HALIBURTON: 
 
 A CENTENARY CHAPLET 
 
 "It shouldn't be England and her Colonies, but 
 they should be integral parts of one great whole— . * . 
 one vast home market from Hong-Kong to Labrador."
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 SEELEY w. MIDD 
 
 and 
 
 GEORGE 1. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER 
 
 DR. JOHN K. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 
 
 IAMBI R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F.SARTORI 
 
 to the 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH 
 
 JOHN FISKi;
 
 tf, u ■■ 
 
 AUG 1 9 1954 
 
 fEB *«* 
 
 Form L-9-15rn-8,'26 
 
 Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 Form L I 
 
 A iv rr C
 
 AGC. ABOUT 4S 
 
 3 
 
 +
 
 HALIBURTON 
 
 Centenary Chaplet. 
 
 WITH A BIBLIOGRAPHY BY JOHN PARKER ANDERSON. 
 British Museum, London, Eng. 
 
 Published for 
 
 THE HALIBURTON CLUB, 
 
 King's College, Windsor, N.S., 
 
 WILLIAM BRIGGS, 
 
 
 Toronto. 
 
 
 
 1897. 
 
 
 
 
 9
 
 
 €. 
 
 
 ©f fleers 
 
 THE HALIBURTON CLUB. 
 1896-97. 
 
 President : 
 
 A. B. de MILLE, M.A. 
 
 Vice-President : 
 
 O. W. SMITH, B.E. 
 
 v Secretary: 
 
 R. W. NORWOOD, B.A. 
 
 Treasurer : 
 
 J. KHADDER, B.A. 
 
 Historian : 
 
 H. A. ANCIENT.
 
 A TOAST TO TOM HALBURTON. 
 
 Here'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 Hashes 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 we 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,
 
 When thy genius, assuming all hues of delight, 
 
 Fled away with the rapturous hours, 
 And when wisdom and wit, to enliven the night, 
 
 Scattered freely their fruits and their flowers ; 
 
 When thy eloquence played round each topic in turn, 
 
 Shedding lustre and life where it fell, 
 As the sunlight, in which the tall mountain-tops burn, 
 
 Paints each bud in the lowliest dell ; 
 
 When that eye, before which the pale Senate once quailed, 
 
 With humour and deviltry shone, 
 And the voice which the heart of the patriot hailed, 
 
 Had mirth in its every tone. 
 
 Then a health to thee, Tom ! Ev'ry bumper we drain 
 
 But renders thine image more dear : 
 As the bottle goes round, and again, and again, 
 
 We wish, from our hearts, you were here ! 
 
 — From Poems, by Joseph Howe.
 
 FOREWORD. 
 
 'PHIS book, as its name implies, is intended for a tribute 
 to the memory of Judge Haliburton. It was first 
 proposed to publish the volume within a month of the cen- 
 tenary of his birth, on December 17th, 1896, but circum- 
 stances rendered this impossible. The original title, however, 
 has been allowed to stand as expressing the raison d'etre of 
 the publication. 
 
 It seemed appropriate that The Haliburton should 
 undertake the issue of such a volume. This club was founded 
 at King's College, Windsor, N.S., in 1881. Almost purely 
 literary in its aims, it endeavors, among other things, 
 to keep its members in touch with Canadian writers and 
 their work. It also attempts the collection of Canadian 
 books and manuscripts. Its first president was one of its 
 chief promoters, Mr. H. P. Scott, of Windsor. In 1885 
 Professor C. G. D. Roberts, M.A., F.R.S.C, was appointed 
 to the office, which he held continuously until his departure 
 from the college in 1895. Meetings take place fortnightly 
 throughout the academic year. It is an interesting fact, by 
 the way, that the club-room is a large apartment which was 
 used by Judge Haliburton during his course at King's 
 
 7
 
 College, from 1810 to 1815. One other publication has been 
 put forth by the Club, " Haliburton : The Man and the 
 Writer," by Mr. Crofton. It appeared in 1889, and is sub- 
 stantially reproduced in the present volume. 
 
 The centenary of Haliburton's birth, which this book 
 commemorates in a more permanent form, was pleasantly 
 observed on the evening of December 17th, 1896, when a 
 meeting was held in the Assembly Chamber of the Legisla- 
 tive building, Halifax, N.S., under the auspices of the Nova 
 Scotia Historical Society. An admirable programme of 
 speeches was compiled by the Secretary, Mr. Crofton, to 
 whom chiefly the success of the occasion was due. Among 
 the speakers were the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, 
 the Archbishop of Halifax, Hon. Mr. Justice Townshend, 
 Hon. Speaker Lawrence, of the House of Assembly, the 
 Attorney-General of Nova Scotia, J. J. Stewart, Esq., and 
 the President of the Haliburton Club. A satisfactory 
 feature was the representative nature of the audience. 
 
 It is believed that " The Centenary Chaplet " will be not 
 unworthy of its object. It is unnecessary to preface the 
 various articles by any words of explanation or praise ; 
 special attention, however, is directed to the Bibliography, 
 which is the only one of its kind extant. The Hali- 
 burton esteems itself fortunate in having secured the 
 services of Mr. Anderson. That gentleman's work is too 
 widely known to call for comment ; it will be remembered 
 that he contributes the bibliographies to the " Great 
 Writers " series of English authors. In justice to Mr. 
 Anderson it may be said that his work in the present 
 instance would have been even more complete if he had not 
 been constrained by the exigencies of publication. The 
 
 8
 
 illustrations are made from photographs kindly loaned by a 
 member of Judge Haliburton's family. 
 
 The " Chaplet " has been issued, as far as possible, by 
 subscription. The thanks of the Club are due to those 
 friends who have assisted towards this end. 
 
 The Haliburton has kept in view the fact that in issuing 
 this book it is honoring the memory of one who was a 
 Canadian and something more — an Imperialist, whose great 
 ideas must eventually give him a place in the hearts of all 
 who love Canada, and who cherish hopes of what a united 
 Empire may achieve. 
 
 A. B. DE MlLLE.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Sketch of the Life and Times of Judge Haliburton . . 13 
 
 Haliburton as a Humorist and Descriptive Writer, ... 41 
 By H. P. Scott, M.A., Windsor, N.S. 
 
 Haliburton : The Man and the Writer 53 
 
 By F. Blake Ceofton, Provincial Librarian, 
 Halifax, N.S. 
 
 Bibliography 107 
 
 By John Parker Anderson, British Museum, 
 London, England. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Judge Haliburton Frontispiece. 
 
 Clifton, Windsor, N.S Opposite 13 
 
 The Piper's Pond n 17 
 
 Gordon House, Isleworth n 41 
 
 Library, Gordon House n 107
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 : 
 
 : 
 - 
 -
 
 A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF 
 JUDGE HALIBURTON. 
 
 With Five Illustrations. 
 
 Entered 
 
 according to \ rllament of Canvla Intt 
 thousand el{ 
 
 CJRANT HAL1BLT.TO.V, . rtiui'Ilt of \
 
 A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF 
 JUDGE HALLIBURTON.* 
 
 IN the absence of any suitable biography of the author of 
 "The Clockmaker," his centenary may lend an interest 
 to the following brief sketch of his life and times. 
 Thomas Chandler Haliburton was born at Windsor, in 
 the Province of Nova Scotia, on the 17th day of December, 
 1796. He was descended from the Haliburtons of Mertoun 
 and New mains, a Border family, one of whom was Barbara 
 Haliburton, only child of Thomas Haliburton, of New- 
 mains, who married Robert Scott, and whose second son 
 was Walter Scott, the father of the immortal Sir Walter. 
 Her eldest son left numerous descendants. Sir Walter's tomb 
 
 * The anonymous form seemed to me the most convenient to adopt 
 in writing the above sketch, and it was understood that, while I should 
 be generally known as the author, my name should not be published as 
 such. As, however, since the above was written, the circulars an- 
 nouncing the forthcoming volume have mentioned my name in con- 
 nection with it, I have thought it best to append this note. — R. G. 
 Haliburton. 
 
 13
 
 i- in the ancient burial place of the Haliburtons, St. M n . 
 \ i -!••, in Dryburgh Abbey. About the beginning of the lasl 
 century nearly all of her nuni'-nuis uncles migrate 1 to 
 Jamaica, and the eldest of them, Andrew Haliburton, re 
 moved thence to Scituate, aear Boston, Massachusetts, where 
 he, and, subsequently, his son William, married members of 
 the Otis family, to which the well-known James Otis 
 belonged. William Haliburton (whose cousin, Major John 
 Haliburton, Olive's colleague, was, according to Mill's History 
 of India, "the Founder of the Sepoy force,"*) removed to 
 Nova Scotia with many persons from Scituato, when the 
 vacant lands of the Acadian French were offered to settlers. 
 His son, the Hon. William Hersey Otis Haliburton, Chief 
 Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, in Nova Scotia, mar- 
 ried Lucy Grant, a daughter of Major Alexander Grant, one 
 of Wolfe's Highland officers at the siege of Quebec, who, 
 after the French war, settled in the colony of New York, 
 where he married a Miss Kent, a near relative of the famous 
 Chancellor Kent. He was killed in the Revolutionary War, 
 at the storming of Fort Stanwix, while in command of the 
 New York Volunteers. 
 
