ddock to
burst himself with clover, and the same with all his stock, for no other
earthly reason than that they were the best blood and bone to be found
anywhere? There ain't sense or reason in that, stranger, is there?"

"I don't think the parallel applies."

"Maybe not, sir; but you have my meaning; perhaps I piled the metaphor
too high; but as John Jacob Byles says, 'If the charge has hit you, it
don't signify a red cent what the wadding was made of.'"

"I must say I think you are less than just in your estimate of our men
of leisure," said the Englishman, mildly.

"I ain't sure of that, sir; they live too much together, like our people
down South, and that's not the way to get rid of prejudices. They 've
none of that rough-and-tumble with the world as makes men broad-minded
and marciful and forgiving; and they come at last to that wickedest
creed of all, to think themselves the superfine salt of the earth.
Now, there ain't no superfine salt peculiar to any rank or class. Human
natur' is good and bad everywhere,--ay, sir, I 'll go further, I 've
seen good in a Nigger!"

"I'm glad to hear you say so," said the Englishman, repressing, but not
without difficulty, a tendency to smile.

"Yes, sir, there 's good amongst all men,--even the Irish."

"I feel sorry that you should make them an extreme case."

"Well, sir," said he, drawing a long breath, "they're main ugly,--main
ugly, that's a fact Not that they can do _us_ any mischief. Our
constitution is a mill where there's never too much water,--the more
power, the more we grind; and even if the stream do come down somewhat
stocked with snags and other rubbish upon it, the machine is an almighty
smasher, and don't leave one fragment sticking to the other when it gets
a stroke at 'em. Have you never been in the States, stranger?"

"Never. I have often planned such a ramble, but circumstances have
somehow or other always interfered with the accomplishment."

"Well, sir, you 're bound to go there, if only to correct the wrong
impressions of your literary people, who do nothing but slander and
belie us."

"Not latterly, surely. You have nothing to complain of on the part of
our late travellers."

"I won't say that. They don't make such a fuss about chewing and
whittling, and the like, as the first fellows; but they go on a-sneering
about political dishonesty, Yankee sharpness, and trade rogueries, that
ain't noways pleasing,--and, what's more, it ain't fair. But