Thomas Chandler Haliburton

“ How on airth could we, if we were all like old Pugnose, as lazy, as ugly, make that cold thin soil of New England produce what it does? Why, sir, the land between Boston and Salem would starve a flock of geese; and yet look at Salem; it has more cash than would buy Nova Scotia from the King. We rise early, live frugally, and work late; what we get we take care of. To all this we add enterprise and intelligence—a feller who finds work too hard here, had better not go to the States. ”

“ Why deacon, said Jerry, why surely your honor isn't a goin for to sell me separate from my poor old wife, are you? Fifty years have we lived together as man and wife, and a good wife has she been to me, through all my troubles and trials, and God knows I have had enough of 'em. No one knows my ways and my ailments but her, and who can tend me so kind, or who will bear with the complaints of a poor old man but his wife. Do, deacon, and Heaven bless you for it, and yours, do sell us together. We have but a few days to live now, death will divide us soon enough. ”

“ If his slay gets upsot, its no longer a funny matter, I tell you; he catches it right and left. Her eyes don't look right up to hisn any more, nor her little tongue ring, ring, ring, like a bell any longer, but a great big hood covers her head, and a whappin great muff covers her face, and she looks like a bag of soiled clothes agoin to the brook to be washed. When they get out, she don't wait any more for him to walk lock and lock with her, but they march like a horse and a cow to water, one in each gutter. ”

“ The folks of Halifax have run down, and they'll never go to all eternity, till they are wound up into motion; the works are all good, and it is plaguy well cased and set—it only wants a key. Put this railroad into operation, and the activity it will inspire into business, the new life it will give the place, will surprise you. It's like lifting a child off his crawling, and putting him on his legs to run—see how the little critter goes ahead arter that. ”

“ It's no more like Congress or Parliament, than Marm Pugwash's keepin' room is like our State hall. It's jist nothin'. Congress makes war and peace, has a say in all treaties, confarms all great nominations of the President, regilates the army and navy, governs twenty-four independent States, and snaps its fingers in the face of all the nations of Europe, as much as to say, who be you? I allot I am as big as you be. If you are six foot high, I am six foot six in my stockin' feet, by gum, and can lambaste any two on you in no time. The British can whip all the world, and we can whip the British. ”

“ And that's not the worst of it neither, for when a woman begins to grow saller it's all over with her; she's up a tree then you may depend, there's no mistake. You can no more bring back her bloom than you can the colour to a leaf the frost has touched in the fall. It's gone goose with her, that's a fact. And that's not all, for the temper is plaguy apt to change with the cheek too. When the freshness of youth is on the move, the sweetness of temper is amazin' apt to start along with it. ”

“ I want to hear what a disinterested man has to say. Now, as a disinterested man, I say if the members of the House of Assembly, instead of raisin' up ghosts and hobgoblins to frighten folks with, and to show what swordsmen they be, a-cuttin' and a-thrustin' at those phantoms that only exist in their own brains, would turn to, heart and hand, and develop the resources of this fine country, facilitate the means of transport, promote its internal improvement, and encourage its foreign trade, they would make it the richest and greatest, as it now is one of the happiest sections of all America. ”

“ What! is it come to this, poor Mohawk, that you, the admiration of all but the envious, the great Mohawk, the standard by which all other horses are measured—trots next to Mohawk, only yields to Mohawk, looks like Mohawk—that you are, after all, only a counterfeit, and pronounced by a straggling Yankee to be merely 'a pretty fair trotter!' If he was trained, I guess that he might be made do a little more. ”

“ If our country is to be darkened by infidelity, our Government defied by every State, and every State ruled by mobs—then, Sam, the blood we shed in our revolution will be atoned for in the blood and suffering of our fellow citizens. ”

“ I am fond of a horse, and always piqued myself on having the fastest trotter in the Province. I have made no great progress in the world; I feel doubly, therefore, the pleasure of not being surpassed on the road. I never feel so well or so cheerful as on horseback, for there is something exhilirating in quick motion; and, old as I am, I feel a pleasure in making any person whom I meet on the way put his horse to the full gallop, to keep pace with my trotter. ”

“ No, your done for, you are up a tree, you may depend; pride must fall. Your town is like a ball room arter a dance. The folks have eat, drank, and frolicked, and left an empty house; the lamps and hangings are left, but the people are gone. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It tante its attraction, said the Clockmaker, its nothin but its power of suction; it is a great whirlpool—a great vortex—it drags all the straw, and chips and floatin sticks, drift wood and trash into it. The small crafts are sucked in, and whirl round and round like a squirrel in a cage— they'll never come out. Bigger ones pass through at certain times of tide, and can come in and out with good pilotage, as they do at HELL GATE up the Sound. ”

“ There'll be the very devil to pay, that's a fact. I expect the blacks will butcher the Southern whites, and the northerners will have to turn out and butcher them again; and all this shoot, hang, cut, stab, and burn business will sweeten our folks' temper, as raw meat does that of a dog—it fairly makes me sick to think on it. The explosion may clear the air again, and all be tranquil once more, but its an even chance if it don't leave us the three steam boat options, to be blown sky high, to be scalded to death or drowned. ”

