“Oh, of course, it isn’t true,” he said, “and every Englishman will swear it’s a falsehood. But you must not expect us to disbelieve it, nevertheless; for your travellers who come to America, pick up here and there, some absurd ontruth or another; or, if they are all picked up already, invent one; and although every man, woman, and child is ready to take their bible oaths it is a bam, yet the English believe this one false witness in preference to the whole nation.
“You must excuse me, Squire; you have a right to your opinion, though it seems you have no right to blart it out always; but I am a freeman, I was raised in Slickville, Onion County, State of Connecticut, United States of America, which is a free country, and no mistake; and I have a right to my opinion, and a right to speak it, too; and let me see the man, airl or commoner, parliamenterer or sodger officer, that dare to report me, I guess he’d wish he’d been born a week later, that’s all. I’d make a caution of him, I know. I’d polish his dial-plate fust, and then I’d feel his short ribs, so as to make him larf, a leetle jist a leetle the loudest he ever heerd. Lord, he’d think thunder and lightnin’ a mint julip to it. I’d ring him in the nose as they do pigs in my country, to prevent them rootin’ up what they hadn’t ought.”
Having excited himself by his own story, he first imagined a case and then resented it, as if it had occurred. I expressed to him my great regret that he should visit England with these feelings and prejudices, as I had hoped his conversation would have been as rational and as amusing as it was in Nova Scotia, and concluded by saying that I felt assured he would find that no such prejudice existed here against his countrymen, as he entertained towards the English.
“Lord love you!” said he, “I have no prejudice. I am the most candid man you ever see. I have got some grit, but I ain’t ugly, I ain’t indeed.”
“But you are wrong about the English; and I’ll prove it to you. Do you see that turkey there?” said he.
“Where?” I asked. “I see no turkey; indeed, I have seen none on board. What do you mean?”
“Why that slight, pale-faced, student-like Britisher; he is a turkey, that feller. He has been all over the Union, and he is a goin’ to write a book. He was at New York when we left, and was introduced to me in the street. To make it liquorish, he has got all the advertisements about runaway slaves, sales of niggers, cruel mistresses and licentious masters, that he could pick up. He is a caterer and panderer to English hypocrisy. There is nothin’ too gross for him to swaller. We call them turkeys; first because they travel so fast—for no bird travels hot foot that way, except it be an ostrich—and second, because they gobble up every thing that comes in their way. Them fellers will swaller a falsehood as fast as a turkey does a grasshopper; take it right down whole, without winkin’.
“Now, as we have nothin’ above particular to do, ‘I’ll cram him’ for you; I will show you how hungry he’ll bite at a tale of horror, let it be never so onlikely; how readily he will believe it, because it is agin us; and then, when his book comes out, you shall see that all England will credit it, though I swear I invented it as a cram, and you swear you heard it told as a joke. They’ve drank in so much that is strong, in this way, have the English, they require somethin’ sharp enough to tickle their palates now. Wine hante no taste for a man that drinks grog, that’s a fact. It’s as weak as Taunton water. Come and walk up and down deck along with me once or twice, and then we will sit down by him, promiscuously like; and as soon as I get his appetite sharp, see how I will cram him.”
“This steam-boat is very onsteady to-day. Sir,” said Mr. Slick; “it’s not overly convenient walking, is it?”
The ice was broken. Mr. Slick led him on by degrees to his travels, commencing with New England, which the traveller eulogised very much. He then complimented him on the accuracy of his remarks and the depth of his reflections, and concluded by expressing a hope that he would publish his observations soon, as few tourists were so well qualified for the task as himself.