Nature and Human Nature Part 45

Halifax has all sorts of talk. Now if you was writin' and not me, you would have to call it, to please the people, that flouris.h.i.+ng great capital of the greatest colony of Great Britain, the town with the harbour, as you say of a feller who has a large handle to his face, the man with the nose, that place that is destined to be the London of America, which is a fact if it ever fulfils its destiny. The little scrubby dwarf spruces on the coast are destined not to be lofty pines, because that can't be in the natur of things, although some folks talk as if they expected it; but they are destined to be enormous trees, and although they havn't grown an inch the last fifty years, who can tell but they may exceed the expectations that has been formed of them? Yes, you would have to give it a shove, it wants it bad enough, and lay it on thick too, so as it will stick for one season.

It reminds me of a Yankee I met at New York wunst, he was disposin' of a new hydraulic cement he had invented. Now cements, either to resist fire or water, or to mend the most delicate china, or to stop a crack in a stove, is a thing I rather pride myself on. I make my own cement always, it is so much better than any I can buy.

Sais I, "What are your ingredients?"

"Yes," sais he, "tell you my secrets, let the cat out of the bag for you to catch by the tail. No, no," sais he, "excuse me, if you please."

It ryled me that, so I just steps up to him, as savage as a meat-axe, intendin' to throw him down-stairs, when the feller turned as pale as a rabbit's belly, I vow I could hardly help laughin', so I didn't touch him at all.

"But," sais I, "you and the cat in the bag may run to Old Nick and see which will get to him first, and say tag--I don't want the secret, for I don't believe you know it yourself. If I was to see a bit of the cement, and break it up myself, I'd tell you in a moment whether it was good for anything."

"Well," sais he, "I'll tell you;" and he gave me all the particulars.

Sais I, "It's no good, two important ingredients are wantin', and you haven't tempered it right, and it won't stick."

Sais he, "I guess it will stick till I leave the city, and that will answer me and my eends."

"No," sais I, "it won't, it will ruin you for ever, and injure the reputation of Connecticut among the nations of the airth. Come to me when I return to Slickville, and I will show you the proper thing in use, tested by experience, in tanks, in brick and stone walls, and in a small furnace. Give me two thousand dollars for the receipt, take out a patent, and your fortune is made."

"Well," sais he, "I will if it's all you say, for there is a great demand for the article, if it's only the true Jeremiah."

"Don't mind what I say," said I, "ask it what it says, there it is, go look at it."

Well, you would have to give these Haligonians a coat of white-wash that would stick till you leave the town. But that's your affair, and not mine. I hold the mirror truly, and don't flatter. Now, Halifax is a sizable place, and covers a good deal of ground, it is most as large as a piece of chalk, which will give a stranger a very good notion of it. It is the seat of government, and there are some very important officers there, judging by their t.i.tles. There are a receiver-general, an accountant-general, an attorney-general, a solicitor-general, a commissary-general, an a.s.sistant commissary-general, the general in command, the quartermaster-general, the adjutant-general, the vicar-general, surrogate-general, and postmaster-general. His Excellency the governor, and his Excellency the admiral. The master of the Rolls, their lords.h.i.+ps the judges, the lord bishop, and the archbishop, archdeacon, secretary for the Home department, and a host of great men, with the handle of honourable to their names. Mayors, colonels, and captains, whether of the regulars or the militia, they don't count more than fore-cabin pa.s.sengers. It ain't considered genteel for them to come abaft the paddle-wheel. Indeed, the quarter-deck wouldn't accommodate so many. Now, there is the same marvel about this small town that there was about the scholar's head--

"And still the wonder grew, How one small head could carry all he knew."

Well, it is a wonder so many great men can be warm-clothed, bedded-down, and well stalled there, ain't it? But they are, and very comfortably, too. This is the upper crust; now the under crust consists of lawyers, doctors, merchants, army and navy folks, small officials, articled clerks, and so on. Well, in course such a town, I beg pardon, it is a city (which is more than Liverpool in England is), and has two cathedral churches, with so many grades, trades, blades, and pretty maids in it, the talk must be various. The military talk is professional, with tender reminiscences of home, and some little boasting, that they are suffering in their country's cause by being so long on foreign service at Halifax. The young swordknots that have just joined are brim full of ardour, and swear by Jove (the young heathens) it is too bad to be shut up in this vile hole (youngsters, take my advice, and don't let the town's-people hear that, or they will lynch you), instead of going to Constantinople.

"I say, Lennox, wouldn't that be jolly work?"

"Great work," says Lennox, "rum coves those Turks must be in the field, eh? The colonel is up to a thing or two; if he was knocked on the head, there would be such promotion, no one would lament him, but his dear wife and five lovely daughters, and they would be really distressed to lose him."

He don't check the youthful ardour, on the contrary, chimes in, and is in hopes he can make interest at the Horse-guards for the regiment to go yet, and then he gives a wink to the doctor, who was in the corps when he was a boy, as much as to say, "Old fellow, you and I have seen enough of the pleasures of campaigning in our day, eh! Doctor, that is good wine; but it's getting confounded dear lately; I don't mind it myself, but it makes the expense of the mess fall heavy upon the youngsters." The jolly subs look across the table and wink, for they know that's all bunk.u.m.

