.A-^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) y.A 1.0 I.I Irl^ III 2.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 ^ 6" _ ► m s W &W W^ o' %.^ >> Photographic Sdences Corporation S: * ^^'<> 1^ o^ ': 22X 26X 30X 7 12X 16X 20X 24X 28X 32X The copy filmed here hes been reproduced thenks to the generosity of: Nationsi Library of Canada L'exemplaire film6 fut reproduit grAce A la gAnArosit6 de: Bibliothdque nationale du Canada The images appearing here are the best quality possible considering the condition and legibility of the original copy and in keeping with the filming contract specifications. Original copies in printed paper covers are filmed beginning with the front cover and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All other original copies are filmed beginning on the first page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impression. 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B. de MILLE, M.A. VioK.PRcaioiNT: O. W. SM/TH, B.E. ■ccRCTAnv: R. W. NORWOOD, B.A. TncAauRcn : J. KHADDER, B.A. Historian : H. A. ANCIENT. A TOAST TO TOM HALIBURTON. Hire's a health to thee, Tom ! May the mists of this earth Never shadow the light of that soul Which so often has lent the mild flashes of mirth To illumine the depths of the Bowl. With a world full of beauty and fun for a theme, And a glass of good wine to inspire, E'en without thee wo sometimes are bless'd with a gleam That resembles thy spirit's own fire. Yet still in our gayest and merriest mood Our pleasures are tasteless and dim, For the thoughts of the past and of Tom, that intrude. Make us feel we're but happy with him. Like the Triumph of old, where the absent one threw A cloud o'er the glorious scene. Are our feasts, my dear Tom, when we meet without you, And think of the nights that have been, 1 A / Whun thy ({eiiiuH, nuuiiiing hU Huuh uf dulight, Fleil Hway with thu mpturoUH huui-H, And whun windoni and wit, t<> enliven the night, Scattered freely their fruitu and thuir tluwerH ; When thy eloritish Legislature successfully advocated the removal of Roman Catholic dis- abilities. Speaking of his speech on that occasion, Mr. Beamish Murdoch, in his " History of Nova Scotia," says it was " the most splendid bit of declamation that it has ever been my fortune to listen to. He was then in the prime of life and vigor, both mental and physical. The healthy air of country life had given him a robust appearance, though his figure was yet slender and gniceful. As an orator, his manner and Jittitude were extremely impressive, earnest and dignified ; and, although the strong propensit}' of his mind to wit and humor was often apparent, they seldom detracted from lis now in * With tho permission of Mr. Henry J. Morgan, portions of this paper are reproduced, in an abridged form, from his " Bibliotheca Canadensis," published in 18G7. 19 w ¥m m m the seriousness of his language, when the subject under dis- cussion was important. Although he sometimes exhibited rather more hauteur than was agreeable, yet his wit was usually kind and playful. On this occasion he absolutely entranced his audience. He was not remarkable for readi- ness of reply in debate ; but when he had time to prepare his ideas and language he was almost always sure to make an impression on his hearers." On this point Mr. Duncan Campbell, in his "History of Nova Scotia " (p. 334), says : " The late Mr. Howe spoke of him to the writer as a polished and effective speaker. On some passages of his more elaborate speeches he bestowed great pains, and in the delivery of them, Mr. Howe, who acted in the capacity of a reporter, was so captivated and entranced that he had to lay down his pen and listen to his sparkling oratory. It is doubtless to one of these passages that Mr. Beamish Murdoch refers." It is difficult to imagine a more uninviting arena than was presented at that time by Nova Scotian politics, or more undesirable associates in public life than the politicians of that day. The Province was ruled over by a Council consist- ing of a few officials living at Halifax, one of the leaders of which was the Church of England Bishop. In vain, there- fore, year after year Mr, Haliburton got the House to vote a grant to a Presbyterian institution, the Pictou Academy. It was invariably rejected by the Council ; while a small grant in aid of public schools was contemptuously rejected without any discussion as to it. His ridicule of the conduct of the Council in that matter gave them great offence, and they demanded an apology from the House, which, however, was refused, as the House resolved that there was nothing objectionable in his remarks, and also that they 20 were privileged. The Council again more peremptorily de- manded an apology, when the House, incredible as it may seem, unanimously stultified itself by resolving that Mr. Haliburton should be censured for his remarks. He accord- ingly attended in his place, and was censured by the Speaker! It must, therefore, have been an infinite relief, when an opportunity offered of escape from such an ordeal as public life was in those days. Ho lived in the district embraced by the ^liddlo Division of the Court of Common Pleas, of which his father was Chief Justice, while he himself was the leader on that circuit. When, therefore, his father died, the vacant post was, as a matter of course, offered to him, and was gladly accepted. But in Pictou County, which was largely settled by " dour " Cameronians, and which gloried in those annual and ever-recurring battles against the Bishop and his followers, there are no doubt types of " Old Mortality" that will never cease to denounce his retirement from the perennial strife as a great sin, and an act of treason to his country, or (what is the same thing) to the Pictou Academy. In 1828, when only thirty-two years of age, he received the appointment of Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1841 the Court of Common Pleas was abolished, and his services were transferred to the Supreme Court. In February, 1856, he resigned his office of a Judge of that Court, and soon afterwards removed to England, where he continued to reside till his death. It was a curious instance of " the irony of fate," when the successful advocate of the removal of the political disabilities of Roman Catholics was a quarter of a century afterwards called on as a Judge to rule that the rights of Roman Catholic laymen, as British subjects, could not be restricted by any ecclesiastical authority. f I Garten, a very prominent and respected Irishman living in Halifax, having been excommunicated, was denied access to his pew in St. Mary's Cathedral, of which he was the legal otoner. Judge Haliburton's ruling in favor of the plaintiif in Garten vs. "Walsh et al. was a very able one. This was probably the only case in which a judge in Nova Scotia ever had to order a court room to be cleared in con- sequence of manifestations of public excitement and feeling. About 1870 the same point was raised at Montreal in the famous " Guibord case." The members of a French- Canadian literary society, which had refused to have standard scientific works weeded out of its library, were excommuni- cated. One of them, named Guibord, had bought and was the legal owner of a lot in the public cemetery at Montreal, and, when he died, his body was refused admission to it. Though this proceeding was justified by the Quebec courts, their judgments were reversed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ; and upon the defendants refusing to obey " the order of Her Majesty in Council in the matter," some thousands of troops were called out, and the body, under military protection, was buried under several feet of Portland cement in the Guibord lot. While the ruling in Garten vs. Walsh et al. created some bitter enemies that were powerful enough to make their hostility felt, some offence (perhaps not altogether without apparent cause) may also have been taken by them at a few incidental philosophical allusions in " Rule and Misrule of the English in America" to tViv important results that were likely to flow from the now role of the Roman Catholic Church as a political power in the New World, a subject that he would no doubt have prudently avoided could he have foreseen the bitter controversy as to ,4 that question that was about to be caused by the rise of the " Know-nothing Movement." Thanks to that wonder-worker, Titne, the lapse of fifty years rarely fails to take all the caloric out of *' burning questions," and is able to convert the startling forecasts of thinkers into the trite truisms of practical politics. The animus against him, however, was probably of a per- sistent type. " From the ills of life," says Longinus, " there is for mortals a sure haven — death, while the woes of the gods are eternal." But successful authors are not much better off than the unlucky gods, for their names and their works survive them and can be tabooed. The generous tribute from the Archbishop of Halifax and Mr. Senator Power, at the Haliburton Centenary meeting at Halifax, to the important services he had rendered three- quarters of a century ago, is a pleasing proof that a public man may safely do his duty and leave his life to the impartial verdict of a later generation. A few years after taking up his residence in England, he paid a visit to Ontario, Canada, where he negotiated the pur- chase by the Canadian Land and Immigration Company of an exteuoive tract of country near Peterborough. Most of it that is not now sold is included in the county of Haliburton, which returns a member to the Ontario Legislature, and the county town of Haliburton is the terminus of the Haliburton branch of the Grand Trunk Railway. In 1816, as already stated, he married Louisa, only daughter of Captain Laurence Neville, of the 19th Light Dragoons (she died 1840), by whom he had a large family.