From Halifax to Cumberland, Squire, the eastern coast of Nova Scotia presents more harbours fit for the entrance of men-of-war than the whole Atlantic coast of our country from Maine to Mexico. No part of the world I am acquainted with is so well supplied and so little frequented. They are "thar," as we say, but where are the large ships? growing in the forest I guess. And the large towns? all got to be built I reckon. And the mines? why wanting to be worked. And the fisheries? Well, I'll tell you, if you will promise not to let on about it. We are going to have them by treaty, as we now have them by trespass. Fact is, we treat with the British and the Indians in the same way. Bully them if we can, and when that won't do, get the most valuable things they have in exchange for trash, like glass beads and wooden clocks. Still, Squire, there is a vast improvement here, though I won't say there ain't room for more; but there is such a change come over the people, as is quite astonishing. The Blue-nose of 1834 is no longer the Blue-nose of 1854. He is more active, more industrious, and more enterprising. Intelligent the critter always was, but unfortunately he was lazy. He was asleep then, now he is wide awake, and up and doing. He never had no occasion to be ashamed to show himself, for he is a good-looking feller, but he needn't now be no longer skeered to answer to his name, when the muster is come and his'n is called out in the roll, and say, "Here am I, Sirree." A new generation has sprung up, some of the drones are still about the hive, but there is a young vigorous race coming on who will keep pace with the age.

It's a great thing to have a good glass to look in now and then and see yourself. They have had the mirror held up to them.

Lord, I shall never forget when I was up to Rawdon here once, a countryman came to the inn where I was, to pay me for a clock I had put off on him, and as I was a passin' through the entry I saw the critter standin' before the glass, awfully horrified.

"My good gracious," said he, a talking to himself, "my good gracious, is this you, John Smiler? I havn't seen you before now going on twenty years. Oh, how shockingly you are altered, I shouldn't a known you, I declare."

Now, I have held the mirror to these fellows to see themselves in, and it has scared them so they have shaved slick up, and made themselves look decent. I won't say I made all the changes myself, for Providence scourged them into activity, by sending the weavel into their wheat-fields, the rot into their potatoes, and the drought into their hay crops. It made them scratch round, I tell you, so as to earn their grub, and the exertion did them good. Well, the blisters I have put on their vanity stung 'em so, they jumped high enough to see the right road, and the way they travel ahead now is a caution to snails.

Now, if it was you who had done your country this sarvice, you would have spoke as mealy-mouthed of it as if butter wouldn't melt in it. "I flatter myself," you would have said, "I had some little small share in it." "I have lent my feeble aid." "I have contributed my poor mite," and so on, and looked as meek and felt as proud as a Pharisee. Now, that's not my way. I hold up the mirror, whether when folks see themselves in it they see me there or not. The value of a glass is its truth. And where colonists have suffered is from false reports, ignorance, and misrepresentation. There is not a word said of them that can be depended on. Missionary returns of all kinds are coloured and doctored to suit English subscribing palates, and it's a pity they should stand at the head of the list. British travellers distort things the same way. They land at Halifax, where they see the first contrast between Europe and America, and that contrast ain't favourable, for the town is dingy lookin' and wants paint, and the land round it is poor and stony. But that is enough, so they set down and abuse the whole country, stock and fluke, and write as wise about it as if they had seen it all instead of overlooking one mile from the deck of a steamer. The military enjoy it beyond anything, and are far more comfortable than in soldiering in England; but it don't do to say so, for it counts for foreign service, and like the witnesses at the court-marshall at Windsor, every feller sais, Non mi ricordo. Governors who now-a-days have nothing to do, have plenty of leisure to write, and their sufferings are such, their pens are inadequate to the task. They are very much to be pitied.

