No. XIII The Clockmaker’s Opinion of Halifax
The next morning was warmer than several that had preceded it. It was one of those uncommonly fine days that distinguish an American autumn.
“I guess,” said Mr. Slick, “the heat today is like a glass of mint julip, with a lump of ice in it, it tastes cool and feels warm; it’s real good, I tell you. I love such a day as this dearly. It’s generally allowed the finest weather in the world is in America; there ain’t the beat of it to be found anywhere.” He then lighted a cigar, and throwing himself back on his chair, put both feet out of the window, and sat with his arms folded, a perfect picture of happiness.
“You appear,” said I, “to have travelled over the whole of this Province, and to have observed the country and the people with much attention; pray what is your opinion of the present state and future prospects of Halifax?”
“If you will tell me,” said he, “when the folks there will wake up, then I can answer you, but they are fast asleep. As to the Province, it’s a splendid province, and calculated to go ahead, it will grow as fast as a Varginny gal; and they grow so amazin’ fast, if you put your arm round one of their necks to kiss them, by the time you’re done, they’ve grown up into women. It’s a pretty Province I tell you, good above and better below; surface covered with pastures, meadows, woods, and a ’nation sight of water privileges, and under the ground full of mines—it puts me in mind of the soup at the TREE-mont House.
“One day I was a-walkin’ in the Mall, and who should I meet but Major Bradford, a gentleman from Connecticut, that traded in calves and pumpkins for the Boston market. Says he, ‘Slick, where do you get your grub today?’ ‘At General Peep’s tavern,’ says I. ‘Only fit for niggers,’ says he, ‘why don’t you come to the TREE-mont house, that’s the most splendid thing, it’s generally allowed, in all the world.’ ‘Why,’ says I, ‘that’s a notch above my mark; I guess it’s too plagy dear for me, I can’t afford it no how.’ ‘Well,’ says he, ’it’s dear in one sense, but it’s dog cheap in another—it’s a grand place for speculation. There’s so many rich southerners and strangers there that have more money than wit, that you might do a pretty good business there, without goin’ out of the street door. I made two hundred dollars this mornin’ in little less than half no time. There’s a Carolina lawyer there, as rich as a bank, and says he to me arter breakfast, “Major,” says he, “I wish I knew where to get a real slapping trotter of a horse, one that could trot with a flash of lightning for a mile, and beat it by a whole neck or so.” Says I, “My Lord,” for you must know, he says he’s the nearest male heir to a Scotch dormant peerage, “my Lord,” says I, “I have one, a proper sneezer, a chap that can go ahead of a railroad steamer, a real natural traveller, one that can trot with the ball out of the small eend of a rifle, and never break into a gallop.” Says he, “Major, I wish you wouldn’t give me that ’ere nickname, I don’t like it,” though he looked as tickled all the time as possible; “I never knew,” says he, “a lord that warn’t a fool, that’s a fact, and that’s the reason I don’t go ahead and claim the title.” “Well,” says I, “my Lord I don’t know, but somehow I can’t help a-thinkin’, if you have a good claim, you’d be more like a fool not to go ahead with it.” “Well,” says he, “lord or no lord, let’s look at your horse.” So away I went to Joe Brown’s livery stable, at t’other eend of the city, and picked out the best trotter he had, and no great stick to brag on either; says I, “Joe Brown what do you ax for that ’ere horse?” “Two hundred dollars,” says he. “Well,” says I, “I will take him out and try him, and if I like him I will keep him.” So I shows our Carolina Lord the horse, and when he gets on him, says I, “Don’t let him trot as fast as he can, resarve that for a heat; if folks find out how everlastin’ fast he is, they’d be afeared to stump you for a start.” When he returned, he said he liked the horse amazinly, and axed the price; “four hundred dollars,” says I, “you can’t get nothin’ special without a good price, pewter cases never hold good watches.” “I know it,” says he, “the horse is mine.” Thinks I to myself, that’s more than ever I could say of him then anyhow.’