* And secondly, in 1856, Sarah Harriet, widow of Edward Hosier Williams, ^ He left two sons and livo daughters. 1 Ih of Eaton Mascott, Shrewsbury, hy wliom he had no iiwue, and who survived him several years. That life-long exile, the poet Petrarch, says that men, like plants, are the better for transplanting, and that no man should die where he was born. For years Judge Haliburton stagnated and moped in utter solitude at Clifton, for his large family had grown up and were settled in life elsewhere, while death had removed the little band of intellectual companions whose society had been a great source of enjoj'ment to him. But he got a new lease of life by migrating to England. His second wife was a very intelligent and agreeable widow lady of a good social position, who even after having made a con- siderable sacrifice of her means in order to marry him, was comfortably off. It was a very happy match, and she proved to be a most devoted wife. Before they were married she had leased Gordon House, situated on the Thames, not far from Richmond (a house built by George I. for the Duchess of Kendal, who after his death believed that her royal lover used to visit her in the form of a crow in what is still known as " The haunted room "). In time the gardens and grounds there were referred to as showing what lady floriculturists can accomplish. His family, most of whom resided in England, were delighted at seeing him in his old age well cared for in a comfortable home. As an author, he first came before the public in 1829, as the historian of his native Province. His work, which was well received by both the public and the press, and was so highly thought of that the House of Assembly tendered him a vote of thanks, is to the present time regarded as a standard work in the Province. Six years subsequently he became unconsciously the author of the inimitable "Sam Slick." In a series of anonymous 24 articles in the Nova Scotian newspaper, then edited by Mr. Joseph Howe, he made uHe of a Yankee peddler as his mouth- piece. The character proved to lie "a hit," and the articles greatly amused the readers of that paper, and were widely copied by the American press. They were collected together and published anonymously by Mr. Howe, of Halifax, and several editions were issued in the United States. A copy was taken thence to England by General Fox, who gave it to Mr. Richard Lentley, the publisher. To Judge Haliburton's surprise, he found that an edition that had been very favorably received had been issued L\ England. For some time the authorship was assigned to an American gentleman in London, until Judge Haliburton visited England and became known as the real author. For his " Sam Slick " he received nothing from the publisher, aa the work had not been copyrighted, but Mr. Bentley presented him with a silver salver, on which was an inscription written by tiie Rev. Richard Barham, the author of the " Ingoldsby Legends." Between Barham, Theodore Hook and Judge Haliburton an intimacy sprang up. They frequently dined together at the Athenaeum Club, to which they belonged, and many good stories told by Hook and Bar- ham were remembered by the Judge long after death had deprived him of their society. As regards " Sam Slick," he never expected that his name would be known in connection with it, or tliat his productions would escape the usual fate of colonial newspaper articles. On his arrival in London, the son of Lord Abinger (the famous Sir James Scarlett) who was confined to his lied, asked him to call on his father, as there was a question which he would like to put to him. When he called, his Lordship said, " T am convinced that there is a veritable Sam Slick in 25 I , ■!'l I'l I ii li. the flesh now selling clocks to the Bluenoses. Am I right ? " " No," replied the Judge, " there is no such pemon. He was a pure accident. I never intended to descrilw a Yankee olockmaker or Yankee dialect ; but Sam Slick slipped into my book before I was aware of it, and once there he was there to stay." In some respects, perhaps, the prominence given to the Yankee dialect was a mistake, for, except in very isolated communities, dialect soon changes. A Harvard professor, nearly fifty years ago, indignantly protested against Sam Slick being accepted "as a typical American." His indigna- tion was a little out of place. It would be etjually foolish in an Englishman should he protest against Sam Weller being regarded as a typical Englishman. Do typical Americans wander about in out-of-the-way regions selling wooden clocks 1 Sam Slick represented a very limited class that sixty years ago was seen oftener in the Provinces than in the United States, but we have the best proof that The Clockmaker suggested a true type of some " Downeasters " of that day in the fact that the people of many places in the North-eastern States were for many years convinced that they had among them the original character whom Judge Haliburton had met and described. Sixty years ago the Southern States wei-e familiar with the sight of Sam Slicks, who had always good horses, and whose Yankee clocks were everywhere to be seen in settlers' log houses. Since Sam Slick's day the itinerant vendor of wooden clocks has moved far west, and when met with there, is a very different personage from Sam Slick. Within the past forty years, however, veritable Sam Slicks have occasionally paid a visit to Canada. One of them sold a large number of 26 i^i w(XKlen clocks throughout Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. They were warranted to keep accurate time for a year, and hundreds of notes of hand were taken for the price. The notes passed by endorsement into third hands, but, unfortu- nately, the clocks would not go. Actions were brought in several counties by the indorsees, and the fact that Seth'a clocks had stopped caused as much lamentation and dismay as a money panic. The first case that came up was tried before Judge Haliburton, much to the amusement of the public and to the edification of the Yankee clockmaker, who had a long homily read to him on the impropriety of cheating Bluenoses with Yankee clocks that would do anything sooner than keep time. But a man may be a Yankee clockmaker without having the "cuteiiess" and common sense of Sam Slick. In liis Early Reminisce.nces, Sir Daniel Lysons describes such an one who, while selling clocks in Canada, was tempted to stake his money and clocks, etc., on games of billiards with a knowing young subaltern. "The clocks soon passed into British pos- session. They then played for the waggon and horse. Finally, Sam Slick, pluck to the backbone, and still confident, staked his broad-brimmed hat and his coat ; Bob won them ; and putting them on in place of his own, which he gave to his friend Sam, he mounted the waggon and drove into barracks in triumph, to the immense amusement of the whole garrison." An English Reader has for half a century been in use in French schools, which gives Sam Slick's chapter on "Buying a Horse " as one of its samples of classical English literature. Experience is proving that the value attached by Sam Slick to the geographical position and natural advantages of the Province of Nova Scotia was not a mistaken one. We are, however, apt to be more grateful to those that amuse 27 ]' I than to thoso who instruct uh. Many pprsons who laughwl at Sam Slick's jokes did not it h'sh histiuths, and his popu- hvrity as an author was far greater out of Nova Scotia than in it ; but it had ceased to depend on the verdict of his countrymen. Art(Mnus Ward pronounced him to ho the "father of tlio American school of humor." The illustrati(ms of the Clockmaker by Hervicu, and of Wise Saws by Leech, supplied the convontional type of *' Brother Johathan," or " Uncle Sam," with his shrewd smile, his long hair, his goatee, his furry hat, and his short striped trousers held down by long straps, a precise contrast to tlio conventional testy, pompous, pot-bellied John liull, with his knee-broeches and swallow-tail coat. Among all the numerous notices of Sam Slick's works that have appeared from time to time, that by the Illustrated LondoT News, on July IStli, 1842, which was accompanied by an excellent portrait of Judge Ilaliburton, is the most discriminating and appreciative. " Sam Slick's entree into the literary world would appear to have been in the columns of a weekly Nova Scotian journal, in which he wrote seven or eight years ago a series o/" sketches illustrative of homely American character. There was no name attached to them, but they soon became so pop- ular that the editor of the Nova Scotian newspaper applied to the author for permission to reprint them entire ; and this being granted, he brought them out in