esses, Parliament men, and them that call
themselves gentlemen and ladies, for spies."

"How very absurd!" I said.

"Oh yes, very absurd," said Mr. Slick; "whenever I say anythin' agin
England, it's very absurd, it's all prejudice. Nothin' is strange,
though, when it is said of us, and the absurder it is, the truer it is.
I can bam as well as any man when bam is the word, but when fact is the
play, I am right up and down, and true as a trivet. I won't deceive you;
I'll prove it.

"There was a Kurnel Dun--dun--plague take his name, I can't recollect
it, but it makes no odds--I know _he_ is Dun for, though, that's a fact.
Well, he was a British kurnel, that was out to Halifax when I was there.
I know'd him by sight, I didn't know him by talk, for I didn't fill then
the dignified situation I now do, of Attache. I was only a clockmaker
then, and I suppose he wouldn't have dirtied the tip eend of his white
glove with me then, any more than I would sile mine with him now, and
very expensive and troublesome things them white gloves be too; there is
no keepin' of them clean. For my part, I don't see why a man can't make
his own skin as clean as a kid's, any time; and if a feller can't be let
shake hands with a gall except he has a glove on, why ain't he made to
cover his lips, and kiss thro' kid skin too.

"But to get back to the kurnel, and it's a pity he hadn't had a glove
over his mouth, that's a fact. Well, he went home to England with his
regiment, and one night when he was dinin' among some first chop men,
nobles and so on, they sot up considerable late over their claret; and
poor thin cold stuff it is too, is claret. A man _may_ get drowned in
it, but how the plague he can get drunk with it is dark to me. It's like
every thing else French, it has no substance in it; it's nothin' but red
ink, that's a fact. Well, how it was I don't know, but so it eventuated,
that about daylight he was mops and brooms, and began to talk somethin'
or another he hadn't ought to; somethin' he didn't know himself, and
somethin' he didn't mean, and didn't remember.

"Faith, next mornin' he was booked; and the first thing he see'd when he
waked was another man a tryin' on of his shoes, to see how they'd fit to
march to the head of his regiment with. Fact, I assure you, and a fact
too that shows what Englishmen has come to; I despise 'em, I hate 'em, I
scorn such critters as I do oncarcumcised niggers."

"What a strange perversion of facts