 Chief Justice William Hersey Otis Haliburton left an only 
 child, the future author of " Sam Slick," who was educated 
 at the Grammar School, Windsor, and afterward, at the same 
 place, at the University of King's College, for Tory King's 
 College of the Colony of New York had migrated to 
 Windsor, Nova Scotia, where, preserving the traditions 
 
 * The only references to him in Scott's " Memorials of the Jlalilmr- 
 tons'' (printed privately in 1820 to show that thai family had 1" oome 
 BXl met in I he male line) are, " killed on parade at Madras hy a t'anat ical 
 Sepoy," ami " he was the last survivor in the male line of the llali- 
 burtons of Nfewmaine and Mertoun." Mill speaks of his death, and 
 says that "the name of Haliburton was long rememhercd by the 
 Madras Sepoys." 
 
 Then- is no tablet to his memory in the burial place of his family. 
 14
 
 of Oxford of olden times, it remained out and out Tory in 
 its politics, and continued unchanged, even after Oxford itself 
 had long felt the influence of modern ideas. In its colle- 
 giate school, as late at least as 1845, that venerable heirloom, 
 " Lilly's Latin Grammar," which had not a word of English 
 from cover to cover, and which was a familiar ordeal for boys 
 long before Shakespeare was born (Cardinal Wolsey, it is 
 said, assisted in its composition), was still employed. It even 
 retained the quaint old frontispiece representing boys with 
 knee-breeches and shoebuckles (probably a picture of the 
 original " Blue-coat Boys ") climbing up the tree of know- 
 ledge, and throwing down the golden fruit. Daily, too, at 
 the meals in the College Hall there was, and perhaps may 
 be to this day, heard a quaint Latin grace, which was droned 
 by the "senior scholar." beginning, Oculi omnium ad te sjoectant, 
 Domine ; probably the same that was heard in some college 
 halls in the days of the Crusades. It is to be hoped that the 
 " spirit of the age " has not led it to discard this and other 
 venerable heirlooms derived from an ancient ancestiy. This 
 truly conservative and orthodox institution, in which the 
 future author was crammed with classics, and taught to 
 "fear God and honour the King," was then considered one of 
 the most successful educational institutions in America, and 
 it still ranks high in its reputation as a college. It is the 
 oldest in the Colonies, and it is the only one that has a Royal 
 Charter. 
 
 Mr. Haliburton used often to puzzle his friends by saying 
 that he and his father were bom twenty miles apart, and in 
 the same hoiose. 
 
 The enigma throws some light on the early history of 
 Windsor. His father had extensive grants of land at 
 Douglas, a place situated at the head waters of the St. 
 
 15
 
 Croix, a tributary of the Avon, as to which there is a grue- 
 some tablet at St. Paul's Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia, to 
 the memory of a nobleman, who lost his life "from exposure 
 during an inclement winter, while settling a band of brave 
 Carolinians " at Douglas. 
 
 The famous Flora McDonald, whose husband was a captain 
 in that regiment, spent a winter in Fort Edward, the old 
 blockhouse of which still overlooks the village of Windsor. 
 
 The house at Douglas was built in the middle of the last 
 century, like a Norwegian lodge, of solid timber covered 
 with boards. When Mr. Haliburton's father removed from 
 Douglas it was floated down the river, and was placed on the 
 bank of the Avon, where the town of Windsor now is, and 
 in it Mr. Haliburton was born. The tide there is very remark- 
 able, as it rises over thirty-six feet ; and while at high tide 
 hundreds of Great Easterns could float there, when the tide 
 is out the river dwindles into a rivulet, lost in a vast expanse 
 of square miles of chocolate. The village early in the 
 century consisted of one straggling street along the river 
 bank, under green arches formed by the meeting of the 
 boughs of large elms, a pretty little Slerpy Hollow, the quiet 
 of which was only at times disturbed by the arrival from 
 Halifax of a six-horse stage-coach at full gallop, or by the 
 melancholy whistle of a wheezy little steamer from St. John, 
 New Brunswick. The limited society of the place, a bit of 
 rural England which had migrated, was far more exclusive 
 and aristocratic than that now found in Halifax, or any 
 Canadian city (for a shop-keeper or retailer, however wealthy, 
 could not get the entree to it), and was composed mainly of 
 families of retired naval and military officers, " U.E. Loyal- 
 ists," professional men, Church of England clergy, and pro- 
 fessors at the College, and also one or two big provincial 
 16
 
 S5 
 
 —
 
 dignitaries, with still bigger salaries, who had country seats 
 where they spent their summers. The officers, too, of a 
 detachment of infantry stationed there largely contributed 
 to break the monotony of the place. 
 
 The migratory house was in time succeeded by a much 
 more commodious one, built almost opposite to it ; and this, 
 in its turn, soon after Mr. Haliburton was made a Judge, 
 was deserted for what was his home for a quarter of a cen- 
 tury, Olifton, a picturesque property to the west of the village, 
 consisting in all of over forty acres, bounding to the eastward 
 on the village, to the north on the river, and to the south on 
 the lands of King's College. Underlaid by gypsum, it was 
 much broken up and very uneven ; and the enormous amount 
 of earth excavated in opening up the gypsum quarries was 
 all needed to make the property a comfortable and suitable 
 place of residence. Lord Falkland, a Lieutenant-Governor 
 of Nova Scotia, used to say that he had never seen any place 
 of its size that had such a variety of charming scenery. One 
 precipitous, sunny bank, about one hundred and fifty feet 
 long and thirty feet high, became a dense thicket of acacias, 
 and when they were in bloom, was one mass of purple 
 and white blossoms, while pathways wandered up and down 
 through gleaming spruce copses and mossy glades. 
 
 One of its special points of interest was the " Piper's 
 Pond," so named after a probably mythical piper of a 
 Highland regiment, who, having dropped his watch into the 
 water, dived after it, and never came up. It was one of the 
 few " punch-bowls " in gypsum regions that are not found 
 dry. 
 
 As a landscape gardener, he was greatly aided by the 
 thorough art training his assistant had obtained at the best 
 ladies' school of her day — one at Paris supported by the old 
 2 17
 
 Noblesse. Her history, from early childhood to the time 
 when she arrived at Windsor, the youthful bride o£ MEr. 
 EEaliburton, who himself was still ;i minor, waa a singular 
 succession of romantic incidents. She was a daughter of 
 Captain Laurence Neville, of the 1 9th Light Dragoons, and 
 ;is she was very young when her mother died, her father, 
 having made provision for her support and education before 
 rejoining his regiment in [ndia,* left her in charge of the 
 widow of a brother officer, a sister of Sir Alexander Lockhart, 
 who subsequently, unknown to him, married William Put- 
 nam McCabe, a man of humus, who became the Secretary of 
 "the United Irishmen" of '98. When he escaped to 
 Fiance in an open smuggler's boat, lie took with him his 
 wife and also her ward, Miss Neville; and in 1816, the year 
 the latter was married, in spite of the ten thousand pounds 
 placed on his head he secretly went to England to bid her 
 good-bye. 
 
 Long before the thrilling tales of his escapes from the 
 troops in pursuit of him, and other adventures, appeared in 
 Madden's " History of the United Irishmen," they had been 
 household words in the nursery at Clifton. 
 
 The story of her marriage was equally romantic. When 
 her father, who was living at Henley-on-Thames in 1812, 
 was on his death-bed, he heard that a very old military friend, 
 named Captain Piercy, was living not far from that place, 
 and lie therefore wrote to him, asking him to call on Miss 
 Neville, and to render her such services as she might need 
 until the arrival of her only brother, who was then in India 
 with his regiment, the 11th Hussars. He died in ignorance 
 
 ' The aword of Tippoo Sahib, taken from his dead l> »\y by Capt. 
 Neville, after the famous charge of his regiment at Seringapatam, 
 which earned for them the name of "-the Terror of India," is now in 
 thepo eaaionof Sir Arthur Ealiburton, <;.('. K. 
 
 lb
 
 of the fact that he had written to a perfect stranger, an old 
 retired naval officer of that name, who, with his wife, on 
 receipt of the letter, called on Miss Neville, and invited 
 her, as they had no children, to make their house her 
 home. His step-nephew, Mr. Haliburton, while on a visit 
 to England, met her at his house, and though still a minor, 
 became engaged to and married her. The memoiy of these 
 incidents was long preserved in tho local traditions of 
 Henley-on-Thames. 
 
 Mr. Haliburton, who had graduated with honors on leaving 
 college, in time was called to the bar, and practised at 
 Annapolis Royal, the former capital of Nova Scotia, where 
 he acquired a large and lucrative practice; but a wider sphere 
 of action was opened to him when he became the represen- 
 tative of the county of Annapolis, and, as such, by his power 
 of debate and his ability, he speedily attained a leading 
 position.* 
 
 He was the first public man who in a British 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 graceful. As an orator, his 
 manner and attitude were extremely impressive, earnest and 
 dignified ; and, although the strong propensity of his mind to 
 wit and humor was often apparent, they seldom detracted from 
 
 * With the permission of Mr. Henry J. Morgan, portions of this 
 paper are reproduced, in an abridged form, from his " Bibliotheea 
 Canadensis," published in 1867. 
 
