“She didn’t speak for a minute; so to relieve her, sais I:
“‘When I look round here, and see how charmingly you are located, and what your occupation is, I hardly think you would feel disposed to leave it; so perhaps I may as well forbear the proposal, as it isn’t pleasant to be refused.’
“‘It depends,’ she said, ‘upon what the nature of those proposals are, Mr Slick, and who makes them,’ and this time she did give a look of great complacency and kindness. ‘Do put down your hat, Sir. I have read your Clockmaker,’ she continued; ‘I really feel quite proud of the relationship; but I hope you will excuse me for asking, Why did you put your own name to it, and call it ‘Sam Slick the Clockmaker,’ now that you are a distinguished diplomatist, and a member of our embassy at the court of Victoria the First? It’s not an elegant appellation that, of Clockmaker,’ sais she, ‘is it?’ (She had found her tongue now.) ‘Sam Slick the Clockmaker, a factorist of wooden clocks especially, sounds trady, and will impede the rise of a colossal reputation, which has already one foot in the St Lawrence, and the other in the Mississippi.’
“‘And sneezes in the Chesapeake,’ sais I.
“‘Oh,’ said she, in the blandest manner, ‘how like you, Mr Slick! you don’t spare a joke even on yourself. You see fun in everything.’
“‘Better,’ sais I, ‘than seeing harm in everything, as them galls—’
“‘Young ladies,’ said she.
“‘Well, young ladies, who saw harm in me because I was a man. What harm is there in their seeing a man? You ain’t frightened at one, are you, Liddy?’
“She evaded that with a smile, as much as to say, ‘Well, I ain’t much skeered, that’s a fact.’
“‘Mr Slick, it is a subject not worth while pursuing,’ she replied. ‘You know the sensitiveness, nervous delicacy, and scrupulous innocence of the fair sex in this country, and I may speak plainly to you as a man of the world. You must perceive how destructive of all modesty in their juvenile minds, when impressions are so easily made, it would be to familiarise their youthful eyes to the larger limbs of gentlemen enveloped in pantaloons. To speak plainly, I am sure I needn’t tell you it ain’t decent.’