a small, unpretending duodecimo volume, the popularity of which, at first confined to our American colonies, soon spread over the United States, by all classes of whose inhabitants it was most cordially wel- comed. At Boston, at New York, at Philadelphia, at Balti- more, in short, in all the leading cities and towns of the 28 Unit)n, this anonymous littlo voluun was to be found on tho drawing-room tables of tlio most influential members of the social comnmnity ; while, oven in tho emij^rant's H«)litary farm house and tho squatter's lojjf hut among the primeval forests of the Far West, it was read with the deepest interest, cheering the spirits of tiie backwoodsman by its wholesome, vigorous and lively pictures of everyday life. A recent traveller records his surpris«5 and pleasure at meeting with a well thumbed copy in a log hut in the wome kind sd in the be very Eis apt to ichool of iccessors. s earlier t pictur- and his rh a very of those seaboard e shores ive talk That ;od at a le rakish schooner-skipper from St. Mary's Bay or Chegogin. For this kind of writing by bis early life, his travels, his genial observant nature, and, more than all, by his exceptional opportunities as a judge on circuit in a sparsely settled country in which individualism is apt to be fostered, he was well equipped. For there is, probably, no position in which a man of quick apprehension, keen sympathies, and clear insight, like Fielding, can obtain such a wide familiarity with the characters and dialects and ways of thinking of the masses as on a bench of justice. The human mind is laid bare to the accurate observer in such positions. Dickens may have had a larger idea than a mere wish for a perma- nent and assured income, when he thought seriously of trying for the job of a London police court magistrate. If one were asked to give, in a few words, the most prominent characteristics of everyday life during the year in Nova Scotia, he could not do better than to quote a portion of Chapter XIX. of "The Old Judge," entitled " Comers and Goers." " The seasons in this colony are not only accompanied by the ordinary mutations of weather observed in other countries but present a constant and rapid succession of incidents and people. From the opening of the ports to the close of navi- gation, everything and everybody is in motion. The whole province is a sort of railroad station, where crowds are perpetually arriving and departing. It receives an immi- grant population, and either hurries it onward or furnishes another of its own in exchange. It is the land of comers and goers. The yeomanry of the rural districts approach nearer to the character of inhabitants than do those who dwell in towns or villages, but the love of change is inherent even among them, and richer lands, warmer climates and 4 48 ! I better times, those meteor terms that seduce them thither, still precede them and light the way to Canada or the far west, to ruin or the grave. That portion which may be denominated society, presents the same dissolving views. New groups gradually fill the space vacated by others. The new know not the old, and the old inhabitant feels that he is in the land of strangers. Day by day, the exchange of emigration for immigration continues with this diflFerence, that they who go seldom return, except to speak of disap- pointment and broken fortunes, and that those who come remain only for a season." Then follows a most graphic and faithful description of the changes in temperature, customs and habits, dress amusements and work from the opening of spring with its " robin " or " wild geese " storms to the return of winter. This chapter is our Ilias in nuce. Observe also the nice powers of perception he employs in describing the change of autumn leaves : " There has been a slight frost near the brook that brawls down the mountain side, for there is a variegated waving scarf-1 ike strip of foliage extending each side of it, and mark- ing all its devious courses with its bright colors of a thousand tints, while the leaves of the trees on the dry land have escaped this first stage of decay. In a few days the whole scene becomes changed, and all is enveloped in a blaze of beauty. The larch rises like a cone of gold, the maple is clothed with a crimson robe, fading in the distance into changeable shades of brown j the beech presents its bright yellow leaves, gradually yielding to a strong green near the trunk, where the frost has not yet penetrated ; and the birch Mrith its white stem and gaudy coloring, is relieved by a pale grey tint, produced by the numerous branches of trees that 50 thither, the far may be g views, rs. The hat he is lange of ifFerence, of disap- irho come on of the lusements •obin" or chapter is have already shed their leaves, and by the rich glowing colors of the fruit of the ash ; while the tremulous aspen grieves in alarm at the universal change around it, and timidly exposes its reversed leaf to the sun, in the vain hope of protecting it from its baneful influence. The dark and melancholy-looking pines and firs defy the effects of alternate heat and cold, and as they tower above the work of destruction, break with their pointed tops the smooth uniform round outlines of the hard- wood trees. It is a rich and gaudy but transitory scene, for the rude southern blasts will soon tear the fluttering leaves from their stems, and the forest will again exhibit the same cold cheerless naked aspect as when lately breathed upon by the first genial air of spring." imploys in lat brawls d waving md mark- thousand and have the whole blaze of maple is mce into ts bright near the the birch by a pale ,rees that 51 I lij J Pro yeai houi edit Y mail book bono Liter writt even wbos( to mi HALIBURTON : THE MAN AND THE WRITER. BY F. BLAKE CROFTON, Author q/ " The Major't Big-talk Storiei," etc., etc. IN the eyes of the English-speaking world outside of the Dominion of Canada, Haliburton is still the most prominent man of letters yet produced in any existing Province of British North America. Within the last few years three of his works have been republished by one London house, and no less than six by another, and some new editions have also been issued in the United States. Yet in Canada, whose rights and interests he zealously maintained in his parliamentary speeches as well as in his books, he has not generally been given his rightful place of honor. In a somewhat flippant r(?sitm^ of "English-Canadian Literature" in The Week (Toronto) of August 28, 1884, written by a New Brunswick litterateur, Haliburton was not even referred to ! And it is only of late that even Nova Scotia, whose resources he has done more than any other human being to make known, has begun to grant him his due precedence 53 I' ;i h among hor more eminent sons. His biographer in the " Bibliotheca Canadensis" has illustrated this comparative lack of appreciation for Haliburton in the land of his birth by pointing out that, shortly after his own college gave him the honorary degree of M.A., the great University of Oxford found him worthy of the higher degree of D.C.L. Certainly there has been of late years a revival of local interest in Haliburton, as is evidenced by the formation of the Halibur- ton Club at Windsor, whose first President was Professor Charles G. D. Roberts, himself one of the most eminent Canadian authors. This revived interest has been recently fanned, here as well as elsewhere, by the champions of Imperial Federation and by the censors of the expatriation of the Acadians, who have been widely quoting Haliburton in support of their opinions. This is not a biographical sketch of Judge Haliburton, but a slight study of him as a writer, thinker and observer. It may, however, smooth the way for Haliburton's future biographer, if I step aside from my task to correct a few strange errors which have come under my notice. Whoever wrote the short sketch of Haliburton in AUi- bone's Dictionary of English Literature evidently confuses our Nova Scotian author with his chief creation, "Sam Slick." Judge Haliburton, according to this bewildered biographer, *' in 1842 visited England as an attache of the American Legation (I), and in the next year embodied the results of his observations in his amusing work, * The Attache ; or Sam Slick in England.'" This curious mistake had previon'' been made by the British *' Annual Register " for ] ^65 obituary of the Judge. Haliburton was appointed Chief Justice ot le Info r Courts of Common Pleas for the Middle Division of Nova 64 in the ive lack irth by liim the Oxford ertoinly ereat in Halibur- 'rofessor eminent recently pions of iation of )urton in rton, but observer. I's future fct a few 1 in AUi- if uses uur Slick." igrapher, merican ta of his or Sam Irevion ' Int'e . of Nova Scotia (an office wliicli, by the way, is generally misnamed) in tlie year 1829. He was made a Judge of the Supreme Court in 1841. He resigned the latter office early in 1856, and soon afterwards took his final departure for England. But the " Encyclopuxlia Britannica " says, " Within two years (of his appointment) he resigned his seat on the bench " — an error of just thirteen years ! Appleton's " Cycloptedia of American Biography" follows the "Britannica" in this blun- der, as well as in giving 1840 as the date of his appointment