"Doctor," sais a new hand, "do you know if Cargill has sold his orses.

His leada is a cleverwish saut of thing, but the wheela is a riglar bute. That's a goodish orse the Admewall wides; I wonder if he is going to take him ome with him."

"Haven't heard--can't say. Jones, what's that thing that wont burn, do you know? Confound the thing, I have got it on the tip of my tongue too."

"Asphalt," sais Jones.

"No! that's not it; that's what wide-awakes are made of."

"Perhaps so," sais Gage, "a.s.s'felt is very appropriate for a fool's cap."

At which there is a great roar.

"No; but really what is it?"

"Is it arbutus?" sais Simpkins, "I think they make it at Killarney--"

"No, no; oh! I have it, asbestos; well, that's what I believe the cigars here are made of--they won't go."

"There are a good many things here that are no go," sais Gage, "like Perry's bills on Coutts; but, Smith, where did you get that flash waistcoat I saw last night?"

"Oh! that was worked by a poor despairing girl at Bath, during a fit of the scarlet fever."

"It was a memento mori then, I suppose," replies the other.

But all the talk is not quite so frivolous. Opposite to that large stone edifice, is an old cannon standing on end at the corner of the street, to keep carriages from trespa.s.sing on the pavement, and the non-military a.s.semble round it; they are civic great guns. They are discussing the great event of the season--the vote of want of confidence of last night, the resignation of the provincial ministry this morning, and the startling fact that the head upholsterer has been sent for to furnish a new cabinet, that won't warp with the heat and fly apart. It is very important news; it has been telegraphed to Was.h.i.+ngton, and was considered so alarming, the President was waked up to be informed of it. He rubbed his eyes and said:

"Well, I acknowledge the coin, you may take my hat. I hope I may be cow-hided if I knew they had a ministry. I thought they only had a governor, and a regiment for a const.i.tution. Will it affect the stocks? How it will scare the Emperor of Roos.h.i.+a, won't it?" and he roared so loud he nearly choked. That just shows (everybody regards the speaker with silence, for he is an oracle), says Omniscient Pitt.

That just shows how little the Yankees know and how little the English care about us. "If we want to be indepindent and respictable," sais an Hibernian magnate, "we must repale the Union." But what is this? here is a fellow tied hand and foot on a truck, which is conveying him to the police court, swearing and screaming horribly. What is the meaning of all that?

A little cynical old man, commonly called the major, looks knowing, puts on a quizzical expression, and touching his nose with the tip of his finger, says, "One of the new magistrates qualifying as he goes down to be sworn into office."

It makes the politicians smile, restores their equanimity, and they make room for another committee of safety. A little lower down the street, a mail-coach is starting for Windsor, and ten or fifteen men are a.s.sembled doing their utmost, and twenty or thirty boys helping them, to look at the pa.s.sengers, but are unexpectedly relieved from their arduous duty by a military band at the head of a marching regiment.

Give me the bar though. I don't mean the bar-room, though there are some capital songs sung, and good stories told, and first-rate rises taken out of green ones, in that bar-room at the big hotel, but I mean the lawyers. They are the merriest and best fellows everywhere. They fight like prize-boxers in public and before all the world, and shake hands when they set to and after it's over. Preachers, on the contrary, write anonymous letters in newspapers, or let fly pamphlets at each other, and call ugly names. While doctors go from house to house insinuating, undermining, shrugging shoulders, turning up noses, and looking as amazed as when they was fust born into the world, at each other's prescriptions. Well, politicians are dirty birds too, they get up all sorts of lies against each other, and if any one lays an egg, t'other swears it was stole out of his nest. But lawyers are above all these tricks. As soon as court is ended, off they go arm-in-arm, as if they had both been fighting on one side. "I say, Blowem, that was a capital hit of yours, making old Gurdy swear he was king of the mountains."

"Not half as good as yours, Monk, telling the witness he couldn't be a partner, for the plaintiff had put in all the 'stock in hand,' and he had only put in his 'stock in feet.'"

They are full of stories, too, tragic as well as comic, picked up in the circuits.

"Jones, do you know Mc Farlane of Barney's River, a Presbyterian clergyman? He told me he was once in a remote district there where no minister had ever been, and visiting the house of a settler of Scotch descent, he began to examine the children.

"'Well, my man,' said he, patting on the shoulder a stout junk of a boy of about sixteen years of age, 'can you tell me what is the chief end of man?'

"'Yes, Sir,' said he. 'To pile and burn brush.'1

1 In clearing woodland, after the trees are chopped down and cut into convenient sizes for handling, they are piled into heaps and burned.

"'No it ain't,' said his sister.

"'Oh, but it is though,' replied the boy, 'for father told me so himself.'

"'No, no,' said the minister, 'it's not that; but perhaps, my dear,'

addressing the girl, 'you can tell me what it is?'

"'Oh, yes, Sir,' said she, 'I can tell you, and so could John, but he never will think before he speaks.'

"'Well, what is it, dear?'