 19
 
 the seriousness of his language, when the subject under < 1 i s - 
 oussion was important. Although he sometimes exhibited 
 rather more bauteur than was agreeable, yet bis wit was 
 
 usually kind and playful. On this occasion lie absolutely 
 entranced his audience. Ho 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 tliere 
 w as 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. 
 
 He lived in the district embraced by the Middle 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.
 
 ('.it ten, a very prominent and respected Irishman living 
 in Halifax, having been excommunicated, was denied access 
 to his pew in St. Mail's Cathedral, of which he was the 
 legal owner. Judge Haliburton'a ruling in favor of the 
 
 plaint ill' in Carton vs. Walsh et a/, 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 anil 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 Carten vs. Walsh et al. created some 
 bitter enemies that were powerful enough to make their 
 hostility felt, soiue 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 the important 
 results that were likely to flow from the new role of the 
 Human 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 
 
 .>.>
 
 that question that was about to be caused by the rise of the 
 " Know-nothing Movement." 
 
 Thanks to that wonder-worker, Time, 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 
 extensive 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 five daughters. 
 
 23
 
 of Eaton Mascott, Shrewsbury, by whom be had ao issue, and 
 who Burvived him severaJ years. 
 
 That life-long exile, the poet Petrarch, says that men, like 
 plants, are the better for transplanting, and that no man 
 should the where he was horn. For years Judge Haliburton 
 stagnated and moped in utter solitude at Clifton, for his large 
 t'.uniU had grown up and were settled in life elsewhere, while 
 il-ath had removed the little band of intellectual companions 
 whose society had been a great source of enjoyment 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 many 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 
 aire well cared for in a comfortable home. 
 
 As an author, he first came before the public in 1M".I, 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 tin- 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 
 ■_'4
 
 articles in the Nova Scolian newspaper, then edited by Mr. 
 Joseph Howe, he made use of a Yankee peddler as his mouth- 
 piece. The character proved to be "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 Bentley, the publisher. To Judge Haliburton's 
 surprise, he found that an edition that had been very favorably 
 received had been issued in 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, as the work had not been copyrighted, but Mr. 
 Bentley presented him with a silver salver, on which was an 
 inscription written by the 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 that 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 bed, 
 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, " I am convinced that there is a veritable Sam Slick in 
 
 25
 
 the flesh now selling clocks to the Bluenoses. Am I right 1 " 
 "No," replied the Judge, "there is no such person. He was 
 a pure accident. I never intended to describe a Yankee 
 clockmaker 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 equally 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? 
 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 were 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 
 •20
 
 wooden 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's 
 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 " cuteness " and common sense of Sam Slick. In his 
 Early Reminiscences, 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
 
 than to those who instruct us. Many persons who laughed 
 at Sam Slick's jokes did not relish his truths, and his popu- 
 larity as an author was far greater out of Nova Scotia than 
 in it ; but il had ceased to depend on the verdict of his 
 count rvnien. 
 
 Art emus Ward pronounced him to be the "father of the 
 American school of humor." 
 
 The illustrations of the Clockmaker by TIervieu, and of 
 Wise Saws by Leech, supplied the conventional type of 
 "Brother Jonathan," 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 the 
 conventional testy, pompous, pot-bellied John Bull, with his 
 knee-breeches 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 
 London News, on July 15th, 1842, which was accompanied 
 by an excellent portrait of Judge Haliburton, 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 of 
 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 tliem out in a small, unpretending 
 duodecimo volume, the popularity of which, at first confined 
 to our American colonies, soon spread over the United States, 
 l>y 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
 
 Union, this anonymous little volume was to be found on the 
 drawing-room tables of the most influential members of the 
 social community; while, even in the emigrant's solitary 
 farm house and the squatter's log hut among the primeval 
 forests of the Far West, it was read with the deepest interest, 
 cheering the spirits of the backwoodsman by its wholesome, 
 vigorous and lively pictures of every-day life. A recent 
 traveller records his surprise and pleasure at meeting with a 
 well-thumbed copy in^a log hut in the woods of the Mississippi 
 valley. 
 
 " The primary cause of its success, we conceive, may be 
 found in its sound, sagacious, unexaggerated views of human 
 nature — not of human nature as it is modified by artificial 
 institutions and subjected to the despotic caprices of fashion, 
 but as it exists in a free and comparatively unsophisticated 
 state, full of faith in its own impulses and quick to sympathize 
 with kindred humanity ; adventurous, self-relying, untram- 
 melled by social etiquette ; giving full vent to the emotions 
 that rise within its breast ; regardless of the distinctions of 
 caste, but ready to find friends and brethren among all of 
 whom it may come in contact. 
 
 " Such is the human nature delineated in Sam Slick. 
 
 " Another reason for Sam Slick's popularity is the humor 
 
 with which the work is overflowing. Of its kind it is 
 
 decidedly original. In describing it we must borrow a 
 
 phrase from architecture, and say that it is of a ' composite 
 
 order ; ' by which we mean that it combines the qualities of 
 
 English and Scotch humor — the hearty, mellow spirit of the 
 
 one, and the shrewd, caustic qualities of the other. It derives 
 
 little help from the fancy, but has its ground-work in the 
 
 understanding, and affects us by its quiet truth and force 
 
 and the piquant satire with which it is flavored. In a word — 
 
 it is the sunny side of common sense." 
 
 29
 
 A review of "Nature and Human Nature'' drew attention 
 to the fact that no writer has produced purer conceptions of 
 
 the female character than are to he found in Sain Slick's 
 works. They show none of those morbid, scxualistic 
 tendencies which are betrayed in some modern novels written 
 by young ladies, or in semi-scientific papers on sexual subjects 
 by "advanced females." Tacitus praised the social purity of 
 the Germans at the expense of his corrupt fellow-countrymen. 
 " No one there makes a jest of vice," which we may now read, 
 "No one there writes novels about adultery." Sam Slick 
 tells us how he romped and flirted with country girls ; but in 
 all he has written there is not the slightest trace of impro- 
 priety, even by the most remote implication. There is no 
 harm in Sam Slick's jokes, which were originally intended for 
 rough, plain spoken backwoods Bluenoses of sixty years ago ; 
 for, while impurity corrupts, however refined it may be, 
 coarseness does not. The Bible is often coarse, but never 
 impure. 
 
 Some years before Sydney Smith made what is generally 
 set down as his best joke, as to a day being so hot that it 
 would be a comfort to "take off our flesh and sit in our 
 bones" it had made its appearance in "Sam Slick;" and 
 the country girl who says, " I guess I wasn't brought up at 
 all, I growed up," probably suggested Topsy's, " spec I 
 growed." 
 
 After this sketch had been written, a somewhat startling 
 suggestion, that the idea of The Clockmaker had been 
 borrowed from Dickens, and that Sam Slick was merely a 
 Yankee version of Sam Weller, led to an inquiry into the 
 point. The coincidences were many, and could hardly be 
 accidental. Dickens sends ofl* Pickwick in his wanderings 
 without any apparent object in view, accompanied by a 
 30
 
 shrewd and humorous Cockney valet, whose sayings and 
 doings are the prominent feature of the book ; while Judge 
 Haliburton sends off the author on very similar travels, 
 accompanied by a cute Yankee, for whose yarns and jokes 
 the book is simply a peg on which they can be hung. In 
 both cases there is the faintest apology for a connected story. 
 If any one had been guilty of plagiarism, it was Dickens, 
 for the first number of the " Pickwick Papers " appeared 
 in April, 1836, while the early chapters of "The Clock- 
 maker" were published in 1835, and were at once widely 
 copied by the American press, and may have been seen by 
 Dickens. 
 
 The Cockney dialect was used as far back as 1811 in a 
 farce by Samuel Beazley, architect ; and no doubt the 
 Yankee dialect in "The Clockmaker " was not its first appear- 
 ance in literature. 
 
 Duncan Campbell says in his " History of Nova Scotia " 
 (p. 335), " Sam Slick, the Clockmaker, immediately attracted 
 attention. The character proved to be as original and 
 amusing as Sam Wellei*. Samuel amuses us only. Slick 
 both amuses and instructs. Rarely do we find in any 
 character, not excepting the best of Scott's, the same 
 degree of originality and force, combined with humor, 
 sagacity, and sound sense, as we find in the Clockmaker. 
 Industry and perseverance are effectively inculcated in 
 comic story and racy narrative. In the department of 
 instructive humor Haliburton stands, perhaps, unrivalled in 
 English litei*ature." 
 
 The Spectator (London) calls him " One of the shrewdest 
 of humorists ;" and his biographer in Chambers' Encyclo- 
 pedia says, " he attained a place and fame difficult to acquire 
 at all times — that of a man whose humor was a native of one 
 
 31
 
 country ami became naturalized in another, for humour is 
 the least exotic of the gifts of Genius." 
 