Well, colonists on the other hand seldom get their noses out of it. But if provincials do now and then come up on the other side of the big pond, like deep sea-fish rising to the surface, they spout and blow like porpoises, and try to look as large as whales, and people only laugh at them. Navy officers extol the harbour and the market, and the kindness and hospitality of the Haligonians, but that is all they know, and as far as that goes they speak the truth. It wants an impartial friend like me to hold up the mirror, both for their sakes and the Downing Street officials too. Is it any wonder then that the English don't know what they are talking about? Did you ever hear of the devil's advocate? a nickname I gave to one of the understrappers of the Colonial office, an ear mark that will stick to the feller for ever! Well, when they go to make a saint at Rome, and canonize some one who has been dead so long he is in danger of being forgot, the cardinals hold a sort of court-martial on him, and a man is appointed to rake and scrape all he can agin him, and they listen very patiently to all he has to say, so as not to do things in a hurry. He is called "the devil's advocate," but he never gained a cause yet. The same form used to be gone through at Downing Street, by an underling, but he always gained his point. The nickname of the "devil's advocate" that I gave him did his business for him, he is no longer there now.

The British cabinet wants the mirror held up to them, to show them how they look to others. Now, when an order is transmitted by a minister of the crown, as was done last war, to send all Yankee prisoners to the fortress of Louisburg for safe keeping, when that fortress more than sixty years before had been effectually razed from the face of the earth by engineer officers sent from England for the purpose, why it is natural a colonist should laugh, and say Capital! only it is a little too good; and when another minister says, he can't find good men to be governors, in order to defend appointments that his own party say are too bad, what language is strong enough to express his indignation? Had he said openly and manly, We are so situated, and so bound by parliamentary obligations, we not only have to pass over the whole body of provincials themselves, who have the most interest and are best informed in colonial matters, but we have to appoint some people like those to whom you object, who are forced upon us by hollerin' their daylights out for us at elections, when we would gladly select others, who are wholly unexceptionable, and their name is legion; why, he would have pitied his condition, and admired his manliness. If this sweeping charge be true, what an encomium it is upon the Dalhousies, the Gosfords, the Durhams, Sydenhams, Metcalfs, and Elgins, that they were chosen because suitable men could not be found if not supported by party. All that can be said for a minister who talks such stuff, is that a man who knows so little of London as to be unable to find the shortest way home, may easily lose himself in the wilds of Canada.

Now we licked the British when we had only three millions of people including niggers, who are about as much use in a war as crows that feed on the slain, but don't help to kill 'em. We have "run up" an empire, as we say of a "wooden house," or as the gall who was asked where she was raised, said "She warn't raised, she growed up." We have shot up into manhood afore our beards grew, and have made a nation that ain't afeard of all creation. Where will you find a nation like ours? Answer me that question, but don't reply as an Irishman does by repeating it,--"Is it where I will find one, your Honour?"

Minister used to talk of some old chap, that killed a dragon and planted his teeth, and armed men sprung up. As soon as we whipped the British we sowed their teeth, and full-grown coons growed right out of the earth. Lord bless you, we have fellows like Crocket, that would sneeze a man-of-war right out of the water.

We have a right to brag, in fact it ain't braggin', its talking history, and cramming statistics down a fellow's throat, and if he wants tables to set down to, and study them, there's the old chairs of the governors of the thirteen united universal worlds of the old States, besides the rough ones of the new States to sit on, and canvas-back ducks, blue-point oysters, and, as Sorrow says, "hogs and dogs," for soup and pies, for refreshment from labour, as Freemasons say. Brag is a good dog, and Holdfast is a better one, but what do you say to a cross of the two?--and that's just what we are. An English statesman actually thinks nobody knows anything but himself. And his conduct puts folks both on the defensive and offensive. He eyes even an American all over as much as to say, Where the plague did you originate, what field of cotton or tobacco was you took from? and if a Canadian goes to Downing Street, the secretary starts as much as to say, I hope you han't got one o' them rotten eggs in your hand you pelted Elgin with. Upon my soul, it wern't my fault, his indemnifyin' rebels, we never encourage traitors except in Spain, Sicily, Hungary, and places we have nothin' to do with. He brags of purity as much as a dirty piece of paper does, that it was originally clean.

"We appreciate your loyalty most fully, I assure you," he says. "When the militia put down the rebellion, without efficient aid from the military, parliament would have passed a vote of thanks to you for your devotion to our cause, but really we were so busy just then we forgot it. Put that egg in your pocket, that's a good fellow, but don't set down on it, or it might stain the chair, and folks might think you was frightened at seeing so big a man as me;" and then he would turn round to the window and laugh.