to the Supreme Bench. "The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography " fixes the date of his resignation only six years before the event. "In 1847," it observes, "Mr. Haliburton contributed to Eraser' a Magazine a story entitled 'The Old Judge.' Three years later Mr. Haliburton resigned his colonial judgeship, and exchanged the narrow field of colonial life for the wider sphere of political life in England." " The Bibliotheca Canadensis " also falls into the error that the Courts of Common Pleas in Nova Scotia wore abolished, and Haliburton appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court in 1840. Both ei-'ftnts occurred in 1841. The four books which alone narrate the say'.igs and doings of the celebrated Samuel Slick, of Slickville, are, in their chronological order, "The Clockmaker," "The Attach^," "Wise Saws," and "Nature and Human Nature." Two others, "The Letter-Bag of the Great Western" and "The Bubbles of Canada," are expressly attributed to Mr. Slick as their author, as may be gathered from the last letter in the former, and from the dedication of the latter work ; and publishers have placed the name of Sam Slick on the covers of "The Old Judge," "The Season Ticket," "American Humor," and " Americans at Home." The first series of " The Clockmaker," which first appeared 55 ":. it lii in Tfie If ova Scotian in 1835 and 1836, was published in book form in Halifax and London in 1837. The second series was issued in 1838 ; the third in 1840. In most later editions the three series make one volume. The cute dodges of the clockmaker in pushing his trade are said to have been reminiscences of suits tried by Haliburton, and brought by an itinerant" vendor of clocks for the payment of notes given him for his time-pieces. In the first chapter of "The Attach^ " its ostensible writer speaks of " The Clockmaker " as an accidental hit, a success which he did not purpose to imperil by experimenting in other literary lines. "When Sam Slick," he says, " ceases to speak, I shall cease to write." But Haliburton's self-confidence grew with his fame, and he failed to keep this modest resolution. "The Attach^," the two series of which appeared respec- tively in 1843 and 1844, was probably suggested by Dickens' "American Notes," which had been published early in 1842. After deprecating Slick's lively indignation at the latter book, " the Squire " observes in "The Attach^ " : " If the English have been amused by the sketches their tourists have drawn of the Yankees, perhaps the Americans may laugh at oiir sketches of the English." "The Attach^," however, is not uniformly satirical. Slick's own descriptions of persons and things in this work are indeed, as they are meant to be, generally jaundiced caricatures. But some social sketches by other personages are drawn with strict fidelity, and some even with a slight partiality for England. The sub-title of this book, " Sam Slick in England," has been made the only title in some editions. This last remark may be made also of " Wise Saws and Modern Instances," which has been given to the public, at least once, under its second title of " Sam Slick in Search of a 56 i in book icries was r editions jes of the ive been pought by jtes given of "The ckmaker " )urpo3e to " When to write." le, and he •ed respec- f Dickens' y in 1842. ,tter book, 16 English ive drawn ;h at otir er, is not arsons and ,nt to be, :etche8 by lome even lie of this only title ISaws and jublic, at jarch of a Wife." The earliest edition of " Wise Saws" of which I am aware is the London edition of 1854. "Nature and Human Nature " is a continuation of " Wise Saws," and con- cludes the record of the sayings and doings of the rcdoi'.bted Sam Slick. The earliest of Judge Haliburton's works was his " Histor- ical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia," published in Halifax in 1829. His opinion that the expulsion of the Acadians was unjustifiable has often been quoted in recent controversies, and so has his misleading stateir»ent that there were " no traces of this important event among the records " at Halifax, and that " the particulars of this affair seem to have been carefully concealed." It may therefore be well to put on record once more that Haliburton was not a very painstaking searcher of documents. Indeed, as some gentle- men still living can testify, he was content to obtain many of his facts and statistics vicariously. Had he been more indus- trious in his reseai'ches, he would doubtless have found in the Province Building the important papers on the subject of the expatriation which have since been arranged (and some of them printed) by Mr. T. B. Akins. There is now no doubt that our author's History tinctured Longfellow's picture of the expulsion. " The poet," says his brother and biographer, " read such books as were attainable ; Haliburton, for instance, with his quotations from the Abb6 Raynal." The pathetic separations of kinsfolk are dwelt upon in our Nova Scotian historian's chapter on the expul- sion, particularly in the "humble petition " from the Acadian exiles in Pennsylvania ; and the name of " Ren^ Lablanc, the notary public," is expressly mentioned. But may not the publication of Haliburton's History have been a link in the chain of incidents that led to the inception of " Evangeline " 1 57 jpj ^ ' i! The tale of the separated Acadian lovers, it is well known, was told to Longfellow by Hawthorne, who had heard it from his friend, the Rev. H. L. Conolly, at one time rector of a church in South Boston. "The incident had been related to him by a parishioner of his, Mrs. Haliburton," writes the Rev. Samuel Longfellow. This was Mrs. George Haliburton, an aunt by marriage of the Judge's. Is it not likely that her attention was first drawn to the Acadians by the touching description of their virtues and their woes in the History written by her nephew 1 Haliburton himself does not seem to have thought very highly of his History in later years. In chapter 9 of the second series of " The Clockmaker," the Squire refers to it slightingly as " Haliburton's History of Nova Scotia, which, next to Mr. Josiah Slick's History of Cattyhunk in five volumes, is the most important account of unimportant things I have ever seen." Our author's second historical book was " The Bubbles of Canada," a series of letters on Canada and the Imperial Colonial policy, purporting to be written by Sam Slick, in 1838, but showing none of the clockmaker's peculiarities of diction. The last letter ends with a quasi-prophetic warn- ing : "The fate of Canada will determine that of all the colonies. The retreat of the soldiers will invite the incursions of the barbarians, and the withdrawal of the legions, like those of Rome, from the distant parts of the Empire will show that England, conscious of her present weakness and past glories, is contracting her limits and concentrating her energies to meet, as becomes her character, the destiny that awaits all human greatness." The drift and aim of the work are shown in these closing words, as well as in the character- istic note beneath, in which the author urges ironically that a 59 tree " would be much more vigorous, if the branches, with their prodigious expenditure on the leaves, were all lopped off (for it is a well-known fact that the trunk supplies the branches with sap, and not the branches the trunk), and that the stem would be larger, stronger and better without such useless and expensive appendages." '* Rule and Misrule of the English in America," the last of Haliburton's historical works, appeared in 1851. It is a general history of the British Colonies on this continent, valuable for its philosophic comments and its thoughtfully reasoned theories of colonial government. In this work he essays to prove that " American Democracy does not owe its origin to the Revolution and to the great statesmen that formed the Federal Constitution ; but that a Republic de facto was founded at Boston in 1630, which subsisted in full force and vigor for more than half a century." "The Letter-Bag of the Great Western, or Life in a Steamer," first published in 1839, is a collection of letters supposed to be written by various passengers from England to America in the famous steamship of that name. These letters contain not only comments upon life at sea, but the writers' reflections on the country they are leaving or the country they are going to — a plan which enables the author to present us with some lively studies in his favorite subject, human nature. In 1846 and 1847 Haliburton contributed to Eraser' a Magazine a series of papers, which in 1849 were collected in the book entitled " The Old Judge, or Life in a Colony." This work depicts various phases of life in Acadia in the earlier part of this century. As in the " Sam Slick " series, the plot is a mere thread on which to string facts, jests and opinions. Little interest seems to be invited, and certainly 69 mf' I '«"• none is aroused, for the English traveller who listens to and notes the Old Judge's tales, and adds his own experiences to them. In works designed to inform as much as to amuse, this weakness of the main plot is not an unmixed defect, if it be a defect at all. One is not irritated by Haliburton's innumerable digressions so much as by the far