[CHAPTER I.]
A SURPRISE.
Thinks I to myself, as I overheard a person inquire of the servant at the door, in an unmistakeable voice and tone, “Is the Squire to hum?” that can be no one else than my old friend Sam Slick the Clockmaker. But it could admit of no doubt when he proceeded, “If he is, tell him I am here.”
“Who shall I say, Sir?”
The stranger paused a moment, and then said, “It’s such an everlastin’ long name, I don’t think you can carry it all to wunst, and I don’t want it broke in two. Tell him it’s a gentleman that calculates to hold a protracted meeten here to-night. Come, don’t stand starin’ there on the track, you might get run over. Don’t you hear the engine coming? Shunt off now.”
“Ah, my old friend,” said I, advancing, and shaking him by the hand, “how are you?”
“As hearty as a buck,” he replied, “though I can’t jist jump quite so high now.”
“I knew you,” I said, “the moment I heard your voice, and if I had not recognised that, I should have known your talk.”
“That’s because I am a Yankee, Sir,” he said, “no two of us look alike, or talk alike; but being free and enlightened citizens, we jist talk as we please.”
“Ah, my good friend, you always please when you talk, and that is more than can be said of most men.”
“And so will you,” he replied, “if you use soft sawder that way. Oh, dear me! it seems but the other day that you laughed so at my theory of soft sawder and human natur’, don’t it? They were pleasant days, warn’t they? I often think of them, and think of them with pleasure too. As I was passing Halifax harbour, on my way hum in the ‘Black Hawk,’ the wind fortunately came ahead, and thinks I to myself, I will put in there, and pull foot1 for Windsor and see the Squire, give him my Journal, and spend an hour or two with him once more. So here I am, at least what is left of me, and dreadful glad I am to see you too; but as it is about your dinner hour I will go and titivate up a bit, and then we will have a dish of chat for desert, and cigars, to remind us of by-gones, as we stroll through your shady walks here.”