“Well, I was goin’ to tell you about the soup; says the Major, ‘It’s near about dinner time, jist come and see how you like the location.’ There was a sight of folks there, gentlemen and ladies in the public room—I never seed so many afore except at commencement day—all ready for a start, and when the gong sounded, off we sot like a flock of sheep. Well, if there warn’t a jam you may depend; some one give me a pull, and I near abouts went heels up over head, so I reached out both hands, and caught hold of the first thing I could, and what should it be but a lady’s dress—well, as I’m alive, rip went the frock, and tear goes the petticoat, and when I righted myself from my beam eends, away they all came home to me, and there she was, the pretty critter, with all her upper riggin’ standin’ as far as her waist, and nothin’ left below but a short linen under-garment. If she didn’t scream, it’s a pity, and the more she screamed the more folks larfed, for no soul could help larfin’, till one of the waiters folded her up in a tablecloth.
“‘What an awkward devil you be, Slick,’ says the Major; ‘now that comes of not falling in first; they should have formed four deep, rear rank in open order, and marched in to our splendid national air, and filed off to their seats right and left shoulders forward. I feel kinder sorry, too,’ says he, ‘for that ’ere young heifer; but she showed a proper pretty leg tho’ Slick, didn’t she? I guess you don’t often get such a chance as that ’ere.’ Well, I gets near the Major at table, and afore me stood a china utensil with two handles, full of soup, about the size of a foot-tub, with a large silver scoop in it, near about as big as a ladle of a maple sugar kettle. I was jist about bailing out some soup into my dish, when the Major said, ‘Fish it up from the bottom, Slick.’ Well, sure enough, I gives it a drag from the bottom, and up come the fat pieces of turtle, and the thick rich soup, and a sight of little forced meat balls of the size of sheep’s dung. No soul could tell how good it was; it was near about as handSUM as father’s old genuine particular cider, and that you could feel tingle clean away down to the tip eends of your toes. ‘Now,’ says the Major, ‘I’ll give you, Slick, a new wrinkle on your horn. Folks ain’t thought nothin’ of unless they live at Treemont: it’s all the go. Do you dine at Peep’s tavern every day, and then off hot foot to Treemont, and pick your teeth on the street steps there, and folks will think you dine there. I do it often, and it saves two dollars a day.’ Then he put his finger on his nose, and says he, ‘Mum is the word.’
“Now, this Province is jist like that ’ere soup—good enough at top, but dip down and you have the riches, the coal, the iron ore, the gypsum, and what not. As for Halifax, it’s well enough in itself, though no great shakes neither, a few sizeable houses, with a proper sight of small ones, like half a dozen old hens with their broods of young chickens; but the people, the strange critters, they are all asleep. They walk in their sleep, and talk in their sleep, and what they say one day they forget the next; they say they were dreaming. You know where Governor Campbell lives, don’t you, in a large stone house with a great wall round it, that looks like a state prison; well, near hand there is a nasty dirty horrid-lookin’ buryin’ ground there; it’s filled with large grave rats as big as kittens, and the springs of black water there go through the chinks of the rocks and flow into all the wells, and fairly pyson the folks; it’s a dismal place, I tell you; I wonder the air from it don’t turn all the silver in the Governor’s house of a brass colour—and folks say he has four cart loads of it—it’s so everlastin’ bad; it’s near about as nosey as a slave ship of niggers. Well you may go there and shake the folks to all etarnity and you won’t wake ’em, I guess, and yet there ain’t much difference atween their sleep and the folks at Halifax, only they lie still there and are quiet, and don’t walk and talk in their sleep like them above ground.
