Some squeamish people turn up the whites of their peepers at both those authors and say they are coarse. How can they be otherwise? society was coarse. There are more veils worn now, but the devil still lurks in the eye under the veil. Things ain’t talked of so openly, or done so openly, in modern as in old times. There is more concealment; and concealment is called delicacy. But where concealment is, the passions are excited by the difficulties imposed by society. Barriers are erected too high to scale, but every barrier has its wicket, its latch key, and its private door. Natur is natur still, and there is as much of that that is condemned in his books now, as there was then. There is a horrid sight of hypocrisy now, more than there was one hundred years ago; vice was audacious then, and scared folks. It ain’t so bold at present as it used to did to be; but if it is forbid to enter the drawing-room, the back staircase is still free. Where there is a will there is a way, and always will be. I hate pretence, and, above all, mock modesty; it’s a bad sign.
I knew a clergyman to home a monstrous pious man, and so delicate-minded, he altered a great many words and passages in the Church Service, he said he couldn’t find it in his heart to read them out in meetin’, and yet that fellow, to my sartain knowledge, was the greatest scamp in private life I ever knew. Gracious knows, I don’t approbate coarseness, it shocks me, but narvous sensibility makes me sick. I like to call things by their right names, and I call a leg a leg, and not a larger limb; a shirt a shirt, though it is next the skin, and not a linen vestment; and a stocking a stocking, though it does reach up the leg, and not a silk hose; and a garter a garter, though it is above the calf, and not an elastic band or a hose suspender. A really modest woman was never squeamish. Fastidiousness is the envelope of indelicacy. To see harm in ordinary words betrays a knowledge, and not an ignorance of evil.
But that is neither here nor there, as I was sayin’, when you are dead and gone these Journals of mine which you have edited, when mellowed by time, will let the hereafter-to-be Blue-noses, see what the has-been Nova Scotians here from ‘34 to ‘54 were. Now if something of the same kind had been done when Halifax was first settled a hundred years ago, what strange coons the old folks would seem to us. That state of society has passed away, as well as the actors. For instance, when the militia was embodied to do duty so late as the Duke of Kent’s time, Ensign Lane’s name was called on parade. “Not here,” said Lieutenant Grover, “he is mending Sargent Street’s breeches.”
Many a queer thing occurred then that would make a queer book, I assure you. There is much that is characteristic both to be seen and heard in every harbour in this province, the right way is to jot all down. Every place has its standing topic. At Windsor it is the gypsum trade, the St John’s steamer, the Halifax coach, and a new house that is building. In King’s County it is export of potatoes, bullocks, and horses. At Annapolis, cord, wood, oars, staves, shingles, and agricultural produce of all kinds. At Digby, smoked herrings, fish weirs, and St John markets. At Yarmouth, foreign freights, berthing, rails, cat-heads, lower cheeks, wooden bolsters, and the crown, palm, and shank of anchors. At Shelburne, it is divided between fish, lumber, and the price of vessels. At Liverpool, ship-building, deals, and timber, knees, transums, and futtucks, pintles, keelsons, and moose lines. At Lunenburg, Jeddore, and Chesencook, the state of the market at the capital. At the other harbours further to the eastward, the coal trade and the fisheries engross most of the conversation. You hear continually of the fall run and the spring catch of mackerel that set in but don’t stop to bait. The remarkable discovery of the French coasters, that was made fifty years ago, and still is as new and as fresh as ever, that when fish are plenty there is no salt, and when salt is abundant there are no fish, continually startles you with its novelty and importance. While you are both amused and instructed by learning the meaning of coal cakes, Albion tops, and what a Chesencooker delights in, “slack;” you also find out that a hundred tons of coal at Sydney means when it reaches Halifax one hundred and fifteen, and that West India, Mediterranean, and Brazilian fish are actually made on these shores. These local topics are greatly diversified by politics, which, like crowfoot and white-weed, abound everywhere.
Halifax has all sorts of talk. Now if you was writin’ and not me, you would have to call it, to please the people, that flourishing great capital of the greatest colony of Great Britain, the town with the harbour, as you say of a feller who has a large handle to his face, the man with the nose, that place that is destined to be the London of America, which is a fact if it ever fulfils its destiny. The little scrubby dwarf spruces on the coast are destined not to be lofty pines, because that can’t be in the natur of things, although some folks talk as if they expected it; but they are destined to be enormous trees, and although they havn’t grown an inch the last fifty years, who can tell but they may exceed the expectations that has been formed of them? Yes, you would have to give it a shove, it wants it bad enough, and lay it on thick too, so as it will stick for one season.
It reminds me of a Yankee I met at New York wunst, he was disposin’ of a new hydraulic cement he had invented. Now cements, either to resist fire or water, or to mend the most delicate china, or to stop a crack in a stove, is a thing I rather pride myself on. I make my own cement always, it is so much better than any I can buy.
Sais I, “What are your ingredients?”
“Yes,” sais he, “tell you my secrets, let the cat out of the bag for you to catch by the tail. No, no,” sais he, “excuse me, if you please.”
It ryled me that, so I just steps up to him, as savage as a meat-axe, intendin’ to throw him down-stairs, when the feller turned as pale as a rabbit’s belly, I vow I could hardly help laughin’, so I didn’t touch him at all.
“But,” sais I, “you and the cat in the bag may run to Old Nick and see which will get to him first, and say tag—I don’t want the secret, for I don’t believe you know it yourself. If I was to see a bit of the cement, and break it up myself, I’d tell you in a moment whether it was good for anything.”