 Philarete Chasles in the Revue des Deux Mondes,* in a 
 long and favorable notice of Judge Haliburton's works, 
 pronounced them to be unequalled by anything that had been 
 written in England since the days of Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Long after "Sam Slick, the Clockmaker," first appeared, it 
 was by many persons referred to as a store-house of practical 
 v* tsdom and common sense, and a vade mecuui ;is to the 
 affairs of every-day life. Forty years ago an able but very 
 eccentric Danish Governor at St. Thomas, in the West Indies, 
 was noted far and wide for his excessive admiration for Sam 
 Slick's works. Whenever a very knotty point arose before 
 him and his Council, which consisted of three persons, he 
 used to say "We must adjourn till to-morrow. I should like 
 to look into this point. T must see what Sam Slick has to 
 say about it." 
 
 A traveller on reaching the most northern town in the 
 world, Ilammerfest, found that Sam Slick had been there 
 before him, for the "Clockmaker" was a hobby and a text- 
 book of a humorous Scotchman, who was the British consul 
 there at that time. 
 
 Judge Haliburton was very fond of youthful society ; old 
 men were too old for him, for he used to say that a large 
 majority of men when they begin to grow old become very 
 prosy. On the other hand, his humor and conversational 
 powers were very attractive to young men. In illustration 
 of this, the late Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who considered him the 
 most agreeable talker he had ever met, used to tell of meeting 
 him once during the shooting season, at a country house. 
 Next morning, to his surprise, he found all the young men 
 
 • Tome XXVI, 307 (1841). 
 32
 
 gathered around the Judge in the smoking room, instead of 
 their being among the turnips. They preferred hearing Sam 
 Slick talk to the delights of shooting. 
 
 In 1859, he consented to run for Launceston, where his 
 friend, the Duke of Northumberland had great influence. 
 On his election he thanked his constituents, "in behalf of 
 four million of British subjects on the other side of the water, 
 who, up to the present time, had not one individual in the 
 House of Commons through whom they might be heard." 
 
 It seems almost providential that when an advocate of the 
 Unity of the Empire was most sorely needed, he had for a 
 quarter of a century been writing in favor of the colonies. 
 But for the strong public opinion as to their value among 
 the masses, whom the popularity of his works had enabled him 
 to reach, fanatical free traders, in order to prevent the possi- 
 bility of a return to "the Colonial System," might have, 
 persuaded the nation to burn its ships by getting rid of its 
 colonies. 
 
 A solitary colonist at that period in the House of Commons 
 soon found that he had fallen on evil times, and that among 
 all classes above the mass of the people, but especially among 
 politicians, Conservative as well as Liberal, there was a 
 growing hostility to the colonies. 
 
 " Oh ! was it wise, when, for the love of gain, 
 England forgot her sons beyond the main ; 
 Held foes as friends, and friends as foes, for they 
 To her are dearest, who most dearly pay ? " 
 
 Though no one in Parliament dared to openly advocate 
 disintegration, there was a settled policy on the part of a 
 secret clique, whose headquarters were in the Colonial Office, 
 to drive the colonies out of the Empire by systematic snub- 
 bing, injustice and neglect. 
 
 3 33
 
 This infamous state of things, of which all classes of 
 Englishmen profess now t<> he ashamed, was made apparent 
 when Judge Haliburton moved in the House of Commons 
 thai some months notice should be given of the Act to throw 
 open British markets to Baltic timber, a measure which, if 
 suddenly put in operation, would seriously injure New 
 Brunswick merchants ; and he urged as a reason for due 
 consideration for that interest, that it was not represented in 
 Parliament. Mr. Gladstone did not condescend to give any 
 explanation or reply, but led his willing majority to the vote, 
 and the Bill was passed. 
 
 People sometimes cite what occurred at this debate as a 
 proof that " Judge Haliburton was not a success in the House 
 of Commons ; " but it is difficult to imagine a more uncon- 
 genial audience for an advocate of Imperial Unity. 
 
 Gladstone, as if to remove any doubt as to his animus in 
 these proceedings, sent a singularly insolent reply to a letter 
 written to him by a New Brunswick timber merchant pro- 
 testing against this unexpected measure. "You protest, as 
 well as remonstrate. Were I to critically examine your 
 language, I could not admit your right, even individually, to 
 protest against any legislation which Parliament may think 
 fit to adopt on this matter." Had the protest only been in 
 the form of dynamite he would have submissively bowed 
 down at the sound of that " chapel bell" which has since then 
 from time to time called him and his cabinets to repentance. 
 His two attempts to destroy the Empire, first by attacking 
 its extremities through Imperial disintegration, and, next, its 
 heart by Home Rule, alike failed ; and he has retired from 
 public life, leaving behind him the fragments, not of a great 
 Empire, but of a shattered party. 
 
 Though a majority of both parties, Conservatives as well as 
 34
 
 Liberals, agreed with their two leaders in their wish to get 
 rid of the Colonies, (for Disraeli, as far back as 1852, wrote, 
 "These wretched Colonies will all be independent in a few 
 years, and are a millstone around our neck"), the people were 
 wiser and more patriotic than their politicians; and in 1869 
 (only four years after Judge Haliburton's death) over one 
 hundred and four thousand workinsmien of London signed 
 an address to the Queen protesting against any attempt to 
 get rid of that heritage of the people of England — the Colonial 
 Empire. This memorial was not considered worthy of any 
 reply or acknowledgment.* At that time, when the fate of 
 
 * It could not have been conveniently jngcon-holed, for it re- 
 quired six men to carry it ; but we may assume that it never got 
 farther than the Home Office, and that Her Majesty never heard of it, 
 and therefore never replied to it. The petition was written by the 
 truest friend the colonies have ever had — one who died in harness 
 while working in their cause — the late C. W. Eddy, who informed the 
 writer that the Disintegration party had for a time so effectually 
 " captured " the Royal Colonial Institute, of which he was Secretary, 
 that the Council refused to allow the petition to lie on the table of the 
 reading-room on the ground that it was "revolutionary!" So un- 
 satisfactory was their conduct as late as 1872, that another colonial 
 society would have been founded, had not the colonial element gained 
 the day in the Institute. 
 
 How far the petition was "revolutionary" may be seen from the 
 following extracts : 
 
 "We beg to represent to your Majesty that we have heard with 
 regret and alarm that your Majesty has been advised to consent to 
 give up the colonies, containing millions of acres of unoccupied land, 
 which might be employed profitably both to the colonies and to our- 
 selves as a field for emigration. We respectfully submit that your 
 Majesty's colonial possessions were won for your Majesty, and settled 
 by the valor and enterprise and the treasure of the English people ; 
 and that, having thus become part of the national freehold and in- 
 heritance of your Majesty's subjects, they are held in trust by your 
 Majestj', and ought not to be surrendered, but transmitted to your 
 Majesty's successors, as they were received by your Majesty." 
 
 The petition, after urging that by proclamation the mother country 
 and the colonies should be declared to be one Empire, adds, " we 
 would also submit that your Majesty might call to your Privy Council 
 representatives from the colonies for the purpose of consultation on 
 the affairs of the more distant parts of your Majesty's dominion." 
 
 35
 
 England as a first-class power was in the balance, there was 
 no need for the masses to be "educated up" to the subject; 
 it was rather their statesmen and politicians that required to 
 be educated down — down to the common sense of the common 
 people. 
 
 The next move against the Disintegrationists was made 
 four years later, in 187*2, when "The United Empire 
 Review " revived the now familiar watchword of the old 
 " U. E. Loyalists" of 1776 (those Abe Lincolns, who fought 
 for the Union a hundred years ago), "a United Empire;" 
 and in 1873 an agitation was begun in the Premier's own 
 constituency (Greenwich) against the dismemberment policy 
 of the Government, that six months later drove them out of 
 power at the general election. 
 
 While Gladstone was deliberately striving to breed dis- 
 union between the people of England, Scotland, Ireland and 
 "gallant little Wales," and to get rid of our Colonial Empire, 
 his exact antipodes in everything, Bismarck, that Colossus <>/ 
 the Nineteenth Century, was devoting his giant energies to 
 his life-work, — the unity of Germany, and the creation of a 
 German Colonial Empire. It is possible that, as Sam Slick's 
 works are among his favorite books, he may have imbibed 
 to some extent Sam Slick's ideas as to the value of our 
 colonies, and the incredible folly of those that wished to get 
 rid of them ; and that we may here find a clue to the 
 unmeasured contempt which the Prince used so often to 
 openly express for English politicians But he must have 
 been most interested in Ride and Misrule of the English in 
 America, one of the most profoundly philosophical and pro- 
 phetic works to be found in the literature of any country. 
 Published in England, and by Harper Brothers, New- 
 York, in 1851, a troubled time all over Europe, and 
 36
 
 even in America, which had its Tammany Hall rule, and, 
 later on, its " Know-nothing Movement," it pointed out that 
 American republican institutions, which dated back to the 
 old Puritans, were of slow growth, and could not be acquired 
 or preserved in European countries by revolutions and uni- 
 versal suffrage ; and he foretold the collapse of the French 
 Republic, the rise of Communism, the stern rule of self- 
 imposed Imperialism, and nearly all the leading features of 
 the political history of Europe and America since that date. 
 
