Thomas Chandler Haliburton
[1] Thinks I to myself, as I overheard a person inquire of the servant at the door, in an unmistakeable voice and tone, “Is the Squire to home?” That can be no one else than my old friend Sam Slick the clockmaker.But it could admit of no doubt when he proceeded, “If he is, tell him I am here.”
[2] “Who shall I say, Sir?”
[3] The stranger paused a moment, and then said, “It’s such an everlasting long name, I don’t think you can carry it all to worst, and I don’t want it broke in two.Tell him it’s a gentleman that calculates to hold a protracted meeting here to-night.Come, don’t stand staring there on the track, you might get run over.Don’t you hear the engine coming? Shunt off now.”
[4] “Ah, my old friend,” said I, advancing, and shaking him by the hand, “how are you?”
[5] “As hearty as a buck,” he replied, “though I can’t just jump quite so high now.”
[6] “I knew you,” I said, “the moment I heard your voice, and if I had not recognized that, I should have known your talk.”
[7] “That’s because I am a Yankee, Sir,” he said, “no two of us look alike, or talk alike; but being free and enlightened citizens, we just talk as we please.”
[8] “Ah, my good friend, you always please when you talk, and that is more than can be said of most men.”
[9] “And so will you,” he replied, “if you use soft sawder that way.Oh, dear me! It seems but the other day that you laughed so at my theory of soft sawder and human nature, don’t it? They were pleasant days, weren’t they? I often think of them, and think of them with pleasure too.As I was passing Halifax harbor, on my way home in the‘Black Hawk,’ the wind fortunately came ahead, and thinks I to myself, I will put in there, and pull foot for Windsor and see the Squire, give him my journal, and spend an hour or two with him once more.So here I am, at least what is left of me, and dreadful glad I am to see you too; but as it is about your dinner hour I will go and titivate up a bit, and then we will have a dish of chat for desert, and cigars, to remind us of by-gones, as we stroll through your shady walks here.”