“‘I’m up to snuff, Sir,’ sais I, ‘and no mistake.’ I know’d well enough that warn’t what he sent for me for, by the way he humm’d and hawed when he began.
“‘Taking up a trunk, as every hotel-keeper does and has a right to do, and examinin’ the name on the brass plate to the eend on’t, is one thing; forcin’ the lock and ransackin’ the contents, is another. One is precaution, the other is burglary.’
“‘It tante burglary,’ sais I, ‘unless the lodger sleeps in his trunk. It’s only—’
“‘Well,’ says he, a colourin’ up, ‘that’s technical. I leave these matters to my law officers.’
“I larnt that little matter of law from brother Eldad, the lawyer, but I guess I was wrong there. I don’t think I had ought to have given him that sly poke; but I didn’t like his talkin’ that way to me. Whenever a feller tries to pull the wool over your eyes, it’s a sign he don’t think high of your onderstandin’. It isn’t complimental, that’s a fact. ‘One is a serious offence, I mean, sais he; ‘the other is not. We don’t want to sarch; we only want to look a slaver in the face, and see whether he is a free and enlightened American or not. If he is, the flag of liberty protects him and his slaves; if he ain’t, it don’t protect him, nor them nother.’
“Then he did a leadin’ article on slavery, and a paragraph on non-intervention, and spoke a little soft sawder about America, and wound up by askin’ me if he had made himself onderstood.
“‘Plain as a boot-jack,’ sais I.
“When that was over, he took breath. He sot back on his chair, put one leg over the other, and took a fresh departur’ agin.
“‘I have read your books, Mr. Slick,’ said he, ‘and read ‘em, too, with great pleasure. You have been a great traveller in your day. You’ve been round the world a’most, haven’t you?’
“‘Well,’ sais I, ‘I sharn’t say I hante.’