“Halifax reminds me of a Russian officer I once seed at Warsaw; he had lost both arms in battle—but I guess I must tell you first why I went there, ’cause that will show you how we speculate. One Sabbath day, after bell ringin’, when most of the women had gone to meetin’—for they were great hands for pretty sarmons, and our Unitarian ministers all preach poetry, only they leave the rhyme out; it sparkles like perry—I goes down to East India wharf to see Captain Zeek Hancock, of Nantucket, to enquire how oil was, and if it it would bear doin’ anything in; when who should come along but Jabish Green. ‘Slick,’ says he, ‘how do you do; isn’t this as pretty a day as you’ll see between this and Norfolk; it whips English weather by a long chalk;’ and then he looked down at my watch seals, and looked and looked as if he thought I’d stole ’em. At last he looks up, and says he, ‘Slick, I suppose you wouldn’t go to Warsaw, would you, if it was made worth your while?’ ‘Which Warsaw?’ says I, for I believe in my heart we have a hundred of ’em. ‘None of our’n at all,’ says he; ‘Warsaw in Poland.’ ‘Well, I don’t know,’ says I; ‘what do you call worth while?’ ‘Six dollars a day, expenses paid, and a bonus of one thousand dollars, if speculation turns out well.’ ‘I am off,’ says I, ‘whenever you say go.’ ‘Tuesday,’ says he, ‘in the Hamburg packet. Now,’ says he, ‘I’m in a tarnation hurry; I’m goin’ a-pleasurin’ today in the Custom House Boat, along with Josiah Bradford’s gals down to Nahant. But I’ll tell you what I am at: the Emperor of Russia has ordered the Poles to cut off their queues on the 1st of January; you must buy them all up, and ship them off to London for the wig makers. Human hair is scarce and risin’. ‘Lord a massy!’ says I, ‘how queer they will look, won’t they. Well, I vow, that’s what the sea folks call sailing under bare poles, come true, ain’t it?’ ‘I guess it will turn out a good spec,’ says he; and a good one it did turn out—he cleared ten thousand dollars by it.
“When I was at Warsaw, as I was a-sayin’, there was a Russian officer there who had lost both his arms in battle; a good-natured contented critter, as I e’enamost ever seed, and he was fed with spoons by his neighbours, but arter awhile they grew tired of it, and I guess he near about starved to death at last. Now Halifax is like that ’ere SPOONEY, as I used to call him; it is fed by the outports, and they begin to have enough to do to feed themselves; it must larn to live without ’em. They have no river, and no country about ’em; let them make a railroad to Minas Basin, and they will have arms of their own to feed themselves with. If they don’t do it, and do it soon, I guess they’ll get into a decline that no human skill will cure. They are proper thin now; you can count their ribs e’enamost as far as you can see them. The only thing that will either make or save Halifax, is a railroad across the country to Bay of Fundy.
“‘It will do to talk of,’ says one. ‘You’ll see it some day,’ says another. ‘Yes,’ says a third, ‘it will come, but we are too young yet.’
“Our old minister had a darter, a real clever-lookin’ gal as you’d see in a day’s ride, and she had two or three offers of marriage from ‘sponsible men—most particular good specs—but minister always said, ‘Phoebe, you are too young—the day will come—but you are too young yet dear.’ Well, Phoebe didn’t think so at all; she said she guessed she knew better nor that: so the next offer she had, she said she had no notion to lose another chance—off she shot to Rhode Island and got married. Says she, ‘Father’s too old, he don’t know.’ That’s jist the case at Halifax. The old folks say the country is too young, the time will come, and so on; and in the meantime the young folks won’t wait, and run off to the States, where the maxim is, ‘Youth is the time for improvement; a new country is never too young for exertion; push on—keep movin—go ahead.’
“Darn it all,” said the Clockmaker, rising with great animation, clinching his fist, and extending his arm, “darn it all, it fairly makes my dander rise, to see the nasty idle, loungin’ good-for-nothin’, do-little critters; they ain’t fit to tend a bear-trap, I vow. They ought to be quilted round and round a room, like a lady’s lap-dog, the matter of two hours a day, to keep them from dyin’ of apoplexy.”
“Hush, hush!” said I, “Mr. Slick, you forget.”
“Well,” said he, resuming his usual composure, “well, it’s enough to make one vexed though, I declare—isn’t it?”
Mr. Slick has often alluded to this subject, and always in a most decided manner. I am inclined to think he is right. Mr. Howe’s papers on the railroad I read till I came to his calculations, but I never could read figures, “I can’t cipher,” and there I paused; it was a barrier: I retreated a few paces, took a running leap, and cleared the whole of them. Mr. Slick says he has UNDER and not OVER rated its advantages. He appears to be such a shrewd, observing, intelligent man, and so perfectly at home on these subjects, that I confess I have more faith in this humble but eccentric Clockmaker, than in any other man I have met with in this Province. I therefore pronounce “there will be a railroad.”