“Well now, there’s none o’ these things to the country; and it’s so everlastin’ stupid, it’s only a Britisher and a nigger that could live in an English country-house. A nigger don’t like movin’, and it would jist suit him, if it warn’t so awful wet and cold.
“Oh if I was President of these here United States,
I’d suck sugar candy and swing upon de gates;
And them I didn’t like, I’d strike ‘em off de docket,
And the way we’d go ahead, would be akin to Davy Crockit.
With my zippy dooden, dooden dooden, dooden dooden dey,
With my zippy dooden, dooden dooden, dooden dooden dey.
“It might do for a nigger, suckin’ sugar candy and drinkin’ mint-julep; but it won’t do for a free and enlightened citizen like me. A country house—oh goody gracious! the Lord presarve me from it, I say. If ever any soul ever catches me there agin, I’ll give ‘em leave to tell me of it, that’s all. Oh go, Squire, by all means; you will find it monstrous pleasant, I know you will. Go and spend a week there; it will make you feel up in the stirrups, I know. Pr’aps nothin’ can exceed it. It takes the rag off the bush quite. It caps all, that’s a fact, does ‘Life in the Country.’”
CHAPTER VIII. BUNKUM.
I am not surprised at the views expressed by Mr. Slick in the previous chapter. He has led too active a life, and his habits and thoughts are too business-like to admit of his enjoying retirement, or accommodating himself to the formal restraints of polished society. And yet, after making this allowance for his erratic life, it is but fair to add that his descriptions were always exaggerated; and, wearied as he no doubt was by the uniformity of country life, yet in describing it, he has evidently seized on the most striking features, and made them more prominent than they really appeared, even to his fatigued and prejudiced vision.
In other respects, they are just the sentiments we may suppose would be naturally entertained by a man like the Attache, under such circumstances. On the evening after that on which he had described “Life in the Country” to me, he called with two “orders” for admission to the House of Commons, and took me down with him to hear the debates.
“It’s a great sight,” said he. “We shall see all their uppercrust men put their best foot out. There’s a great musterin’ of the tribes, to-night, and the Sachems will come out with a great talk. There’ll be some sport, I guess; some hard hittin’, scalpin’, and tomahawkin’. To see a Britisher scalp a Britisher is equal to a bullfight, anytime. You don’t keer whether the bull, or the horse, or the rider is killed, none of ‘em is nothin’ to you; so you can enjoy it, and hurror for him that wins. I don’t keer who carries the day, the valy of a treat of julep, but I want to see the sport. It’s excitin’, them things. Come, let’s go.”
We were shown into a small gallery, at one end of the legislative wall (the two side ones being appropriated to members), and with some difficulty found sitting room in a place that commanded a view of the whole house. We were unfortunate. All the great speakers, Lord Stanley, Sir Robert Peel, Sir James Graham, Shiel, and Lord John Russell, had either already addressed the Chair, and were thereby precluded by the rules of the House from coming forward again, or did not choose to answer second-rate men. Those whom we did hear, made a most wretched exhibition. About one o’clock, the adjournment took place, and we returned, fatigued and disappointed.
“Did you ever see the beat of that, Squire?” said Mr. Slick. “Don’t that take the rag off quite? Cuss them fellers that spoke, they are wuss than assembly men, hang me if they aint; and they aint fit to tend a bear trap, for they’d be sure to catch themselves, if they did, in their own pit-fall.