergency, Jessie pointed to a stout half-inch rope that was coiled up in the bottom of the canoe, and I immediately exchanged places with her, and commenced making a lasso, while she plied the paddle.

We gained rapidly upon him, and I was preparing to throw the fatal noose over his horns, when to my astonishment he raised his neck and a portion of his fore-legs out of the water, as if he was landing. We were then a considerable distance from the shore, but it appeared, as I afterwards learned from the doctor, that a long low neck of land made out there into the lake, that was only submerged in the spring and autumn, but in summer was covered with wild grass, upon which deer fed with avidity, as an agreeable change from browsing. The instinct of the animal induced him to make for this shallow, from which he could bound away at full speed (trot) into the cover.