The Attache or Sam Slick in England Part 19

consaited, they won't take no advice. The way they can't do it is cautionary. One gets throwed, another gets all covered with grease, a third loses his hat, a fourth gets run away with by his horse, a fifth sees he can't do it, makes some excuse, and leaves the ground afore the sport is over; and now and then, an unfortunate critter gets a hyste that breaks his own neck. There is only one on 'em that I have see'd out there, that can do it right.

"It requires some experience, that's a fact. But let John Bull alone for that; he is a critter that thinks he knows every thing; and if you told him he didn't, he wouldn't believe you, not he. He'd only pity your ignorance, and look dreadful sorry for you. Oh if you want to see high life, come and see "a colonial gander pulling."

"'Tying up a goose, Sir, is no great harm,' sais I, 'seein' that a goose was made to be killed, picked and devoured, and nothin' else. Tyin' up a colonist by the heels is another thing. I don't think it right; but I don't know nothin'; I've had the book too close to my eyes. Joe H--e, that never was there, can tell you twice as much as I can about the colonies. The focus to see right, as I said afore, is three thousand miles off.'

"'Well,' sais he, 'that's a capital ill.u.s.tration, Mr. Slick. There is more in that than meets the ear. Don't tell me you don't know nothin'

about the colonies; few men know so much as you do. I wish to heavens you was a colonist,' sais he; 'if you were, I would offer you a government.'

"'I don't doubt it,' sais I; 'seein' that your department have advanced or rewarded so many colonists already.' But I don't think he heard that shot, and I warn't sorry for it; for it's not right to be a pokin' it into a perlite man, is it?

"'I must tell the Queen that story of _the Gander Pulling_,' sais he; 'I like it amazingly. It's a capital caricature. I'll send the idea to H.

B. Pray name some day when you are disengaged; I hope you will give me the pleasure of dining with me. Will this day fortnight suit you?'

"'Thank you,' sais I, 'I shall have great pleasure.'

"He railly was a gentlemany man that. He was so good natured, and took the joke so well, I was kinder sorry I played it off on him. I hante see'd no man to England I affection so much as Mr. Tact, I swear! I begin to think, arter all, it was the right of _sarchin' vessels_ he wanted to talk to me about, instead of _sarchin' me_, as I suspicioned.

It don't do always _to look for motives, men often act without any_. The next time, if he axes me, I'll talk plain, and jist tell him what I _do_ think; but still, if he reads that riddle right, he may larn a good deal, too, from the story of "the Gander Pulling," mayn't he?"

CHAPTER V. THE BLACK STOLE.

The foregoing sketch exhibits a personal trait in Mr. Slick's character, the present a national one. In the interview, whether real or fanciful, that he alleges to have had with one of the Secretaries of State, he was not disposed to give a direct reply, because his habitual caution led him to suspect that an attempt was made to draw him out on a particular topic without his being made aware of the object. On the present occasion, he exhibits that irritability, which is so common among all his countrymen, at the absurd accounts that travellers give of the United States in general, and the gross exaggerations they publish of the state of slavery in particular.

That there is a party in this country, whose morbid sensibility is pandered to on the subject of negro emanc.i.p.ation there can be no doubt, as is proved by the experiment made by Mr. Slick, recorded in this chapter.

On this subject every man has a right to his own opinions, but any interference with the munic.i.p.al regulations of another country, is so utterly unjustifiable, that it cannot be wondered at that the Americans resent the conduct of the European abolis.h.i.+onists, in the most unqualified and violent manner.

The conversation that I am now about to repeat, took place on the Thames. Our visits, hitherto, had been restricted by the rain to London.

To-day, the weather being fine, we took pa.s.sage on board of a steamer, and went to Greenwich.

While we were walking up and down the deck, Mr. Slick again adverted to the story of the government spies with great warmth. I endeavoured, but in vain, to persuade him that no regular organized system of espionage existed in England. He had obtained a garbled account of one or two occurrences, and his prejudice, (which, notwithstanding his disavowal, I knew to be so strong, as to warp all his opinions of England and the English), immediately built up a system, which nothing I could say, could at all shake.