Whoever brags over me gets the worst of it, that's a fact. Lord, I shall never forget a rise I once took out of one of these magnetized officials, who know all about the colonies, tho' he never saw one. I don't want any man to call me coward, and say I won't take it parsonal. There was a complaint made by some of our folks against the people of the Lower provinces seizing our coasters under pretence they were intrudin' on the fisheries. Our embassador was laid up at the time with rheumatism, which he called gout, because it sounded diplomatic. So says he, "Slick, take this letter and deliver it to the minister, and give him some verbal explanations."

Well, down I goes, was announced and ushered in, and when he saw me, he looked me all over as a tailor does a man before he takes his measure. It made me hoppin' mad I tell you, for in a general way I don't allow any man to turn up his nose at me without having a shot at it. So when I sat down I spit into the fire, in a way to put it out amost, and he drew back and made a face, a leettle, just a leettle uglier than his natural one was.

"Bad habit," sais I, "that'of spittin', ain't it?" lookin' up at him as innocent as you please, and makin' a face exactly like his.

"Very," said he, and he gave a shudder.

Sais I, "I don't know whether you are aware of it or not, but most bad habits are catching."

"I should hope not," said he, and he drew a little further off.

"Fact," sais I; "now if you look long and often at a man that winks, it sets you a winkin'. If you see a fellow with a twitch in his face, you feel your cheek doin' the same, and stammerin' is catching too. Now I caught that habit at court, since I came to Europe. I dined wunst with the King of Prussia, when I was with our embassador on a visit at Berlin, and the King beats all natur in spittin', and the noise he makes aforehand is like clearin' a grate out with a poker, it's horrid. Well, that's not the worst of it, he uses that ugly German word for it, that vulgarians translate 'spitting.' Now some of our western people are compelled to chew a little tobacco, but like a broker tasting cheese, when testing wine, it is only done to be able to judge of the quality of the article, but even them unsophisticated, free, and enlightened citizens have an innate refinement about them. They never use that nasty word 'spitting,' but call it 'expressing the ambia.' Well, whenever his Majesty crosses my mind, I do the same out of clear sheer disgust. Some o' them sort of uppercrust people, I call them big bugs, think they can do as they like, and use the privilege of indulging those evil habits. When folks like the king do it, I call them 'High, low, jack, and the game.'"

Well, the stare he gave me would have made you die a larfin'. I never saw a man in my life look so skeywonaky. He knew it was true that the king had that custom, and it dumb-foundered him. He looked at me as much as to say, "Well, that is capital; the idea of a Yankee, who spits like a garden-engine, swearing it's a bad habit he larned in Europe, and a trick he got from dining with a king, is the richest thing I ever heard in my life. I must tell that to Palmerston."

But I didn't let him off so easy. In the course of talk, sais he:

"Mr Slick, is it true that in South Carolina, if a free nigger, on board of one of our vessels, lands there, he is put into jail until the ship sails?" and he looked good, as much as to say, "Thank heaven I ain't like that republican."

"It is," said I. "We consider a free nigger and a free Englishman on a parr; we imprison a free black, lest he should corrupt our slaves. The Duke of Tuscany imprisons a free Englishman, if he has a Bible in his possession, lest he should corrupt his slaves. It's upon the principle, that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."

He didn't pursue the subject.

That's what I call brag for brag. We never allow any created critter, male or female, to go a-head of us in anything. I heard a lady say to embassador's wife once, in answer to her question, "how she was?"

"Oh, I am in such rude health, I have grown quite indecently stout."

Embassadress never heard them slang words before (for even high life has its slang), but she wouldn't be beat.

"Oh," said she, "all that will yield to exercise. Before I was married I was the rudest and most indecent gall in all Connecticut."