fewer inter- ludes which break the continuity of Victor Hugo's thrilling romances. Hugo's episodes are charmingly told, it is true, but then it is difficult to appreciate even the loveliest landscape when one is looking at an exciting race. One can, however, turn aside without impatience to read the mono- logues in " The Old Judge." Some of them, like the chapter on " The Seasons," are rather long, it is true, for any reader with only a slight appetite ; but they are all germane to the author's design to give outsiders a fair idea of Nova Scotia. The Old Judge's opinions, by the way, seem to march pretty closely with Haliburton's own. "Traits of American Humour" and "Americans at Home," (also published under the title of "Yankee Stories") are merely collections of tales, mirthful or marvellous, edited by Haliburton, but culled from American books and periodicals. His latest work was " The Season Ticket," a series of miscel- laneous notes made and conversations reported by a Mr. Shegog, the holder of a season ticket on an English railroad. The papers which comprise this work were first published anonymously in The Dublin University Magazine, in 1858 and 1859, and were afterwards sold by the author, with the right of attaching his name thereto, to Messrs. Bentley and Son. By this firm the copyright of the papers was resold to Frederick Warne "B.C ^V.C." and the "Grand Fr^ School "; Carman, Roberts. Lockhart and Eaton have sung of Acadian scenery; the Abb^ Oasgrain has made his "P^lerinage au Pays d'Evaugeline " ; and several other literary tourists have printed their impressions of Acadie. Yet it is not too much to say that Haliburton has advertised the Province 70 10, blind and harp smediable d J to ad- try is the ;hat Hiili- Eruit, firat 1 slow old era, every to-day, if t. At all (duced the ed he dis- 1 "Nature mirroi up and it has lade them- , or their 3 the right laution to /•ritten his ler ' Pilot Lnd Grace Province ; Ure of the School"; Acadian rinage au tourists I is not too Province more effectively than any other writer, except the great poet who has thrown a halo of romance around her shores. A better picture of Nova Scotian life and characteristics, at the time when he wrote at all events, is given by Halibur- ton than by any other writer. To depict the life of to-day accurately the picture would need, of course, to be retouched ; some old features would have to be erased and some new features to be painted in. Such blendings of work and fun as "raisings," "log-rollings" or "rolling frolics," " husk- ings," "bees," and "apple-peelings," are now obsolete or obsole.scent, owing to the denser settlement of the country and the increased use of machinery. " Pickinick stirs " are replaced by more conventional and temperate picnics. When such jovial gatherings had already died out in Haliburton's time, he found the result regrettable. Men lost their cheeri- ness and hospi(:ality, he thought. One of his characters notices " the irtjurious effect upon the health occasioned by the absence of all amusement and the substitution of fanati- cism or politics in its place." As a rule, the habits of the personages in Haliburton's tales were notably different from the present habits of Nova Sco- tians in the matter of stimulants. Tn "The Old Judg " a certain County Court Justice is represented to have spent his time, while waiting for a verdict, in drinking, first a bottle of wine, purchased by a fine which he had just imposed upon a drunken fellow who made a disturbance in court, and after- wards a bottle of brandy, purchased by a fine which he imposed upon the prothonotary for presuming tii fill his own glass first ! " For my own part," observed this model Justice, " I am obliged to be very abstemious now, as I am subject to the gout. I never exceed two bottles of late years, and I rectify the acidity of the wine by taking a glass of clear brandy 71 1\ ^1i (which I call the naked truth) between every two of Madeira. Ah, here is the brandy, lawyer ! Your very good health, air — pray help yourself; and Mr. Prothonotary, here's better manners to you in future. Seniorea priores, sir, that's the rule." It was a fancy of the old Greeks that the gods sent a judi- cial blindness on persons doomed to destruction, lest they might do something to avert their fate. The plausibility of this notion has been often illustrated in modern history, notably in the case of classes remaining stolidly insensible to plain and ominous signs of coming social storms. The French aristocrats, menaced by the organization of the oppressed masses, despised the gathering tempest till it had burst ; and the Irish landlords long ignored the growing strength of the r^nt agitation. Both offered more or less reasonable com- promises too late. To-day capitalists, threatened more and more by trades-unions, socialism, Henry-George-ism, boycot- ting, anarchy and dynamite, are either strangely blind or else inert and vacillating — neither offering wise and timely con- cessions, nor pressing for sternly deterrent legislation. The Tweed ring in New York actually smiled at the rising indig- nation of the citizens, and even asked flippantly, " What are you going to do about it?" And so in the infancy of the temperance movement publicans were generally quite blind to its vitality and importance, and even in some instances fed the flppie that promised to devour them. Halibu'-ton de- scribes (Old Judge, c. 16) how the wails of a Nova ;jcotian bar-room were covered with " hand-bills calling public meet- ings for the promotion of temperance," and other objects. Every here and there one or other of Haliburton's characters hits the extravagance or the hypocrisy or the grotesqueness of a certain class of temperance professors. Steve Richardson, 72 indig- in " The Old Judge," speaking of a reformed drunkard who was lecturing, observes that " the moment a feller reforms here he turns preacher on the principle that the greater the sinner the greater the saint." The Old Judge himself, in the chapter on the Seasons, notes one of the shams that were even then connected with the holy cause of temperance: "In a little back room of that temperance inn, the winnings (of a horse race) are spent in the purchase of numerous ' yards of stone wall ' — a name for brandy omitted in the License Law which is thus evaded or defied." The various industries of the Province about the middle of this century may be gathered from a statement in "Nature and Human Nature" (c. 18) : " Every place has its standing topic. At Windsor it is the gypsum trade, the St. John's steamer, the Halifax coach, and a new house that is building. In Kings County it is export of potatoes, bullocks and horses. At Annapolis cord-wood, oars, staves, shingles, and agricultural produce of all kinds. At Digby, smoked herrings, fish weirs, and St. John's markets. At Yarmoutli, foreign freights, berthing, rails, catheads, lower cheeks, wooden bolsters, and the crown, palm, and shank of anchors. At Shelburne, it is divided between fish, lumber, and the price of vessels. At Liverpool, ship-building, deals and timber, knees, transoms, and futtocks, pintles, keelsons, and moose lines. At Lunenburg, Jeddore, and Chesencook, the state of the tt"'arket at the capital. At the other harbo' s farther to the eastward, the coal trade and the fisheriei engross most of the conversation. You hear continually oi' the fall run and the spring catch of mackerel that set in but don't stop to bait. The remarkable discovery of the French coasters, that was made fifty years ago, and still is as new and as fresh as ever, that when fish are plenty there is no 73 :^'': k W!IMi salt, and when salt is abundant there are no fish, continually startles you with its novelty and importance. While you are both amused and instructed by learning the meaning of coal cakes, Albion tops, and what a Chesencooker delights in, ' slack ' ; you also find out that a hundred tons of coal at Sydney means when it reaches Halifax one hundred and fifteen, and that West Indian, Mediterranean, and Brazilian fish are actually made on these shores. Those local topics are greatly diversified by politics, which, like crow-foot and white- weed, abound everywhere. Halifax has all sorts of talk." The dress and character of the Chesencook Acadians is graphically described in the 16th chapter of the same book. And the equally picturesque costume of tlie Digby Acadienne is sketched in " The Old Judge " (c. 16). Among the features of the Acadian climate which our author faithfully and graphically describes, ar3 a " silver thaw " (Old Judge, c. 10) ; an intense frost at Halifax, with its attendant phenomena and its breaking up (ibid. c. 11) ; and a still, hot day on the south coast (Wise Saws, c. 24). The " day on the lake " (Nature and Human Nature, cc. 10 and 11), with its quaint personages, its varied incidents and changing scenery, is perhaps the most alluring sketch of bylvan summer life in Nova Scotia that has yet appeared in prase. There is a wholesome ">ral in the contrast between *he big, untidy, bleak and com^.JK ;::s farmhouse described in t.