tired. I've been hard at
work all the mornin'; a body has to stir about considerable smart in
this country, to make a livin', I tell you.'

"I looked over the fence, and I seed he had hoed jist ten hills of
potatoes, and that's all. Fact I assure you.

"Sais he, 'Mr. Slick, tell you what, _of all the work I ever did in my
life I like hoein' potatoes the best, and I'd rather die than do that,
it makes my back ache so_."

"'Good airth" and seas,' sais I to myself, 'what a parfect pictur of a
lazy man that is! How far is it to Windsor?'

"'Three miles,' sais he. I took out my pocket-book purtendin' to write
down the distance, but I booked his sayin' in my way-bill.

"Yes, _that_ is a _Blue-nose_; is it any wonder, Stranger, he _is small
potatoes and few in a hill_?"

CHAPTER VII. A GENTLEMAN AT LARGE.

It is not my intention to record any of the ordinary incidents of a sea
voyage: the subject is too hackneyed and too trite; and besides,
when the topic is seasickness, it is infectious and the description
nauseates. _Hominem pagina nostra sapit_. The proper study of mankind
is man; human nature is what I delight in contemplating; I love to trace
out and delineate the springs of human action.

Mr. Slick and Mr. Hopewell are both studies. The former is a perfect
master of certain chords; He has practised upon them, not for
philosophical, but for mercenary purposes. He knows the depth,
and strength, and tone of vanity, curiosity, pride, envy, avarice,
superstition, nationality, and local and general prejudice. He has
learned the effect of these, not because they contribute to make him
wiser, but because they make him richer; not to enable him to regulate
his conduct in life, but to promote and secure the increase of his
trade.

Mr. Hopewell, on the contrary, has studied the human heart as a
philanthropist, as a man whose business it was to minister to it,
to cultivate and improve it. His views are more sound and more
comprehensive than those of the other's, and his objects are more noble.
They are both extraordinary men.

They differed, however, materially in their opinion of England and its
institutions. Mr. Slick evidently viewed them with prejudice. Whether
this arose from the supercilious manner of English tourists in America,
or from the ridicule they have thrown upon Republican society, in the
books of travels they have published, after their return to Europe,
I could not discover; but it soon became ma