 Time, however, had a marvel in store, the fruit of half a 
 century of social and political development, which even he 
 did not foresee — a French-Canadian Roman Catholic, sup- 
 ported by a Liberal majority from Quebec, ruling from ocean 
 to ocean over a new Dominion ! 
 
 Some of his views, visionary as they may have appeared 
 fifty years ago, seem to have taken a practical shape at the 
 Queen's Jubilee. 
 
 " The organization is all wrong. They are two people, but 
 not one. 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 tax on colonial produce, 
 and the colonies should not be allowed to tax British manu- 
 factures. All should pass free, as from one town to another 
 in England ; the whole of it one vast home market from 
 Hong-Kong to Labrador. . . . They should be repre- 
 sented in Parliament, help to pass English laws, and show 
 them what laws they want themselves. It should no more be 
 a bar to a man's promotion, as it is now, that he lived beyond 
 the sea, than being on the other side of the channel. It 
 should be our navy, our army, our nation. That's a great 
 word, but the English keep it to themselves, and colonists 
 have no nationality. They have no place, no station, no 
 
 37 
 
 9
 
 rank. Honors don't reach them ; coronations are blank days 
 to them ; no brevets go across the water except to the 
 English othcers, who are 'on foreign service in the colonies.' 
 No knighthood is known there — no stars — no aristocracy — no 
 nobility. They are a mixed race; they have no blood. They 
 are like our free niggers. They are emancipated, but they 
 haven't the same social position as the whites. The fetters 
 are off, but the caste, as they call it in India, remains. 
 Colonists are the Pariahs of the Empire." 
 
 Many persons have been surprised that the ablest colonial 
 statesmen and journalist since the days of Franklin, the 
 Hon. Joseph Howe, " the father of Responsible Government," 
 and an advocate of the Unity of the Empire, died without 
 having received any mark of Imperial recognition, while a 
 motley crowd of Maltese, Levantines and stray Englishmen 
 in the colonies were able to add a handle to their unknow n 
 names. That this was the case need not surprise us, for the 
 dispensing of such favors was (and we must trust no longer 
 is) in the hands of those who were able, from behind the 
 scenes, to pull the strings of the Dismemberment movement. 
 
 The Rev. George Grant, D.D., in a very able address at 
 Halifax, on the life and times of Joseph Howe, said : 
 
 " We are, all of us, pupils of Haliburton and Howe. Is 
 not this a proof that, if you would know those secrets of the 
 future which slumber in the recesses of a nation's thought, 
 unawakened as yet into consciousness, you must look for them 
 in the utterances of the nation's greatest sons ?" 
 
 Before closing this sketch it is but right to mention an 
 instance (the only one) in which the British Government 
 seemed disposed to pay a tribute to the ablest author alid the 
 most profound thinker that the Colonial Empire has yet 
 produced. As Judge Haliburton's unrivalled mastery of 
 38
 
 colonial questions eminently fitted him to be the Governor of 
 an important dependency, the Colonial Office offered to appoint 
 him President of Montserrat, a wretched little West Indian 
 Island, inhabited by a few white families and a thousand or 
 two of blacks. As the manufacture of Montserrat lime-juice 
 had not then been commenced, the island must have been 
 even more desolate and woe-begone than it now is. 
 
 " Judge Haliburton died at his residence at Isleworth, on 
 the banks of the Thames, where he had greatly endeared 
 himself to the people of the place during the few years which 
 he had spent among them, and was buried in the Isleworth 
 churchyard ; and, in accordance with one of his last wishes, 
 his funeral was plain and unostentatious." 
 
 " In the words of a local chronicler : — -' The village of Isle- 
 
 © 
 
 worth will henceforth be associated with the most pleasing 
 reminiscences of Mr. Justice Haliburton ; and the names of 
 Cowley, Thompson, Pope, and Walpole will find a kindred 
 spirit in the world-wide reputation of the author of Sam 
 Slick, who, like them, died on the banks of the Thames.'" * 
 
 In the same graveyard rests the immortal Vancouver. 
 Judge Haliburton, several years before his death, was told 
 by the sexton that a famous navigator was buried there, but 
 he did not remember the name, as it had become illegible on 
 the tombstone. It was found, on making enquiries, that the 
 person in question must have been Vancouver. A new 
 tombstone, with a suitable inscription, was placed over Van- 
 couver's grave ; and several years subsequently a tablet to 
 his memory was erected in the church. It is to be hoped 
 that the day will come when a suitable monument will be 
 raised to the great explorer ; and that Westminster Abbey 
 and St. Paul's may yet become the Valhalla, not only of the 
 Mother Country, but also of her Colonial Empire. 
 
 * Morgan's Bibliotheca Canadensis, p. 169. 
 
 39
 
 It matters not that there is no public memorial to an 
 author whose writings created among the masses a public 
 opinion in favor of the colonies that battled the dismember- 
 ment craze of English statesmen and theorists. lie will nave 
 a monument as long as the British Empire lasts. 
 
 lo
 
 _ 
 : 
 
 z
 
 HALIBURTON AS HUMORIST AND 
 DESCRIPTIVE WRITER. 
 
 BY. H. P. SCOTT, M.A., WINDSOR, N.S. 
 
 WHEN Haliburton first presents himself as a humorist 
 in the opening pages of " The Clockmaker," the 
 story-telling element is the most conspicuous. 
 His descriptive powers are not particularly noticeable until 
 he begins the third series with his admirable picture of " The 
 Prince's Lodge in Ruins." Character drawing again comes 
 later, and his best efforts in this line are to be found in "The 
 Old Judge." The influence of the " Bentley's Miscellany " 
 set, and the advantage of editorial revision and pruning are 
 apparent here also. 
 
 Probably the most carefully drawn of all his characters is 
 that of Stephen Richardson in the series of chapters entitled 
 " The Keeping Room of an Inn." He tries to put too much 
 into the creation of Sam Slick, making one instead of several 
 characters embodying distinct and, in some cases, antagonistic 
 traits. Dickens never wastes his material in this way. Every 
 character of his, however elaborately dressed up, stands for one 
 
 41
 
 simple quality. Baliburton spread the idea of Bam Slick 
 over a vast surface, trying to represent in him the genius of 
 the United Stairs with its many virtues and limitations. 
 Thus in "The Socdolager " introduced in the prefatory 
 
 chapter of "Sam Slick's Wise Saws," wo have a character 
 something like I'M ward Everett, the Unitarian preacher who 
 became a professor and president of Harvard University, then 
 politician and diplomatist. Clever, eloquent and versatile 
 — a type represented in American letters to-day by Edward 
 Eggleston — Everett also appears under his own name in an 
 early chapter of "The Clockmaker." Rev. Ahab Meldrum 
 embodies his views of camp-meeting excitement, in which he 
 has been followed by the late Dr. Holland in " Arthur 
 Bonnycastle " and by Mark Twain in one of his Mississippi 
 sketches. 
 
 President Felton of Harvard repaid Haliburton for satiris- 
 ing Everett by saying some uasty things about "The Clock- 
 maker." 
 
 It. is doubtful whether American readers and critics have 
 ever cheerfully acquiesced in the summary of their differentia 
 tion embodied in " Sam Slick." Readers may have done so, 
 but from occasional references it is surmised that the critics 
 are still very sore over the work. George William Curtis, 
 for instance, in a sketch in Harper's Easy Chair some time 
 ago, of the beginnings of literature in North America, stigma- 
 tizes Halliburton's creations as caricatures and extravaganzas, 
 seen without imagination, and drawn without skill or sym- 
 pathetic insight. To create some distinctly national type in 
 literature has always been the aim of the best writers in the 
 United States. Hawthorne Btudied and dreamed and wrote 
 a life-time on the subject. Carlyle, in one of his letters to 
 Emerson, asks him why he does not embody his ideas in some 
 42
 
 personal sketch. No one has better limned the salient 
 features of Americanism than Emerson in his aphoristic essays, 
 but he tells Carlyle frankly that he cannot create a representa- 
 tive character. W. D. Howells has essayed the task in 
 many elaborately drawn characters from Silas Lapham to 
 Northwick, the manufacturing defaulter, in "The Quality 
 of Mercy," and Jeff Durgin ; but his critics are obliged to 
 confess that they cannot remember even the names of half of 
 his characters. Dr. H. S. Peck, in the February Bookman, 
 discusses the possible ability of Mr. Howells to be the 
 writer of the long expected American Novel, but upon the 
 whole considers him ineligible as obscure and feeble in his 
 powers of characterization. For want of a more striking 
 subject for the great American Novel, how will Sam Slick 
 do ? Certainly he summarizes a great number of the national 
 characteristics, and his range is long and his eye compre- 
 hensive. He has one western type — Lucifer Wolfe, the pre- 
 cursor of Mark Twain's Mississippi heroes. 
 