\e first series of " The Clockraaker " (c. 28), and the reat, weli planned homestead, with its thrifty, hospitable, contented inmates, to whom we are introduced in the second series of the same work (c. 4). And a salutary warning to gentlemen reared in luxury who may contemplate playing the roles of country squires in this new country is given in the pathetic 74 ;, ;i atinually B you are g of coal ights in, )f coal at Ired and Brazilian iopics are tid white- talk." iadiana is Lme book. Lcadienne 'hich our I " silver Halifax, p (ibid. c. d Saws, c. [ Nature, incidents sketch of »eared in Iweeu *he sd in t.\e sat, well lontented series of jntlemen roles of I pathetic picture of Captain Dechamps and his venture in the chapter entitled "The Cucumber Lake," in "Nature and Human Nature." Not only the provincial scenery is unchanged since Hali- burton's time, but also the provincial tendency to magnify it. Still, just as Sam Slick observed, " every sizeable hill to Nova Scotia is a mountain." And some social characteristics also are almost unchanged. This penetrating remark of Sam Slick about Halifax holds true to-day, and it might be worth the while of tourists and temporary residents to note it : "A man must know the people to appreciate them. He must not merely judge by those whom he is accustomed to meet at the social board, for they are not always the best specimens anywhere, but by those, also, who prefer retirement and a narrower circle, and rather avoid general society, as not suited to their taste" Military and naval life, too, on this station remains almost as it was described by Haliburton, in " The Old Judge " and elsewhere. The soldiers and sailors inspire similar loves, ambitions and jealousies. Their coming creates a similar stir, and their flitting leaves similar regrets and heart-aches behind. The citizens, however, do not seem to appreciate the presence of a garrison quite so universally as they used to. There are even a few who, while willing to take the soldiers' money as they accept Britain's protection, without thanks, can see no good whatever in poor Tommy Atkins. They will not even admit their deep indebtedness to him as a convenient scapegoat, on whom they, from time to time, heap all the sins and iniquities of the city. The chief want of Ireland, as well as of Nova Scotia, in Haliburton's opinion, was to settle down more steadily to work, and pay less attention to politics and politicians. " It 76 ?ii': m is time they turned their attention to the material and not the political condition of their country," says the American Senator Boodle in "The Season Ticket." Just before this he had observed tliat " there never was a people so cajoled, fooled, deceived and betrayed, as the Irish." " Poor Pat," says Slick, speaking of a certain Irishman in *' Nature and Human Nature," " you were a good-hearted creature natur- ally, as most of your countrymen are, if repealers, patriots and demagogues, of all sorts and sizes, would only let you alone." Senator Boodle found the Irish '* far more hum a-ous at home than in America, which, perhaps, is also in part attributable to the circumstance of their being more indus- trious there, and in consequence more matter of fact." The unsettled state of Ireland was partly due, however, to the lack of thorough fusion among Irishmen; to their too distinct division according to race and religion. The " two great bodies," said the Yankee Mr. Peabody (Season Ticket, p. 35), " can't agree in nothen. If you go for to talk of schools, they keep apart, like the two forrard wheels of a stage coach. If they come to elections, it's the same thing ; if they meet, they fight ; all, too, for the sake of religion ; and if they assemble in a jury-box, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other. Killing comes natural, half the places in Ireland begins with Kill ; there is Killboy (for all Irishmen are called boys), and what is more onmanly, there is Killbride ; Killbaron, after the landlords ; Killbarrack, after the English soldiers ; Kilcrew, for the navy ; Kilbritain, for the English proprietors ; Killcool, for deliberate murder, and Killmore if that ain't enough." The popularity of the name Jeremiah in Ireland is undeni- able, and the punning Peaboay finds the cause of this popu- larity in the fact that the Irish are " the boys for Lamen- 76 meet, : they of the reland en are bride ; nglish nglish nore if ndeni- popu- lanien- tations." " It's no wonder they had a famine," he adds, " when the country raises nothen but grievances, and that's a crop that grows spontenaciously here." Haliburton's love and appreciation for Great Britain are displayed in all his works. Sam Slick "enthused" over the beauty and freshness of English girls. The high- minded Hopewell displayed pious and touching emotion at seeing the shores of the country which he had been used, in his early days, to call " Home." According to the chronicler of " The Attache (c. 7), his province owed to Britons a debt of gratitude that not only cannot be repaid, but is too great for expression. Their armies protect us within, and their fleets defend us and our commerce without. Their government is not only paternal and indulgent, but is wholly gratuitous. . . . "Where national assistance has failed, private contribution has volunteered its aid." " Gentle reader," he says again (c. 8), " excuse the confessions of an old man, for I have a soft spot in my heart yet, I love Old England." He loved, he goes on to say, her law, her church, her constitution, her literature, her people. And in the " letter from the author," in " The Letter-Bag of the Great "Western," it is remarked that the colonies " have experienced nothing at the hand of the English but unexampled kindness, untiring forbearance, and unbounded liberality. ... If there should be any little changes required from time to time in our limited political sphere, ... a temperate and proper representation will always produce them from the predominant party of the day, whatever it may be, if it can only be demonstrated that they are wise or necessary changes. It is the inclination as well as the interest of Great Britain so to treat us ; and whoever holds out any doubts on this subject, or proclaims the mild, conciliatory and parental sway 77 of the Imperial Government 'a baneful domination,' . . should be considered as either an ignorant or a designing man." But Haliburton was not blind to the faults of the British people or government. He was fond of satirising the blunders of the Colonial Office and the sometimes ludicrous ignorance of its officials about the colonies. And he lets Mr. Slick comment freely on the monotonous, material existence of the squirearchy, the mercenary attentions that are forced upon travellers, and other British faults and flaws. It goes without saying that our author was a strong champion of the British connection, which in Sam Slick's opinion (Clockmaker 2, 21) should not be dissolved even at the desire of the colonies ! Looking far ahead of his contempo- raries, Haliburton put forward some strong pleas for an Imperial Federation. He felt that in its present state the Empire was like a barrel without hoops (Clockmaker, 3, 19) which must be bound together more securely or else tumble to pieces ; or like a bundle of sticks (Nature and Human Nature, c. 19) which needed to be tied or glued more firmly or they would fall apart. " The very word dependencies," said Mr. Hopewell (Attach^, c. 21), and his words were endorsed by the Squire, "shows the state of the colonies. If they are retained they should be incorporated with Great Britain. . . . Now that steam has united the two continents of Ei'rope and America, in such a manner that you can travel from Nova Scotia to England in as short a time as it once required to go from Dublin to London, I should hope for a united legislature. Recollect that the distance from New Orleans to the head of the Mississippi River is greater than from Halifax, N.S., to Liverpool, G.B. I do not want to see colonists and English- 78 ffii r^esigning le British I blunders ignorance Mr. Slick ice of the reed upon a strong im Slick's even at the contempo- las for an , state the ker, 3, 19) Ise tumble id Human ore firmly (Attach^, shows the should be phat steam ja, in such England iDublin to I Recollect Id of the N.S., to English- men arrayed against each other as different races, but united as one people, having the same rights and privileges, each bearing a share of the public burdens, and all having a voice in the general government." A particular form of Imperial Federation that has many advocates to-day is thus suggested by Sam Slick (Wise Saws, c. 2o) : " It shouldn't be England and her colonies, but they should be integral parts of one great whole — all counties of Great Britain. There should be no taxes on colonial produce, and the colonies should not be allowed to tax British manufactures. All should pass free, as from one town to another in England ; the whole of it one vast home- market, from Hong Kf g to Labrador." In "The Attach^" (c. 21), Mr. Slick observes of colonists: "They are attached to England, that's a fact ; keep them so by making them Englishmen. . . . Their language will change them. It will be our army . . . not the English army ; our navy, our church, our parliament, our aristocracy, etc., and the word English will be left out holus-bolus and that proud but endearin' word 'our' will be insarted." Haliburton seems to have fretted under this subordinate status of the colonies, and to have yearned for a fuller imperial citizenship for colonists. "No, don't use that word 'our' till you are entitled to it," says the clockmaker. " Be formal and ever- lastin' polite. Say 'your' empire, 'your' army, etc., and never strut under borrowed plumes." Elsewhere he has compared the colonies to ponds, which rear frogs, but want only inlets and outlets to become lakes and produce fine fish.