Well, an Irishman, with his elbow through his coat, and his shirt, if he has one, playing diggy-diggy-doubt from his trowsers, flourishes his shillalah over his head, and brags of the "Imirald Isle," and the most splindid pisantry in the world; a Scotchman boasts, that next to the devil and the royal owner of Etna, he is the richest proprietor of sulphur that ever was heard of; while a Frenchman, whose vanity exceeds both, has the modesty to call the English a nation of shopkeepers, the Yankees, canaille, and all the rest of the world beasts. Even John Chinaman swaggers about with his three tails, and calls foreigners "Barbarians." If we go a-head and speak out, do you do so, too. You have a right to do so. Hold the mirror to them, and your countrymen, too. It won't lie, that's a fact. They require it, I assure you. The way the just expectations of provincials have been disappointed, the loyal portion depressed, the turbulent petted, and the manner the feelings of all disregarded, the contempt that has accompanied concessions, the neglect that has followed devotion and self-sacrifice, and the extraordinary manner the just claims of the meritorious postponed to parliamentary support, has worked a change in the feelings of the people that the Downing Street officials cannot understand, or surely they would pursue a different course. They want to have the mirror held up to them.

I know they feel sore here about the picture my mirror gives them, and it's natural they should, especially comin' from a Yankee; and they call me a great bragger. But that's nothin' new; doctors do the same when a feller cures a poor wretch they have squeezed like a sponge, ruinated, and given up as past hope. They sing out Quack. But I don't care; I have a right to brag nationally and individually, and I'd be no good if I didn't take my own part. Now, though I say it that shouldn't say it, for I ain't afraid to speak out, the sketches I send you are from life; I paint things as you will find them and know them to be. I'll take a bet of a hundred dollars, ten people out of twelve in this country will recognise Jerry Boudrot's house who have never entered it, but who have seen others exactly like it, and will say, "I know who is meant by Jerry and his daughter and wife; I have often been there; it is at Clare or Arichat or Pumnico, or some such place or another."

Is that braggin'? Not a bit; it's only the naked fact. To my mind there is no vally in a sketch if it ain't true to nature. We needn't go searching about for strange people or strange things; life is full of them. There is queerer things happening every day than an author can imagine for the life of him. It takes a great many odd people to make a world, that's a fact. Now, if I describe a house that has an old hat in one window, and a pair of trousers in another, I don't stop to turn glazier, take 'em out and put whole glass in, nor make a garden where there is none, and put a large tree in the foreground for effect; but I take it as I find it, and I take people in the dress I find 'em in, and if I set 'em a talkin' I take their very words down. Nothing gives you a right idea of a country and its people like that.

There is always some interest in natur, where truly depicted. Minister used to say that some author (I think he said it was old Dictionary Johnson) remarked, that the life of any man, if wrote truly, would be interesting. I think so too; for every man has a story of his own, adventures of his own, and some things have happened to him that never happened to anybody else. People here abuse me for all this, they say, after all my boastin' I don't do 'em justice. But after you and I are dead and gone, and things have been changed, as it is to be hoped they will some day or another for the better, unless they are like their Acadian French neighbours, and intend to remain just as they are for two hundred and fifty years, then these sketches will be curious; and, as they are as true to life as a Dutch picture, it will be interestin' to see what sort of folks were here in 1854, how they lived, and how they employed themselves, and so on.

Now it's more than a hundred years ago since Smollett wrote, but his men and women were taken from real life, his sailors from the navy, his attorneys from the jails and criminal courts, and his fops and fine ladies from the herd of such cattle that he daily met with. Well, they are read now; I have 'em to home, and laugh till I cry over them. Why? Because natur is the same always. Although we didn't live a hundred years ago, we can see how the folks of that age did; and, although society is altered, and there are no Admiral Benbows, nor Hawser Trunnions, and folks don't travel in vans with canvas covers, or wear swords, and frequent taverns, and all that as they used to did to England; still it's a pictur of the times, and instructin' as well as amusin'. I have learned more how folks dressed, talked, and lived, and thought, and what sort of critters they were, and what the state of society, high and low, was then, from his books and Fielding's than any I know of. They are true to life, and as long as natur remains the same, which it always will, they will be read. That's my idea at least.