 The question has often been asked where Haliburton got 
 such a clinging idea of the old-fashioned Yankee — the Yankee 
 of sixty years ago. The descendants of the expatriated 
 Loyalists scattered along the Nova Scotian sea-coast and 
 rivers may have supplied him with his material. The best 
 local description, perhaps, is that of the German and Dutch 
 settlement of Lunenburg contained in the chapter of " The 
 Old Judge," entitled " Hufeisen Bucht." The old Dutchman, 
 seated bolt upright in his chair surrounded by the goods 
 which he had found in the deserted French fort, elevating his 
 toe as if in derision of some gentleman at Lunenburtr — as 
 Rudolph, Von Zwicker or Oxuer, who had belonged to good 
 families in their own country, and who had in consequence 
 been the life-long objects of his envy and malevolence, and 
 
 43
 
 whom he thinks he has now got even with — is spiritedly 
 conceived and drawn. It is odd that no one has ever pro- 
 
 jivtril an annotated edition of these books. Many allusions 
 have already become obscure, and more are growing dim in 
 
 the popular memory. He speaks, for instance, of "Old .Mrs. 
 Puller, that married her sister's husband's brother" — Crane 
 Fuller that was — an evident allusion to the famous repartee 
 that Deacon Crane <, f ot off on Deacon Fuller who had inquired 
 of him the difference between certain species of wild-fowl. 
 Names of places and people, historical references and the like 
 will be the subject of debate before many years have passed 
 away. Now would be a good time for the publication of 
 such an edition while these things could be in part elucidated. 
 His letters, too, have never been published, and he must 
 have left unpublished, as every writer does, sketches which 
 the public would like to see. How eagerly everything that 
 Hawthorne ever put on paper has been seized upon and 
 printed ! Even inferior writers generally have friends who 
 consider it a sacred duty to bring out their posthumous 
 works. How many good things would have perished save 
 for this ! 
 
 If one were asked to give a selection of passages in which 
 Haliburton appears at his best as merely a humorist, the 
 following might be named : 
 
 The Deacon and the French Acadian Horsetrader. — "The 
 Attache," Chapter xxvii. 
 
 The Snow-wreath. — " Clockmaker," Chapter ix. 
 
 Bedding Old Clay.— "The Attache," Chapter xi. 
 
 Fire to the Dairy.— "The Attache," Chapter xxviii. 
 
 The Talisman. — "Clockmaker," second series. Chapter x. 
 
 Wihnot Springs. — (< Clockmaker," second series. Chapter \i. 
 
 A Pippin. — "Old Judge," Chapter xvi. 
 44
 
 Passages in which humor is intermingled with descriptive 
 touches : 
 
 A Hot Day. — " Wise Saws," Chapter xxiv. 
 
 A Picnic at La Have. — "Wise Saws," Chapter xxvi. 
 
 Aunt Thankful.— "Wise Saws," Chapter xx. 
 
 A Juicy Day in the Country. — " The Attache," Chapter ii. 
 
 Passages purely descriptive : 
 
 The Prince's Lodge. — "Clockmaker," third series. Chapter i. 
 
 A Long Night and a Long Story. — "Old Judge," Chap- 
 ter xiii. 
 
 The Lone House. — "Old Judge," Chapter cxl. 
 
 Hufeisen Bucht. — "Old Judge," Chapter xvii. 
 
 The Chesapeake in Halifax Harbor. — Murdoch's "His- 
 tory of Nova Scotia," Volume iii., page 352. 
 
 Louisbourg. — " Nature and Human Nature," Chapter xxv. 
 
 Sam Slick ranks with Pickwick, Dick Swiveller, the 
 Marquis of Steyne, Judge Pyncheon and the other greater 
 creations of fiction of the century. There are various stories 
 of how and where Haliburton captured him, whether from 
 the fund of stories of his coachman, Lennie Geldert, who 
 drove him round on circuit, or from Judge Peleg Wiswell, or 
 with a flesh-and-blood clockmaker, Seth ; but, after sifting all 
 of them, the conclusion is reached that he had, at most, but 
 shadows to assist him in embodying his idea. No type of 
 humor since My Uncle Toby has been so thoroughly worked 
 out as Sam Slick. The reader of the second part of " The 
 Attache " has a lurid picture, which fairly burns itself into 
 the memory, of the actual crime and spoliation which accom- 
 panied the outbreak of the Canadian rebellion, and which, 
 no doubt, tinged Haliburton's mind with a horror of extreme 
 popular movements. 
 
 Sam and his companion visit d'Anville's sunken fleet in a 
 
 45
 
 diving-bell. "The ships," lie Bays, "are still distinctly 
 risible in calm weather, and the rising ground in the neigh- 
 borhood, where the Due d'Anville and his mighty hosl were 
 buried, is again olothed with wood, and not to be distinguished 
 from the surrounding forest, excepl by the inequality of the 
 surface, caused by numerous trenches cut into ll to receive the 
 dead. The whole scene is one of Burpa Lng beauty and deep 
 and melancholy interest. The ruined lodge, the. sunken fleet, 
 the fatal encampment, the lovely and desolate cemetery of 
 those unfortunate strangers, form a more striking and painful 
 assemblage of objects than is to be found in any other part of 
 British America." 
 
 A summer's residence, some years ago, on the shores of 
 Bedford Basin, with its rarely-broken Sabbath stillness, made 
 me well acquainted with the peaceful beauties of the above 
 locality. It is an odd fact that the Duke of Kent's half- 
 dozen broken years' stay here is about the only romantic 
 occurrence in our later history. For a long time it formed 
 the one great subject about which gossips of a historical turn 
 of mind loved to talk. Old men and women living in Halifax 
 until recently remembered the Prince with his French friend, 
 Madame St. Laurent. On the Prince's marriage she went 
 into a convent. One stor} T ran that on their arrival here 
 Lady Inglis, the bishop's wife, cried, " Tut ! I won't call on 
 the nasty French hussy!" But she had to do it. 
 
 True, there is the story of the ghost of Dr. Copeland's wife, 
 which appeared to the brave Captain Torrens one lovely night 
 on Sable Island (told in Sam Slick's Wise Saws, chapter xvi.) ; 
 but there is nothing definite for the imagination to work on 
 except this semi-regal residence of Prince Edward, his father's 
 aversion, by Bedford Basin, the inner harbor of Chebucto. 
 In spite of the lapse of time and the complete absence of 
 46
 
 repairs, it is surprising how vivid an impression may be 
 obtained from the ruins of what the grounds were in their 
 prime. 
 
 Sam has a horse, "Old Clay," that will do his fourteen 
 miles an hour. " He can pick up miles on his feet, throw 'em 
 behind him faster than a steam doctor a racin' ofl* with 
 another man's wife." " Mr. Slick proposed drawing me in his 
 wagon to Horton, by the Mount Denson road, that I might 
 have an opportunity of seeing what he pz-onounced to be some 
 of the most beautiful scenery in the province. ... I 
 was by no means prepared to find a scene of such exquisite 
 beauty as now lay before me. I had seen at different times a 
 good deal of Europe and much of America, but I have seldom 
 seen anything to be compared to the view of the Basin of 
 Minas and its adjacent landscape, as it presents itself to you 
 on your ascent of Mount Denson (five miles below Windsor, 
 on the opposite shore of the Avon), and yet, strange to say, 
 so little is it known or appreciated here, that I never recollect 
 to have heard it spoken of before as anything remarkable." 
 Haliburton comments upon the rapid transmission of slang 
 words and phrases through the States, and points out the 
 great differences (greater in his time than now) between the 
 dialects and humor of the various sections of the country, 
 therein anticipating the learned disquisitions of Homer 
 Wilbur in "The Bigelow Papers." Finally, this curious pair 
 of tourists arrive at Slickville, where Sam is publicly enter- 
 tained, and shortly afterwards, on the strength of his 
 literal (?) reputation, appointed attache to the U. S. Lega- 
 tion in London. 
 
 In " The Attache," Sam comes up radiant as ever with his 
 social discoveries in England. The Derby, he opines, is the 
 best place in which to see the wealth of the country. He 
 
 47
 
 publishes, also, an interview with his chief, Edward Everett, 
 mi whom Haliburton seems to have a BpeciaJ "pick," now 
 introduced as Abednego Layman. "Books," he says, "spile 
 your mind. I wouldn't swap ideas with any man. The 
 Turks are so cursed lazy, tiny hire people to dance for 'cm. 
 The Knglish arc wuss, for they hire people to think for 'em. 
 Never read a book, Bquire ; always think for yourself." 
 
 Haliburton made the Yankee of literature. The English, 
 to this day, draw the old Sam Slick figure when they carica- 
 ture the people of the Union. As much as the English 
 travel over here, they have never accepted any other type of 
 American than the nasal-speaking, slangy, under-bred, half- 
 educated figment of the earlier tourists. So much for Hali- 
 burton's literary force. The man who could stamp into 
 such a nation the impression of his humor to last so many 
 years after his time, must have been not without some kind 
 of power. Haliburton's greatest success was achieved in the 
 conversational passages. In this medium he could be very 
 effective ; but, when he tried plain narrative, he was apt to 
 become dry and prosy. At Dutch painting, in the school of 
 broad humor, he was as good as any of his successors. 
 Whilst in Annapolis Royal, where the years of his earlier 
 manhood were passed, he resided in one of the most pictur- 
 esque and historically interesting nooks of America, and his 
 practice as a lawyer brought him into relations with a very 
 clearly-marked order of humanity. The descendants of those 
 Acadians, who were scattered along the Atlantic seaboard 
 by Governor Lawrence, are thickly settled along the shores 
 of Annapolis basin. Their queer habits and naive talk 
 furnished plenty of opportunities for the humorist. That 
 favorite poser of Slick's, "How many fins has a cod at a 
 word 1" was probably taken out of the mouth of some rakish 
 48
 
 schooner-skipper from St. Mary's Bay or Chegogin. For this 
 kind of writing by his 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 poi'ts 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 49
 
 better limes, those meteor terras 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 tin- 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 difference, 
 that they who go seldom return, except to speak of disap- 
 pointment and broken fortunes, anil 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 Tlias 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 ; 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 
 with its white stem and gaudy coloring, is relieved by a pale 
 grey tint, produced by the numerous branches of trees that 
 50
 
 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." 
 