* * It is a curious coincidence that his ablest deprecator, Professor Felton, of Harvard College, shared Haliburton's views on this subject. In his review of "The Attache," in the North American Beview for January, 1844, Felton attributed what he terms "the antiquated political absurdities" of the judge to "the belittling effects of the 79 J'ii In fact, the main cauRe of discontent among educated and self-reliant colonistH, as he makes Mr. Hopewell point out (Clockmaker, 3, 19, and still more impressively, Attach^, c. 62), was the lack of openings for genius and ambition. On the gate of any colonial cemetery, he thought, might be aptly inscribed the stanzas of "Gray's Elegy," beginning, " Porhaps in this neglected Bpot is laid." The provinces are now confederated, and a Dominion political career furnishes another opening to aspiring and gifted Canadians. Yet while we remain in the present cramping status of colonists some of our ambitious men must feel, with Haliburton, a " want of room — of that employment that is required for ability of a cortain description." George Washington, Mr. Hopewell hinted, might never have led the insurgert provinces to victory, had his gifts and ambition had free vent " in other parts of the Empire." The repre- sentation of colonists in the Imperial Parliament would not only widen their thoughts and interests, but would also serve colonial system on the intellects of colonists. A full and complete national existence," added the Harvard professor, " is requisite to the formation of a manly, intellectual character. What great work of literature or art has the colonial mind ever produced ? What free, creative action of genius can take place tinder the withering sense of inferiority that a distant dependency of a great empire can never escape from ? Any consciousness of nationality, however humble the nation may be, is preferable to the second-hand nationality of a colony of the mightiest empire that ever flourished. The intense national pride which acts so forcibly in the United States is something vastly better than the intellectual paralysis that deadens the energies of men in the British North American Provinces." . . . Professor Drum- mond has strikingly described the deterioration of the hermit crab resulting from its habitually evading the natural responsibility of self- defence. Haliburton evidently feared an analogous fate for a nation permanently evading the same responsibility. — F. B. Crofton, in " The Atlantic Monthly " for March, 1J92, 80 m ated and joint out Attach^, ambition, might be ining, Dominion iring and e present men must aployment " George ,ve led the . ambition rhe repre- would not also serve id complete lisite to the at work of What free, ing sense of can never humble the of a colony 36 national hing vastly lies of men isor Drum- ermit crab lity of self- tr a nation t?i " The to prevent dangerous disaffection : their reprosentatives " will bo safety-valves to let off steam." Our author thought the North American colonioa had reached a periml in their growth "when the treatment of adults should supersede that of children " ; but he was not of those who want to acquire the full privileges of manhood and to shirk its obligations and responsibilities. "Ah, Doctor," said Sam Slick (Nature and Human Nature, c. 19) things can't and tvon't remain long as tliey are. Eng- land has three things among which to choose for her North American colonies : First — Incorporation with herself, and representation in Parliament. Secondly — Independence. Thirdly — Annexation with the States." Wo have seen that Haliburton preferred the first. Sam Slick pooh-poohed the idea of Canadian independence in "The Clockmaker" (2, c. 16), and pronounced it utterly impracticable. But he was then speaking as an American ; and even if our author personally held the same views, he might have modified them had he lived till Canada supported a large militia and a small army, and when Confederation (which he thought an essential preliminary to independence) was an accomplished fact. In " Nature and Human Nature " (c. 19) Mr. Slick says that independence is better for the colonies and England than annexation ; " but if that is decided upon, something must be done soon. The way ought to be prepared for it by an immediate federative and legisla- tive union of them all." Others of Haliburton's personages speak in favor of colonial confederation. Among them is Senator Boodle (Seiison Ticket, c. 8), who also argues that an intercolonial railway should be constructed at once, and that "as soon as this railway is finished immediate steps should be taken to 6 SI 1». .«>.€>. V^7I IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT.3) /. 1.0 I.I 'ffllM IIM •^ 1^ ill 2.2 .« ij^ 11^ :■ ii£ lllllio 1.8 1.25 1.4 J4 .4 6" — ► V] ^1 ^ ^ 0». y y^ Photographic Sdences Corporation L1>^ 4 fV :\ V \ ^ ^ ^. ^w ^^O ;\ •«?' '% 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14S80 (716) 873-4503 .<;' v^-^^ 5r ^ V.A m It- tv l.i! provide a safe, easy and expeditious route to Eraser's River, on the Pacific." In the first chapter of this same work the senator had prophesied a great interoceanic railway and a great metropolis at Esquimalt : " The enterprise, science and energy of the West will require and command the labor of the East, and Vancouver will be the centre where the pro- ducts of both hemispheres will be exchanged. . . . You have the shortest possible route and the most practicable, through your own territory, from one ocean to the other, the finest harbors in the world (Halifax and Esquimalt), abun- dance of coal at the termini and the most direct communica- tion with all the eastern world." The infinite importance of Britain and her colonies parting peaceably, if they are to part at all, was fully recognized by our author. " If the partnership is to be dissolved," advised Mr. Slick, "it had better be done by mutual consent, and it would be for the interest of both that you should part friends. You didn't shake hands with, but fists at, us when we separated. , . . Wounds were given that the best part of a century hasn't healed, and wounds that will leave tender spots forever." Our author did not, however, anticipate an angry parting. The holder of "the season ticket," in the book bearing that name, says to an American who talks of annexing Canada : " Be assured, if they (the Canadians) do become independent, it will be by mutual consent and good will, and, let me add, with the mutual regret of both parties." If our author was averse to annexation, it was from no narrow prejudice against the great American people. Indeed his imagination had conceived and his judgment had approved the very grandest of the various schemes propounded for the future of our race — an Anglo-Saxon union or alliance, domi- nating the world and dictating peace to the too heavily 88 I- i-i I: r's River, work the ay and a ;ience and labor of e the pro- . . You racticable, other, the alt), abun- ommunica- ies parting ognized by 1," advised ent, and it art friends. s when we e best part ;ave tender ticipate an et," in the ID talks of ladians) do and good J parties." IS from no Indeed d approved ded for the ance, domi- xto heavily armed nations. " Now we are two great nations," remarks Mr. Slick, in his quaint style (Wise Saws, c. 26), "the greatest by a long chalk of any in the world — speak the same language, have the same religion, and our constitutions don't differ no great odds. We ought to draw closer than we do. We are big enough, equal enough, and strong enough not to be jealous of each other. United, we are more nor a match for all the other nations put together, and can defy their fleets, armies and millions. Single, we couldn't stand against all, and if one was to fall, where would the other be? Mournin' over the grave that covers a relative whose place can never l)e filled. It is authors of silly books, editors of silly papers, and demagogues of silly parties that help to estrange us. I wish there was a gibbet high enough and strong enough to hang up all these enemies of mankind on." Americans were generally, an our author found them, shrewd, quick, energetic, enterprising. Thoy were generous, too, and, in his opinion, '* those who have described the Yankees as a cold, designing, unimpassioned people, know but little of them in their domestic circles." But the Americans, he thought, were "image worshippers ": they worshipped the golden image and the American image. With them every- thing was for sale, and they humbugged everybody — them- selves included. Many of them were ostentatious and snobbish in their own sense of the latter term. This trait of theirs he often notes and caricatures. He describes some New England factory girls who wanted to be " taken oflF" {i.e., photographed) in company with certain alleged grand relations of theirs. Miss Sally Slick is made to address her