Some squeamish people turn up the whites of their peepers at both those authors and say they are coarse. How can they be otherwise? society was coarse. There are more veils worn now, but the devil still lurks in the eye under the veil. Things ain't talked of so openly, or done so openly, in modern as in old times. There is more concealment; and concealment is called delicacy. But where concealment is, the passions are excited by the difficulties imposed by society. Barriers are erected too high to scale, but every barrier has its wicket, its latch key, and its private door. Natur is natur still, and there is as much of that that is condemned in his books now, as there was then. There is a horrid sight of hypocrisy now, more than there was one hundred years ago; vice was audacious then, and scared folks. It ain't so bold at present as it used to did to be; but if it is forbid to enter the drawing-room, the back staircase is still free. Where there is a will there is a way, and always will be. I hate pretence, and, above all, mock modesty; it's a bad sign.

I knew a clergyman to home a monstrous pious man, and so delicate-minded, he altered a great many words and passages in the Church Service, he said he couldn't find it in his heart to read them out in meetin', and yet that fellow, to my sartain knowledge, was the greatest scamp in private life I ever knew. Gracious knows, I don't approbate coarseness, it shocks me, but narvous sensibility makes me sick. I like to call things by their right names, and I call a leg a leg, and not a larger limb; a shirt a shirt, though it is next the skin, and not a linen vestment; and a stocking a stocking, though it does reach up the leg, and not a silk hose; and a garter a garter, though it is above the calf, and not an elastic band or a hose suspender. A really modest woman was never squeamish. Fastidiousness is the envelope of indelicacy. To see harm in ordinary words betrays a knowledge, and not an ignorance of evil.

But that is neither here nor there, as I was sayin', when you are dead and gone these Journals of mine which you have edited, when mellowed by time, will let the hereafter-to-be Blue-noses, see what the has-been Nova Scotians here from '34 to '54 were. Now if something of the same kind had been done when Halifax was first settled a hundred years ago, what strange coons the old folks would seem to us. That state of society has passed away, as well as the actors. For instance, when the militia was embodied to do duty so late as the Duke of Kent's time, Ensign Lane's name was called on parade. "Not here," said Lieutenant Grover, "he is mending Sargent Street's breeches."

Many a queer thing occurred then that would make a queer book, I assure you. There is much that is characteristic both to be seen and heard in every harbour in this province, the right way is to jot all down. Every place has its standing topic. At Windsor it is the gypsum trade, the St John's steamer, the Halifax coach, and a new house that is building. In King's County it is export of potatoes, bullocks, and horses. At Annapolis, cord, wood, oars, staves, shingles, and agricultural produce of all kinds. At Digby, smoked herrings, fish weirs, and St John markets. At Yarmouth, foreign freights, berthing, rails, cat-heads, lower cheeks, wooden bolsters, and the crown, palm, and shank of anchors. At Shelburne, it is divided between fish, lumber, and the price of vessels. At Liverpool, ship-building, deals, and timber, knees, transums, and futtucks, pintles, keelsons, and moose lines. At Lunenburg, Jeddore, and Chesencook, the state of the market at the capital. At the other harbours further to the eastward, the coal trade and the fisheries engross most of the conversation. You hear continually of the fall run and the spring catch of mackerel that set in but don't stop to bait. The remarkable discovery of the French coasters, that was made fifty years ago, and still is as new and as fresh as ever, that when fish are plenty there is no salt, and when salt is abundant there are no fish, continually startles you with its novelty and importance. While you are both amused and instructed by learning the meaning of coal cakes, Albion tops, and what a Chesencooker delights in, "slack;" you also find out that a hundred tons of coal at Sydney means when it reaches Halifax one hundred and fifteen, and that West India, Mediterranean, and Brazilian fish are actually made on these shores. These local topics are greatly diversified by politics, which, like crowfoot and white-weed, abound everywhere.

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 flourishing 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 titles. There are a receiver-general, an accountant-general, an attorney-general, a solicitor-general, a commissary-general, an assistant 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 lordships 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 passengers. 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 bunkum.

"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, "ass'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 trespassing on the pavement, and the non-military assemble 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 Washington, 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 constitution. Will it affect the stocks? How it will scare the Emperor of Rooshia, 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 assembled doing their utmost, and twenty or thirty boys helping them, to look at the passengers, 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?'

"'Why, the chief end of man, Sir, is his head and shoulders.'

