The Silent Girls.
Do you see them are swallows, said the Clockmaker, how
low they fly? Well I presume we shall have rain right
away, and them noisy critters, them gulls how close they
keep to the water, down there in the Shubenacadie; well
that's a sure sign. If we study natur, we don't want no
thermometer. But I guess we shall be in time to get under
cover in a shingle-maker's shed about three miles ahead
on us. We had just reached the deserted hovel when the
rain fell in torrents.
I reckon, said the Clockmaker, as he sat himself down on
a bundle of shingles, I reckon they are bad off for inns
in this country. When a feller is too lazy to work here,
he paints his name over his door, and calls it a tavern,
and as like as not he makes the whole neighbourhood as
lazy as himself--it is about as easy to find a good inn
in Halifax, as it is to find wool on a goat's back. An
inn, to be a good concarn, must be built a purpose, you
can no more make a good tavern out of a common dwelling
house, I expect, than a good coat out of an old pair of
trowsers. They are etarnal lazy, you may depend--now
there might be a grand spec made there, in building a
good Inn and a good Church. What a sacrilegious and
unnatural union, said I, with most unaffected surprise.
Not at all, said Mr. Slick, we build both on speculation
in the States, and make a good deal of profit out of 'em
too, I tell you. We look out a good sightly place, in a
town like Halifax, that is pretty considerably well
peopled, with folks that are good marks; and if there is
no real right down good preacher among them, we build a
handsome Church, touched off like a New-York liner, a
real taking looking thing--and then we look out for a
preacher, a crack man, a regular ten horse power chap
--well, we hire him, and we have to give pretty high
wages too, say twelve hundred or sixteen hundred dollars
a year. We take him at first on trial for a Sabbath or
two, to try his paces, and if he takes with the folks,
if he goes down well, we clinch the bargain, and let and
sell the pews; and, I tell you it pays well and makes a
real good investment. There were few better specs among
us than Inns and Churches, until the Railroads came on
the carpet--as soon as the novelty of the new preacher
wears off, we hire another, and that keeps up the steam.
I trust it will be long, very long, my friend, said I,
ere the rage for speculation introduces "the money changers
into the temple," with us. Mr. Slick looked at me with
a most ineffable expression of pity and surprise. Depend
on it, Sir, said he, with a most philosophical air, this
Province is much behind the intelligence of the age. But
if it is behind us in that respect, it is a long chalk
ahead on us in others.
I never seed or heard tell of a country that had so many
natural privileges as this. Why there are twice as many
harbors and water powers were, as we have all the way
from Eastport to New OrLEENS. They have all they can ax,
and more than they desarve. They have iron, coal, slate,
grindstone, lime, firestone, gypsum, freestone, and a
list as long as an auctioneer's catalogue. But they are
either asleep, or stone blind to them. Their shores are
crowded with fish, and their lands covered with wood. A
government that lays as light on 'em as a down counterpin,
and no taxes. Then look at their dykes. The Lord seems
to have made 'em on purpose for such lazy folks. If you
were to tell the citizens of our country, that these
dykes had been cropped for a hundred years without manure,
they'd say, they guessed you had seen Col. Crookett, the
greatest hand at a flam in our nation. You have heerd
tell of a man who could'nt see London for the houses, I
tell you, if we had this country, you could'nt see the
harbors for the shipping. There'd be a rush of folks to
it, as there is in one of our inns, to the dinner table,
when they sometimes get jammed together in the door-way,
and a man has to take a running leap over their heads,
afore he can get in. A little nigger boy in New York
found a diamond worth 2,000 dollars; well, he sold it to
a watchmaker for 50 cents--the little critter did'nt
know no better. Your people are just like the nigger boy,
they don't know the value of their diamond.
Do you know the reason monkeys are no good? because they
chatter all day long--so do the niggers--and so do the
Blue Noses of Nova Scotia--its all talk and no work; now,
with us its all work and no talk--in our ship yards,
our factories, our mills, and even in our Vessels, there's
no talk--a man can't work and talk too. I guess if you
were at the factories at Lowell we'd show you a wonder
--five hundred galls at work together, all in silence.
I don't think our great country has such a real natural
curiosity as that--I expect the world don't contain the
beat of that; for a woman's tongue goes so slick of
itself, without water power or steam, and moves so easy
on its hinges, that its no easy matter to put a spring
stop on it, I tell you--it comes as natural as drinkin
mint julip.
I don't pretend to say the galls don't nullify the rule,
sometimes at intermission and arter hours, but when they
do, if they don't let go, then its a pity. You have heerd
a school come out, of little boys, Lord its no touch to
it; or a flock of geese at it, they are no more a match
for em than a pony is for a coach-horse. But when they
are at work, all's as still as sleep and no snoring. I
guess we have a right to brag o' that invention--we
trained the dear critters, so they don't think of striking
the minutes and seconds no longer.
Now the folks of Halifax take it all out in talking--
they talk of steamboats, whalers and rail roads--but they
all end where they begin--in talk. I don't think I'd be
out in my latitude, if I was to say they beat the women
kind at that. One feller says, I talk of going to
England--another says, I talk of going to the Country--
while a third says, I talk of going to sleep. If we happen
to speak of such things, we say: 'I'm right off down
East; or I'm away off South,' and away we go, jist like
a streak of lightning.
When we want folks to talk, we pay 'em for it, such as
ministers, lawyers, and members of congress: but then we
expect the use of their tongues, and not their hands;
and when we pay folks to work, we expect the use of their
hands, and not their tongues. I guess work don't come
kind o' natural to the people of this Province, no more
than it does to a full bred horse. I expect they think
they have a little TOO MUCH BLOOD in 'em for work, for
they are near about as proud as they are lazy.
Now the bees know how to sarve out such chaps, for they
have their drones too. Well they reckon its no fun, a
making honey all summer, for these idle critters to eat
all winter--so they give 'em Lynch Law. They have a
regular built mob of citizens, and string up the drones
like the Vixburg gamblers. Their maxim is, and not a bad
one neither I guess, 'no work, no honey.'