(Greek Text)
sufficiently explains its character. Classes and not individuals have been selected for observation. National traits are fair subjects for satire or for praise, but personal peculiarities claim the privilege of exemption in right of that hospitality, through whose medium they have been alone exhibited. Public topics are public property; every body has a right to use them without leave and without apology. It is only when we quit the limits of this “common” and enter upon “private grounds,” that we are guilty of “a trespass.” This distinction is alike obvious to good sense and right feeling. I have endeavoured to keep it constantly in view; and if at any time I shall be supposed to have erred (I say “supposed,” for I am unconscious of having done so) I must claim the indulgence always granted to involuntary offences.
Now the patience of my reader may fairly be considered a “private right.” I shall, therefore, respect its boundaries and proceed at once with my narrative, having been already quite long enough about “uncorking a bottle.”
CHAPTER II. A JUICY DAY IN THE COUNTRY.
All our preparations for the voyage having been completed, we spent the last day at our disposal, in visiting Brooklyn. The weather was uncommonly fine, the sky being perfectly clear and unclouded; and though the sun shone out brilliantly, the heat was tempered by a cool, bracing, westwardly wind. Its influence was perceptible on the spirits of every body on board the ferry-boat that transported us across the harbour.
“Squire,” said Mr. Slick, aint this as pretty a day as you’ll see atween this and Nova Scotia?—You can’t beat American weather, when it chooses, in no part of the world I’ve ever been in yet. This day is a tip-topper, and it’s the last we’ll see of the kind till we get back agin, I know. Take a fool’s advice, for once, and stick to it, as long as there is any of it left, for you’ll see the difference when you get to England. There never was so rainy a place in the univarse, as that, I don’t think, unless it’s Ireland, and the only difference atween them two is that it rains every day amost in England, and in Ireland it rains every day and every night too. It’s awful, and you must keep out of a country-house in such weather, or you’ll go for it; it will kill you, that’s sartain. I shall never forget a juicy day I once spent in one of them dismal old places. I’ll tell you how I came to be there.
“The last time I was to England, I was a dinin’ with our consul to Liverpool, and a very gentleman-like old man he was too; he was appointed by Washington, and had been there ever since our glorious revolution. Folks gave him a great name, they said he was a credit to us. Well, I met at his table one day an old country squire, that lived somewhere down in Shropshire, close on to Wales, and says he to me, arter cloth was off and cigars on, ‘Mr. Slick,’ says he, ‘I’ll be very glad to see you to Norman Manor,’ (that was the place where he staid, when he was to home). ‘If you will return with me I shall be glad to shew you the country in my neighbourhood, which is said to be considerable pretty.’
“‘Well,’ says I, ‘as I have nothin’ above particular to see to, I don’t care if I do go.’
“So off we started; and this I will say, he was as kind as he cleverly knew how to be, and that is sayin’ a great deal for a man that didn’t know nothin’ out of sight of his own clearin’ hardly.