akin' awful wry faces,
and began to limp, to show how lame his shoulder was, and to rub his
arm, to see if he had one left, and the squirrel ran about the tree
hoppin' mad, hollerin' out as loud as it could scream, chee, chee, chee.

"'Oh bad luck to you,' sais Pat, 'if you had a been at t'other eend of
the gun,' and he rubbed his shoulder agin, and cried like a baby, 'you
wouldn't have said chee, chee, chee, that way, I know.'

"Now when your gun, Squire, was a knockin' over Blue-nose, and makin' a
proper fool of him, and a knockin' over Jonathan, and a spilin' of his
bran-new clothes, the English sung out chee, chee, chee, till all was
blue agin. You had an excellent gun entirely then: let's see if they
will sing out chee, chee, chee, now, when we take a shot at _them_. Do
you take?" and he laid his thumb on his nose, as if perfectly satisfied
with the application of his story. "Do you take, Squire? you have an
excellent gun entirely, as Pat says. It's what I call puttin' the leake
into 'em properly. If you had a written this book fust, the English
would have said your gun was no good; it wouldn't have been like the
rifles they had seen. Lord, I could tell you stories about the English,
that would make even them cryin' devils the Mississippi crocodiles
laugh, if they was to hear 'em."

"Pardon me, Mr. Slick," I said, "this is not the temper with which you
should visit England."

"What is the temper," he replied with much warmth, "that they visit us
in? Cuss 'em! Look at Dickens; was there ever a man made so much of,
except La Fayette? And who was Dickens? Not a Frenchman that is a friend
to us, not a native that has a claim on us; not a colonist, who, though
English by name is still an American by birth, six of one and half a
dozen of t'other, and therefore a kind of half-breed brother. No! he was
a cussed Britisher; and what is wus, a British author; and yet, because
he was a man of genius, because genius has the 'tarnal globe for its
theme, and the world for its home, and mankind for its readers, and
bean't a citizen of this state or that state, but a native of the
univarse, why we welcomed him, and feasted him, and leveed him, and
escorted him, and cheered him, and honoured him, did he honour us? What
did he say of us when he returned? Read his book.

"No, don't read his book, for it tante worth readin'. Has he said one
word of all that reception in his book? that book that will be read,
translated, and read a