“ I lost the linch pin out of my forred axle, and I turned up there to get it sot to rights. Just as I drove through the gate, I saw the eldest gall a makin for the house for dear life—she had a short petticoat on that looked like a kilt, and her bare legs put me in mind of the long shanks of a bittern down in a rush swamp, a drivin away like mad full chizel arter a frog. I could not think what on airth was the matter. Thinks I, she wants to make herself look decent like afore I get in, she don't like to pull her stockings on afore me; so I pulls up the old horse and let her have a fair start. ”

“ Let him sell his wheat, and eat his oatmeal and rye; send his beef, mutton and poultry to market, and eat his pork and potatoes; make his own cloth, weave his own linen, and keep out of shops, and he'll soon grow rich—there are more fortins got by savin than by makin, I guess, a plaguy sight—he cant eat his cake and have it too, that's a fact. No, make a farmer of him, and you will have the satisfaction of seeing him an honest, an independent, and a respectable member of society—more honest than traders, more independent than professional men, and more respectable than either. ”

“ They are as headstrong as mules, and as conceited as peacocks.
The astonishment with which I heard this tirade against my countrymen, absorbed every feeling of resentment. I listened with amazement at the perfect composure with which he uttered it. He treated it as one of those self evident truths, that need neither proof nor apology, but as a thing well known and admitted by all mankind. There's no richer sight that I know of, said he, than to see one on 'em when he first lands in one of our great cities. ”

“ Now these Bluenoses have no motion in 'em, no enterprise, no spirit, and if any critter shows any symptoms of activity, they say he is a man of no judgment, he's speculative, he's a schemer, in short he's mad. They vegitate like a lettuce plant in sarse garden, they grow tall and, spindlin', run to seed right off, grow as bitter as gaul and die. ”

“ Oh, Sam, if she could rub it out of my heart as easy as she thinks she rubs it out of my foot, I should be in peace, that's a fact.
"'What's done, Sam, can't be helped, there is no use in cryin' over spilt milk, but still one can't help a-thinkin' on it. But I don't love schisms and I don't love rebellion.
"'Our revolution has made us grow faster and grow richer; but Sam, when we were younger and poorer, we were more pious and more happy. We have nothin' fixed either in religion or politics. ”

“ One does not need to be deeply concerned in Nova Scotia prosperity, nor versed in the turnings of petty politics, to take a lively pleasure in the sharp thrusts which the author, under shield of the Clockmaker's wit, gives at stupidity and narrowness. ”

“ They are cured the way our pastry cooks cure their prentices of stealing sweet notions out of their shops. When they get a new prentice they tell him he must never so much as look at all them are nice things; and if he dares to lay the weight of his finger upon one of them, they'll have him up for it before a justice; they tell him its every bit and grain as bad as stealing from a till. Well, that's sure to set him at it, just as a high fence does a breachy ox, first to look over it, and then to push it down with its rump ”

“ Now if you ever go to Wall Street to get such a policy, leave the door open behind you, that's all; or they'll grab right hold of you, shave your head and blister it, clap a straight jacket on you, and whip you right into a mad house, afore you can say Jack Robinson. No, your great men are nothin' but rich men, and I can tell you for your comfort, there's nothin' to hinder you from bein' rich too, if you will take the same means as they did. ”

“ The attention that incognito procured for me, the importance it gave me in the eyes of the master of the house, its lodgers and servants, is indescribable. It is only great people who travel incog. State travelling is inconvenient and slow; the constant weight of form and etiquette oppresses at once the strength and the spirits. ”

“ I don't go the whole figur with minister, said the Clockmaker, but I do opinionate with him in part. In our business relations we bely our political principles—we say every man is equal in the Union, and should have an equal vote and voice in the Government; but in our Banks, Rail Road Companies, Factory Corporations, and so on, every man's vote is regilated by his share and proportion of stock ”

“ Slick said, "It's a pity she don't go well in gear. The difficulty with those critters is to get them to start, arter that there is no trouble with them if you don't check 'em too short. If you do, they'll stop again, run back and kick like mad, and then Old Nick himself wouldn't start 'em. Pugwash, I guess, don't understand the natur' of the critter; she'll never go kind in harness for him. When I see a child," said the Clockmaker, "I always feel safe with these women folk; for I have always found that the road to a woman's heart lies through her child." ”

“ I vow, I wish one of these Blue Noses, with his go-to-meetin clothes on, coat tails pinned up behind like a leather blind of a Shay, an old spur on one heel, and a pipe stuck through his hat band, mounted on one of these limber timbered critters, that moves its hind legs like a hen scratchin gravel, was sot down in Broadway, in New York, for a sight. Lord! I think I hear the West Point cadets a larfin at him. Who brought that are scare-crow out of standin corn and stuck him here? I guess that are citizen came from away down east out of the Notch of the White Mountains. ”