Nature and Human Nature

by Thomas Chandler Haliburton

There is great magic in that word “Mr,” when used to men of low degree, and in “Squire” for those just a notch higher. Servitude, at best, is but a hard lot. To surrender your will to another, to come and go at his bidding, and to answer a bell as a dog does a whistle, ain’t just the lot one would choose, if a better one offered. A master may forget this, a servant never does. The great art, as well as one of the great Christian duties, therefore, is not to make him feel it. Bidding is one thing, and commanding is another. If you put him on good terms with himself, he is on good terms with you, and affection is a stronger tie than duty. The vanity of mankind is such, that you always have the ingratitude of helps dinned into your ears, from one year’s end to another, and yet these folk never heard of the ingratitude of employers, and wouldn’t believe there was such a thing in the world, if you were to tell them. Ungrateful, eh! Why, didn’t I pay him his wages? wasn’t he well boarded? and didn’t I now and then let him go to a frolic? Yes, he wouldn’t have worked without pay. He couldn’t have lived if he hadn’t been fed, and he wouldn’t have stayed if you hadn’t given him recreation now and then. It’s a poor heart that don’t rejoice sometimes. So much thanks he owes you. Do you pray that it may always rain at night or on Sundays? Do you think the Lord is the Lord of masters only? But he has been faithful as well as diligent, and careful as well as laborious, he has saved you more than his wages came to—are there no thanks for this? Pooh! you remind me of my poor old mother. Father used to say she was the most unreasonable woman in the world—for when she hired a gall she expected perfection, for two dollars and a half a month.

Mr Jackson! didn’t that make him feel good all over? Why shouldn’t he be called Mr, as well as that selfish conceited M’Clure, Captain? Yes, there is a great charm in that are word, “Mr.” It was a wrinkle I picked up by accident, very early in life. We had to our farm to Slickville, an Irish servant, called Paddy Monaghan—as hard-working a critter as ever I see, but none of the boys could get him to do a blessed thing for them. He’d do his plowin’ or reapin’, or whatever it was, but the deuce a bit would he leave it to oblige Sally or the boys, or any one else, but father; he had to mind him, in course, or put his three great coats on, the way he came, one atop of the other, to cover the holes of the inner ones, and walk. But, as for me, he’d do anythin’ I wanted. He’d drop his spade, and help me catch a horse, or he’d do my chores for me, and let me go and attend my mink and musquash traps, or he’d throw down his hoe and go and fetch the cows from pasture, that I might slick up for a party—in short, he’d do anything in the world for me.

“Well, they all wondered how under the sun Paddy had taken such a shindy to me, when nobody else could get him to budge an inch for them. At last, one day, mother asked me how on airth it was—for nothin’ strange goes on long, but a woman likes to get at the bottom of it.

“Well,” sais I, “mother, if you won’t whisper a syllable to anybody about it, I’ll tell you.”

“Who, me,” sais she, “Sammy?” She always called me Sammy when she wanted to come over me. “Me tell? A person who can keep her own secrets can keep yours, Sammy. There are some things I never told your father.”

“Such as what?” sais I.

“A-hem,” said she. “A-hem—such as he oughtn’t to know, dear. Why, Sam, I am as secret as the grave! How is it, dear?”

“Well,” sais I, “I will tell you. This is the way: I drop Pat and Paddy altogether, and I call him Mr Monaghan, and never say a word about the priest.”

“Why, Sammy,” said she, “where in the world did you pick up all your cuteness? I do declare you are as sharp as a needle. Well, I never. How you do take after me! boys are mothers’ sons. It’s only galls who take after their father.”

It’s cheap coin, is civility, and kindness is a nice bank to fund it in, Squire: for it comes back with compound interest. He used to call Josiah, Jo, and brother Eldad, Dad, and then yoke ’em both together, as “spalpeens,” or “rapscallions,” and he’d vex them by calling mother, when he spoke to them of her, the “ould woman,” and Sally, “that young cratur, Sal.” But he’d show the difference when he mentioned me; it was always “the young master,” and when I was with him, it was “your Honour.” Lord, I shall never forget wunst, when I was a practisin’ of ball-shooting at a target, Pat brought out one of my muskits, and sais he: “Would your Honour just let me take a crack at it. You only make a little round hole in it, about the size of a fly’s eye; but, by the piper that played before Moses, I’ll knock it all to smithereens.”