letters to " Hon. Samuel Slick, late of the Embassy to the Court of St. James's." This she used to do " to let some folks know who some folks are." And Mr. Slick declared 83 i'l. f 'I ■' that if a young English commissariat oflicer went to his native Onion County, Connecticut, he could marry the richest girl in it, merely on account of the imposing length of his title — Deputy -Assistant-Commissary -General. The scamps and humbugs who, all over the North American continent, used the holy cause of temperance as a profession or as a cloak, receive a good deal of notice from our author. The Rev. Mr. Hopewell laments (Attach*?, c. 29) that "emancipa- tion and temperance have superseded the Scriptures in the States. Formerly they preached religion there, but now they only preach about niggers and rum." In the fourth chapter of "The Season Ticket," the chronicler very minutely no'es and comments on the various evasions of the prohibitory law in Maine. Sam Slick thus epigrammatically characterises his country- men : " Brag is a good dog and Holdfast is a l)etter one, but what do you say to a cross of the two 1 And that's just what we are." Americans, Haliburton thought, had no satisfactory safe- guards against popular frenzies ; they lacked a clergy with stipends independent of their congregations, and a nobility and gentry with a social position too secure to be endangered by their opposing the violent whims of the populace. That our author discountenanced the abolition movement, l)elieving slaves to be generally happier than peasants, may 1)6 inferred from Slick's ridicule of " ablutionists," and still more clearly from the cynical letter of an abolitionist in " The Letter-Bag of the Great Western." Three prophecies relating to the United States were made by personages in our author's works, of which two have not and one has been already verified. There would be an upris- ing of the colored population ; there would be an established 84 it to his le richest [th of his A.morican ifession or hor. The smancipa- •es in the now tlioy chapter of no'^s and ry hvw in 8 country- ir one, V)ut just what ctory safe- ergy with a nobility ndangered novement, lants, may and still tionist in ■\'ere made have not an upris- istablished church (the Roman Catholic, txs succes^iive censuses would indicate) ; and there would be a civil war on the question of state-rights. " General Qovernment and State Government," said Mr. Slick, "every now and then square oiTand spar, and the first blow given will bring a genu-ine set-to." # ♦ ♦ * • ♦ Among Haliburton's distinctive gifts wiis his aptitude for aphorisms and short, pithy sayings of all kinds. " Nothin','' says the clockmaker, " improves a man's manners like runnin' an election." "Reforms," says "The Old Judge," sarcasti- cally, " are not applicable to reformers, for those who liberate others must themselves be free." " When ladies wear the breeches, their petticoats should be long enough tid. c. 9). Specimens of our author's broader and more farcical humor may be found in the Anale to the Governor's dinner party, and in the yarn of the extemporized page's breeches, both in " The Old Judge," and in the lady's ludicrous exhibition of fright at a thunder-storm in "The Season Ticket." On one occasion Mr. Slick was sent to Italy to purchase pictures for a Yankee institution, and strongly 'cautioned against bring- ing home anything that might seem indelicate. He carried out his instructions with such carefulness that, a Virgin and a Child being among his puroluvses and the Child's legs being naked, he " hiid an artist to paint trousers an a pair of laced boots upon him," to make him "look genteel." To anybody who has read one of Haliburton's anecdotal works, his proneness to punning will be too patent to need illustration. Some signal instances of his capacity and his weakness for puns are found in the " liCtter-Bag of the Great Western ": — for instance, in the midshipman's description of the seasickness of various passengers in terms borrowed from their respective professions (No. 4) ; in the lawyer's clerk's letter (No. 10) ; and in the Preface, where the author pours a perfect torrent of postal puns on the Postmaster-General, that " frank man of letters who transports the mails." The same temptation to distort words which led him to perpetrate some dmible entendres, led him also to perpetrate some pretty bad puns. How strong this temptation must have been on occasions may l)e gathered from his making a speaker pun while seriously protesting against the mean treatment of the Loyalists in the Canadian rebellion — a subject on which 88 t i i if! m i Human int'u niis- Ekbout the ;nl humor ler party, s, both in libition of On one cture8 ft»r ist bring- le carrit'd 'irgin and legs being ir of laced anecdotal it to need V and his the Great •iption of wed from *s clerk's [lor pours '-General, s.' The [erpetrate le pretty been on bker pun t of the which Haliburton felt very deeply indeed, and to which he often recurred. " He who calleks and opinions popular. "Why is it," asks Sam Hlick (Wise Saws, c. 19), " if you rotul a Ixxtk to u man you set him to sleep ? Just because it is a lxK)k and the language aint com- mon. Why is it if you talk to him ho will sit up all night with you 1 Just because it's talk, the language of natur'." And written chat, ho thought, was the next Ijest medium to oral chat for holding the attention of all classes (for " the test of a real genu-iue good book," in Mr. Slick's opinion at least, " is that it is read in the parlor and in the kitchen"). Here is the rationale of that "conversational style " that has helped to win a circulation for so many modern society journals, and which is growing so popular with " special contributors." Our author's dialogue, however, is not invariably suited to the character either in mattisr or in manner, and few of his dramatis personce, if they display any peculiarities of idiom, 92 tic atteu- unu grand a colony ; bo contain itive aa to tinflniahed jiacu in a terse than ofTocts are iceits more tences are the roader 'er, he dis- atioi» <»f a e his b«Joks «ick (Wise set him to i aint com- p all night of natur'." ium to oral the test of t least, " is ere is the ped to win and which suited to Ifew of his of idiom, are made to use the Rann' diiilpct ronsiHtontly throughout, FIven th«' HjH'llinK that is used to convoy provinrial nUHpnt- nunciiitions is (;HpriciouHly vari«'tl. And our auihor'H chanir tors Homotiuies stray from tlio main suhjoct of discuHMion with an altruptnoHH that in roal life would Htu'itriNO and ofronr stilt. George Routledge, London, 1878, 8vo; London, 1884, 8vo ; New York, 1889, 8vo. "The Clockmaker" was translated into German and published at Braunschweig in 1840-42. The Bubbles of Canada. By the author of "The Clockmaker." Richard Bentley : London, 1839, 8vo. The dedication addressed to James Haliburton, Esq., is signed S. S., and bears date 24th December, 1838. Second edition. Richard Bentley : London, 1839, 8vo. Another edition. Lea d- Blanchard: Philadelphia, 1839, 8vo. A Reply to the Report of the Earl of Durham. By a Colonist. Richard Bentley : London, 1839, 8vo. Consists of seven letters which originally appeared in the Times newspaper. Another edition. Halifax, 1839, 8vo. The Letter-Bag of the Great Western ; or, Life in a Steamer. By the author of " The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick." Richard Bentley: London, 1840, 8vo. 108 17, 12ino. 838, 12mo. I. Richard .840, 12mo. jiowing by a Woman " Miscellany Iphia, 1837, 1838, 12mo. hiladelphia, . U. Colyer, 3. liicliard •son, Philii- New York, 1862, 8vo; New York, 1878, 8vo; Jvo. "The id published lockmaker." [rton, Esq., sr, 1838. 1839, 8vo. liladelphia, Colonist, ppeared in Steamer. }f Samuel Other editions : Joseph Howe : Halifax, 1840, 8vo ; Philadelphia, 1840, 8vo ; New York, 1840, 8vo ; Lon- don, 1843, 8vo ; New York, 1847, 12mo ; London, 1858, 8vo. Rontledfie: London, 1862, 12mo; do. London, 1865, 8vo ; do. London, 1873, 12mo ; do. London, 1894, 8vo. The Attache ; or, Sam Slick in England. By the author of "The Clockmaker ; or, Sayings and Doings of Sam Slick," etc., etc. 2 series. 4 vols. Richard Bentley : Lon- don, 1843-4, 12mo. Other editions : London, 1849, 8vo ; New York, 1856, 8vo ; Routkdge : London, 1862, 12mo ; do. London, 1871, 12mo. The Old Judge ; or. Life in a Colony. By the author of " Sam Slick, the Clookmaker," "The Attache," etc., 2 vols. Henry Colhurn, 1849, 8vo. "The Old Judge '' appeared originally in Fraser's Mag- azine, February, 1847, pp. 141-147 ; March, pp. 308- 321 ; April, pp. 429-446 ; May, pp. 611-528 ; Juno, pp. 700-713 ; July, pp. 76-87 ; August, pp. 204-212 ; September, pp. 324-334 ; Octtiber, pp. 447-461 ; November, pp. 576-587 ; December, pp. 696-710. Other editions : Stringer cfc Toxonsend, New York, 1849, 8vo. mimt e Letter-Bag," "Attache," "Old Judge," etc. Harper cfc Brothers: New York, 1851, 8vo. In consequence of a work having previously appeared under the name of "The Phiglish in America," the words "Rule and Misrule of" were added to the title of the English and of the American edition. — R. G. H. 109 'pf ;• ' i Traits of American Humour, by Native authors. Edited and adapted by the author of "Sam Slick," "The Old Judge," "The English in America," etc. 3 vols. Colhiirn