 51

 
 HALIBURTON : THE MAN AND THE 
 
 WRITER. 
 
 BY F. BLAKE CROFTON, 
 Author of "The Major's Big-talk Stories," 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 resume 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
 
 among her 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, ;is 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 Alli- 
 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 181*2 visited England as an attache' of the American 
 Legation (!), 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 previously 
 been made by the British "Annual Register " for 1865, in its 
 obituary of the Judge. 
 
 Haliburton was appointed Chief Justice of the Inferior 
 Courts of Common Pleas for the Middle Division of Nova
 
 Scotia (an office which, by the way, is generally misnamed) ir. 
 the 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 " Encyclopaedia Britannica " says, " Within two years (of 
 his appointment) he resigned his seat on the bench " — an 
 error of just thirteen years ! Appleton's " Cyclopaedia 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 Fraser's Magazine a story entitled 
 1 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 were abolished, 
 and Haliburton appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court in 
 1840. Both events occurred in 1841. 
 
 The four books which alone narrate the sayings and doings 
 of the celebrated Samuel Slick, of Slickville, are, in their 
 chronological order, "The Clockmaker," "The Attache," 
 "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
 
 in '/'/<•• Xi'i'ii Scotian in 1833 and 183G, was published in buok 
 form in Halifax and London in 1837. The second series was 
 issued in 1838; the third in 1810. In most later editions 
 the three series make one volume. The cute dodges of the 
 olockmaker in pushing his trade are said to have been 
 reminiscences of suits tried by Haliburtoii, 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 
 Attache" 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, 1 shall cease to write." 
 But Haliburton's self-confidence grew with his fame, and he 
 failed to keep this modest resolution. 
 
 "The Attache," the two series of which appeared respec- 
 tively in 1843 and 18-14, 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 our 
 sketches of the English." "The Attache," 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 I nstanees," which has been given to the public, at 
 le it once, under its second title of "Sam Slick in Search of a 
 56
 
 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 redoubted 
 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 statement 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 researches, 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 Abbe" 
 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 "Rene 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
 
 The tale of the separated Acadian lovers, it is well known, 
 was bold 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 bad been related to 
 him by a parishioner of his, Mrs. llaliburton," 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 live 
 volumes, is the most important account of unimportant things 
 1 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 
 58
 
 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 Fraser's 
 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 
 
 59
 
 none is aroused, for the English traveller who listens to and 
 notes the Old Judge's tales, and adds his own experiences to 
 them. 1 u works designed to inform as much as to amuse, 
 this weakness of the main plot is not an unmixed defect, if it 
 he 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 (jf attaching his name thereto, to Messrs. Bentley and 
 Son. By this firm the copyright of the papers was resold to 
 Frederick Warne & Co., who published them in book form. 
 Owing, perhaps, to the fact that "The Season Ticket" 
 appeared originally without the author's name, and that it
 
 deals mainly, though not exclusively, with British topics, this 
 
 book was almost unknown in NoA'a Scotia a few years ago. 
 
 Indeed none of Judge Haliburton's friends or relations in the 
 
 Province, with whom I spoke on the subject, were aware of 
 
 the existence of this work. One of them having at first doubted 
 
 the authenticity of the book, and its name being omitted in 
 
 Allibone's Dictionary, the Bibliotheca Canadensis, and every 
 
 other list of Haliburton's works which I had seen, I wrote to 
 
 Messrs. Warne & Co., and by their courtesy ascertained the 
 
 facts stated above. The papers in The Dublin University 
 
 Magazine are correctly credited to Haliburton in the last 
 
 edition of the Index to Periodical Literature — a publication 
 
 which generally succeeds in tracing the authorship of unsigned 
 
 articles. " The Season Ticket " is important to the student 
 
 of Haliburton, showing, as it does, that his conservative and 
 
 imperialistic views, and his opinions of the l-esources and 
 
 needs of Nova Scotia and Canada, were not materially 
 
 changed in his old age. In this book, too, we may be sure 
 
 that the author expresses himself absolutely without fear or 
 
 favor, for it was evidently designed to remain anonymous. 
 
 Otherwise he would hardly have been bold enough to make a 
 
 gentleman (p. 123) group him with the two greatest writers 
 
 of the day and scoff at the influential Athenfeum Club, of 
 
 which Haliburton was a member. " Defend me from a learned 
 
 Club like mine ! " observes Mr. Cary. " The members are 
 
 not genial, and they must be incurable, when such men as 
 
 Thackeray, Sam Slick, and Dickens, who (to their credit be 
 
 it spoken) are all smokers, can't persuade them" — to have a 
 
 smoking room. 
 
 I have now noticed all of Haliburton's books, unless one 
 
 credited to him in Morgan's " Bibliotheca Canadensis," but 
 
 seemingly unknown to all his other biographers and friends, 
 
 is really his. This is "Kentucky, a Tale. London, 1834. 
 
 2 vols., 12mo." 
 
 61
 
 Besides his books TTaliburton published a few pamphlets, 
 including " A Reply to Lord Durham's Report/' and a couple 
 of speeches delivered in Crcat Britain. " A General Descrip- 
 tion of Nova Scotia," a pamphlet published in Halifax in 1825, 
 and which is attributed to ITaliburton in the " Bibliotheca 
 Canadensis," is in the same compilation also attributed to its 
 
 real author, Walter Bromley. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Judge Haliburton was an Epicurean philosopher, modified 
 a little, for the better by Christianity, and for the worse by 
 practical politics. He loved fun and creature comforts. He 
 smoked a great deal, he drank moderately, and he did not 
 try to conceal these weaknesses. 
 
 It must be admitted that he sometimes carried his love of 
 fun to unseemly lengths, and that even on the bench. A 
 well-known ex-governor of this Province humorously described 
 how on one occasion, when a very young lawyer, he was con- 
 ducting a cause before Haliburton, and how, during his 
 examination of a certain witness he was pleased to observe 
 his lordship apparently making careful and continuous notes. 
 All the time, however, the judge had been merely sketching 
 a caricature of the witness, who was afflicted with a most 
 colossal and peculiar nose! This sketch he afterwards showed 
 to the youthful barrister, much to his surprise and disillusion- 
 ment. It cannot be denied, either that Haliburton's keen 
 relish for the ludicrous has sometimes made him stoop to 
 unmistakable double entendres. In palliation of some of these, 
 at least, it may be urged that their wit preponderates over 
 their grossness. 
 
 Our author makes his "Old Judge" declare himself to be 
 " in religion a Churchman, and in politics a Conservative, as 
 is almost every gentleman in these colonies." His tastes and 
 62
 
 instincts were both conservative and aristocratic. He dis- 
 liked innovations, unless they were unquestionable improve- 
 ments. Certain articles of furniture, some of them solid, but 
 others lighter and flimsier, "are types," says the Old Judge, 
 " of the new and old generation ; for, alas, it is to be feared 
 that what has been gained in appearance has been lost in 
 substance, in things of far more value and importance." 
 Haliburton would have liked to see the old regime restored in 
 France, minus the feudal prerogatives whose abuse occasioned 
 the Revolution. Before that uprising, says his ideal divine, 
 Mr. Hopewell, (Attach^, c. 38), France had "a clergy of 
 gentry." " A mild, tolerant, gentle, humble creed, like that 
 of a Christian, should be taught and exemplified by a gentle- 
 man ; for nearly all his attributes are those of a Christian. 
 This is not theory. An Englishman is himself a practical 
 example of the benefits resulting from the union between the 
 Church and State, and the clergy and the gentry." In these 
 and many other of his utterances Mr. Hopewell is evidently 
 voicing the Judge's own views, tinctured by his affectionate 
 intercourse with the venerable Abbe Sigogne, an exile of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 Failing a union of Church and State, Mr. Hopewell 
 believed in fixed stipends and fixed tenure for clergymen. 
 Where their bread and butter depends upon their flock, 
 there must be, he thought, a temptation to preach only 
 popular doctrines. He is made to describe his own humiliat- 
 ing experiences. He was "catechised like a converted 
 heathen." Various parishioners refused to pay their contri- 
 butions ; one because the pastor didn't join the temperance 
 society and therefore countenanced drunkenness ; another 
 because he smoked, and tobacco was raised by slaves ; 
 another because he prayed for a rascally President ; another 
 
 63
 
 because he was too Calvinistic ; another because he was an 
 Arminian. Tn consequence this excellent parson was well- 
 Iligh starved. Under the voluntary system, thought llali- 
 1 mrton, a minister is in danger either of losing his soul to 
 save his body, or of losing his body to save his soul. 
 