"'Oh,' said a little lassie that was listening to the conversation, 'if you know all these things, Sir, can you tell me if Noah had any butterflies in the ark? I wonder how in the world he ever got hold of them! Many and many a beauty have I chased all day, and I never could catch one yet.'"

"I can tell you a better one than that," says Larry Hilliard. "Do you recollect old Hardwood, our under-sheriff? He has a very beautiful daughter, and she was married last week at St Paul's Church, to a lieutenant in the navy. There was such an immense crowd present (for they were considered the handsomest couple ever married there), that she got so confused she could hardly get through the responses. When the archdeacon said, 'Will you have this man to be your wedded husband?'

"'Yes,' she said, and made a slight pause; and then became bewildered, and got into her catechism. 'Yes,' she said, 'by God's grace I will, and I humbly thank my Heavenly Father for having brought me to this state of salvation.'

"It was lucky she spoke low, and that the people didn't distinctly hear her, but it nearly choaked the parson."

"Talking of church anecdotes," says Lawyer Martin, "reminds me of old Parson Byles, of St John's, New Brunswick. Before the American rebellion he was rector at Boston, and he had a curate who always preached against the Roman Catholics. It tickled the Puritans, but didn't injure the Papists, for there were none there at that time. For three successive Sundays he expounded the text, 'And Peter's wife's mother lay ill of a fever.'

"From which he inferred priests ought to marry. Shortly after that the bell was tolling one day, and somebody asked Dr Byles who was dead.

"Says he, and he looked solemcoly, shut one eye and winked with the other, as if he was trying to shut that also--'I rather think it is Peter's wife's mother, for she has been ill of a fever for three weeks.'"

There are charms in these little "home scenes," these little detached sketches, which are wholly lost in a large landscape.

There is one very redeeming property about the people. Although they differ widely in politics, I infer that they live in the greatest possible harmony together, from the fact that they speak of each other like members of the same family. The word Mr is laid aside as too cold and formal, and the whole Christian name as too ceremonious. Their most distinguished men speak of each other, and the public follow their example, as Joe A, or Jim B, or Bill C, or Tom D, or Fitz this, or Dick that. It sounds odd to strangers no doubt, but the inference that may be drawn from it is one of great amiability.

Still, in holding up the mirror, hold it up fairly, and take in all the groups, and not merely those that excite ridicule. Halifax has more real substantial wealth about it than any place of its size in America; wealth not amassed by reckless speculation, but by judicious enterprise, persevering industry, and consistent economy. In like manner there is better society in it than in any similar American or colonial town. A man must know the people to appreciate them. He must not merely judge by those whom he is accustomed to meet at the social board, for they are not always the best specimens anywhere, but by those also who prefer retirement, and a narrower circle, and rather avoid general society, as not suited to their tastes. The character of its mercantile men stands very high, and those that are engaged in professional pursuits are distinguished for their ability and integrity. In short, as a colonist, Squire, you may at least be satisfied to hear from a stranger like me, that they contrast so favourably with those who are sent officially among them from England, that they need not be ashamed to see themselves grouped with the best of them in the same mirror.

Yes, yes, Squire, every place has its queer people, queer talk, and queer grouping. I draw what is before me, and I can't go wrong. Now, if the sketcher introduces his own person into his foregrounds, and I guess I figure in all mine as large as life (for like a respectable man I never forget myself), he must take care he has a good likeness of his skuldiferous head, as well as a flattering one. Now, you may call it crackin' and braggin', and all that sort of a thing, if you please, but I must say, I allot that I look, sit, walk, stand, eat, drink, smoke, think, and talk, aye, and brag too, like a Yankee clockmaker, don't you? Yes, there is a decided and manifest improvement in the appearance of this province. When I say the province, I don't refer to Halifax alone, though there are folks there that think it stands for and represents the whole colony. I mean what I say in using that expression, which extends to the country at large--and I am glad to see this change, for I like it. And there is a still more decided and manifest improvement in the people, and I am glad of that too, for I like them also. Now, I'll tell you one great reason of this alteration. Blue-nose has seen himself as other folks see him, he has had "the mirror held up to him."