“Now, Squire, I have been a good deal to England, and crossed this big pond here the matter of seven times, and know a good deal about it, more than a great many folks that have writtin’ books on it, p’raps. Mind what I tell you, the English ain’t what they was. I’m not speakin’ in jeest now, or in prejudice. I hante a grain of prejudice in me. I’ve see’d too much of the world for that I reckon. I call myself a candid man, and I tell you the English are no more like what the English used to be, when pigs were swine, and Turkey chewed tobacky, than they are like the Picts or Scots, or Norman, French, or Saxons, or nothin’.”
“Not what they used to be?” I said. “Pray, what do you mean?”
“I mean,” said he, “jist what I say. They ain’t the same people no more. They are as proud, and overbearin’, and concaited, and haughty to foreigners as ever; but, then they ain’t so manly, open-hearted, and noble as they used to be, once upon a time. They have the Spy System now, in full operation here; so jist take my advice, and mind your potatoe-trap, or you will be in trouble afore you are ten days older, see if you ain’t.”
“The Spy System!” I replied. “Good Heavens, Mr. Slick, how can you talk such nonsense, and yet have the modesty to say you have no prejudice?”
“Yes, the Spy System,” said he, “and I’ll prove it. You know Dr. Mc’Dougall to Nova Scotia; well, he knows all about mineralogy, and geology, and astrology, and every thing a’most, except what he ought to know, and that is dollar-ology. For he ain’t over and above half well off, that’s a fact. Well, a critter of the name of Oatmeal, down to Pictou, said to another Scotchman there one day, ‘The great nateralist Dr. Mc’Dougall is come to town.’
“‘Who?’ says Sawney.
“‘Dr. Mc’Dougall, the nateralist,’ says Oatmeal.
“‘Hout, mon,’ says Sawney, ‘he is nae nateral, that chiel; he kens mair than maist men; he is nae that fool you take him to be.’
“Now, I am not such a fool as you take me to be, Squire. Whenever I did a sum to, school, Minister used to say, ‘Prove it, Sam, and if it won’t prove, do it over agin, till it will; a sum ain’t right when it won’t prove.’ Now, I say the English have the Spy System, and I’ll prove it; nay, more than that, they have the nastiest, dirtiest, meanest, sneakenest system in the world. It is ten times as bad as the French plan. In France they have bar-keepers, waiters, chamber galls, guides, quotillions,—”
“Postilions, you mean,” I said.