I a.s.sured him the instances he had mentioned were isolated and unauthorized acts, told in a very distorted manner but mitigated, as they really were, when truly related, they were at the time received with the unanimous disapprobation of every right-thinking man in the kingdom, and that the odium which had fallen on the relators, was so immeasurably greater than what had been bestowed on the thoughtless princ.i.p.als, that there was no danger of such things again occurring in our day. But he was immovable.

"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 a.s.sured 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts about runaway slaves, sales of n.i.g.g.e.rs, 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 gra.s.shopper; 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 appet.i.te 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.

Finding these preliminary remarks taken in good part, he commenced the process of "cramming."

"But oh, my friend," said he, with a most sanctimonious air, "did you visit, and I am ashamed as an American citizen to ask the question, I feel the blood a tannin' of my cheek when I inquire, did you visit the South? That land that is polluted with slavery, that land where the boastin' and crackin' of freemen pile up the agony pangs on the corroding wounds inflicted by the iron chains of the slave, until natur can't stand it no more; my heart bleeds like a stuck critter, when I think of this plague spot on the body politic. I ought not to speak thus; prudence forbids it, national pride forbids it; but genu_wine_ feelings is too strong for polite forms. 'Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh.' Have you been there?"

"Turkey" was thrown off his guard, he opened his wallet, which was well stocked, and retailed his stories, many of them so very rich, that I doubted the capacity of the Attache to out-Herod him. Mr. Slick received these tales with evident horror, and complimented the narrator with a well simulated groan; and when he had done, said, "Ah, I see how it is, they have purposely kept dark about the most atrocious features of slavery. Have you never seen the Gougin' School?"

"No, never."

"What, not seen the Gougin' School?"

"No, Sir; I never heard of it."

"Why, you don't mean to say so?"

"I do, indeed, I a.s.sure you."

"Well, if that don't pa.s.s! And you never even heerd tell of it, eh?"

"Never, Sir. I have never either seen it or heard of it."

"I thought as much," said Mr. Slick. "I doubt if any Britisher ever did or ever will see it. Well, Sir, in South Carolina, there is a man called Josiah Wormwood; I am ashamed to say he is a Connecticut man. For a considerable of a spell, he was a strollin' preacher, but it didn't pay in the long run. There is so much compet.i.tion in that line in our country, that he consaited the business was overdone, and he opened a Lyceum to Charleston South Car, for boxin', wrestlin' and other purlite British accomplishments; and a most a beautiful sparrer he is, too; I don't know as I ever see a more scientific gentleman than he is, in that line. Lately, he has halfed on to it the art of gougin' or 'monokolisin,' as he calls it, to sound grand; and if it weren't so dreadful in its consequences, it sartinly is amost allurin' thing, is gougin'. The sleight-of-hand is beautiful. All other sleights we know are tricks; but this is reality; there is the eye of your adversary in your hand; there is no mistake. It's the real thing. You feel you have him; that you have set your mark on him, and that you have took your satisfaction. The throb of delight felt by a 'monokolister' is beyond all conception."

"Oh heavens!" said the traveller, "Oh horror of horrors! I never heard any thing so dreadful. Your manner of telling it, too, adds to its terrors. You appear to view the practice with a proper Christian disgust; and yet you talk like an amateur. Oh, the thing is sickening."

"It is, indeed," said Mr. Slick, "particularly to him that loses his peeper. But the dexterity, you know, is another thing. It is very scientific. He has two n.i.g.g.e.rs, has Squire Wormwood, who teach the wrastlin' and gouge-sparrin'; but practisin' for the eye is done for punishment of runaways. He has plenty of subjects. All the planters send their fugit_ive_ n.i.g.g.e.rs there to be practised on for an eye. The scholars ain't allowed to take more than one eye out of them; if they do, they have to pay for the n.i.g.g.e.r; for he is no sort o' good after, for nothin' but to pick oak.u.m. I could go through the form, and give you the cries to the life, but I won't; it is too horrid; it really is too dreadful."

"Oh do, I beg of you," said the traveller.

"I cannot, indeed; it is too shocking. It will disgust you."

"Oh, not at all," said Turkey, "when I know it is simulated, and not real, it is another thing."

"I cannot, indeed," said Mr. Slick. "It would shock your philanthropic soul, and set your very teeth of humanity on edge. But have you ever seen--the Black Stole?"

"No."

"Never seen the Black Stole?"

"No, never."