 Our author disapproved of voting by ballot and universal 
 suffrage. To the latter Mr. Hopewell traced the repudiation 
 of their debts by certain States of the Union. " When we 
 speak," he said, " of the honor of the American people and of 
 the English people we speak of two different things, because 
 the word people is not used in the same sense. . . . The 
 question of payment or non-payment in the repudiating 
 States has been put to every male in those States 
 over the age of twenty-one, and repudiation has been 
 the result" (Attache, c. 52). And he declared that the 
 national debt of England would also be repudiated, if the 
 decision rested with all the adults of the United Kingdom. 
 " Now," observed the same reverend gentleman to Sam Slick, 
 at a time when the franchise was still restricted, " now men 
 of property and education make laws to govern rogues and 
 vagabonds, but by your beautiful scheme of universal suffrage 
 rogues and vagabonds will make laws to govern men of 
 property and character." 
 
 Judge Haliburton, in his historical works, opposed the 
 granting of responsible government to the colonies, and Mr. 
 Hopewell is made to utter a set tirade against it in " The 
 Attache " (c. 43). 
 
 Our author held that the tyranny of mobs and majorities 
 may be quite as bad and unbearable as that of despots. This 
 opinion is expressed at length by " the Squire " in his parallel 
 between Russia and the United States, and by Mr. Hopewell 
 in his parallel between the latter country and Great Britain, 
 64
 
 with its constitutional antidotes to ephemeral fads and 
 frenzies. These parallels are to be found, respectively, in 
 chapters 12 and 15 of the Second Series of "The Clock - 
 maker." 
 
 Under democratic forms of government, Mr. Hopewell 
 thought, the parable of the bramble, elected King of trees, is 
 perpetually illustrated. "Theolive, the fig and the vine decline 
 the honor. Content to remain in the sphere in which Provi- 
 dence has placed them, performing their several duties in a way 
 creditable to themselves and useful to the public, they prefer 
 pursuing the even tenor of their way to being transplanted 
 into the barren soil of politics, where a poisonous atmosphere 
 engenders a feeble circulation and a sour and deteriorated 
 fruit. Republicanism has caused our country to be overrun 
 by brambles. The Reform Bill has greatly increased them in 
 England, and responsible government has multiplied them 
 tenfold in the colonies." 
 
 The ultra conservatism of our author peeps forth again in 
 the clockmaker's funny classification of colonial patriots 
 (Clockmaker, 3, c. 13). His "true patriot," it will be 
 noticed, is simply a high-minded tory, " who supports existin' 
 institutions as a whole, but is willin' to mend or repair any 
 part that is defective." But staunch conservative as he was, 
 Haliburton could see and deplore some wrongs and abuses that 
 professed levelers wholly ignored. 
 
 Politics, in our author's estimation, was a poor and over- 
 crowded business eve^where, but especially in the colonies. 
 " It would amuse, or rather I should say disgust you," says 
 Barclay in "The Old Judge," "to see how men and not 
 measures, office and not principle, is at the bottom of our 
 colonial politics." Sam Slick suggested that a law should be 
 enacted against quack politicians, as being infinitely more 
 5 65
 
 dangerous than quack doctors. In spite, however, of his 
 pessimistic views about politicians, Ilaliburton believed that 
 neither political party, here or elsewhere, would think so 
 bitterly of the other party if it studied its aims and arguments 
 faithfully and thoroughly. But this is well-nigh impossible, 
 for as the clockmaker observed, " both are fooled and gulled 
 
 by their own designing champions." 
 
 ****** 
 
 To this petty game of politics he lamented that his country- 
 men devoted far too much attention ; and he exhausted his 
 stores of epigram and ridicule in trying to open their eyes to 
 the fact. If Cumberland folk, said Sam Slick, would attend 
 more to rotations than elections, and to top-dressing than re- 
 dressing, it would be well for them. To a fisherman who 
 boasted that he had come from the biggest political meeting 
 he ever saw, Slick retorted that by so doing he had missed 
 the bisrtrest meeting he had ever seen— of mackerel. Ilali- 
 burton felt the truth of Goldsmith's lines : 
 
 " How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
 
 The part which laws or Kings can cause or cure ! " 
 
 Yet he saw too many of his countrymen waiting inertly for 
 political panaceas, or else wasting their energy in clamoring 
 for them. One third of the day, according to Mr. Slick, was 
 usually given to work, two-thirds of it was " bio win' time." 
 " What the Irish and machinery don't do for 'em," says Steve 
 Richardson, " they expect legislators to do." Nova Scotians, 
 says another of Haliburton's characters, have " everything but 
 enterprise, and that, I do believe in my soul, they expect to 
 find a mine of and dig out of the earth as they do coal." 
 
 It is singularly characteristic of Ilaliburton that he 
 attributed these alleged failings of his countrymen partly to 
 66
 
 " the almost universal suffrage that exists in the Province." 
 " Where the lower orders form the majority of electors," 
 observed the Old Judge, " their vanity is appealed to and not 
 their judgment — their passions and not their reason ; and the 
 mass, instead of being elevated in intelligence by the exercise 
 of political power, is lowered by the delusion and craft of 
 which it is made the willing victim. Nova Scotians have 
 been so often assured that they are the ablest, the wisest and 
 best of men, though their rulers are both ignorant and 
 corrupt, and that they have a rich and fertile country, blessed 
 with a climate more salubrious and agreeable than that of 
 any other part of the world, they begin to think that law and 
 not industry, government and not enterprise is all that is 
 wanting." And certainly if the electors were actually per- 
 suaded that they possessed every moral and material factor of 
 prosperity, and nevertheless were not prosperous, they would 
 be easily induced to lay the blame on their government and to 
 concentrate their efforts to reverse its disastrous policy. "If 
 any man were to say to them that their winters are long and 
 severe, their springs late, cold and variable . . . ; or venture 
 to assert that, although the province abounds with mineral 
 wealth, skill and capital and population are necessary to its 
 successful development ; or that, although the innumerable 
 streams that intersect the country in every direction are 
 admirably adapted for manufactories, the price of labor is yet 
 too high to render such speculations safe or profitable ; and, 
 above all, to tell them that they are idle, conceited and 
 ignorant ; " the result would be, in the Old Judge's opinion, 
 that the demagogues would denounce him as " an enemy to 
 the people, a vile slanderer and a traitor to his country." 
 
 According to Mr. Slick, Nova Scotians yielded to laziness 
 and procrastination ivithout any loss of self-esteem. Like 
 
 67
 
 many other sluggards, they had their conscientious reasons : 
 " When the spring comes and the fields are dry enough to be 
 sowed, they have all to be plowed, 'cause fall rains wash the 
 lands too much for fall plowin'. Well, the plows have to be 
 mended and sharpened, 'cause ivhat's the use of doin' that afore 
 it's wanted ? Well, the wheat gets in too late, and then 
 comes rust, but whose fault is that? Why, the climate to he 
 sure, for Nova Scotia aint a bread country." 
 
 The same acute observer attributed the more general 
 business success of the Yankees mainly to their more per- 
 sistent industry. Their farmers had an endless round of 
 employment, as explained in detail in " The Clockmaker " 
 (1, c. 23). " Instead of racin' over the country, like a young 
 doctor, to show how busy a man is that has nothin' to do, as 
 Bluenose does, and then takes a ' blowin' time,' tve keep a 
 rael travellin' gait, an eight-mile-an-hour pace, the whole 
 year round." 
 
 But, though he freely criticised his countryman's faults, 
 with a view to their reform, Judge Haliburton also recog- 
 nized and advertised the many advantages of his native 
 province. There is an enthusiastic enumeration of its natural 
 resources in the second series of "The Clockmaker," chapter 
 19, where Slick foretells that Nova Scotia is destined to have 
 the greatest trade, the greatest population, the most manu- 
 factures, and the most wealth of any state this side of the 
 water. The most intelligent and high-minded of the person- 
 ages introduced in "The Season Ticket," draws a flattering 
 picture of the Maritime Provinces, closing in these words : 
 " There is no point in Nova Scotia more than thirty miles 
 distant from navigable water. The whole of the borders of 
 the latter province are washed by the ocean, which in that 
 region furnishes one of the most extensive and valuable 
 68
 
 fisheries in the world. Nova Scotia abounds with coal, iron 
 ore, gypsum, grindstone, slate, lead, manganese, plumbago, 
 copper, etc., which, being recently liberated from the monopoly 
 under which they have so long been excluded from public 
 competition, will soon attract the capital and skill requisite 
 for their development. It is the most eastern part of 
 America, and of course the nearest to Europe. It is not too 
 much to say that its wonderful mineral wealth, its noble 
 harbors, its fertile soil, its extensive fisheries, its water 
 powers, its temperate climate arising from its insular position, 
 and last — not least — its possession of the winter outlet and 
 through passage by railway from England to New Brunswick, 
 Canada and the United States, all indicate that it is destined 
 for an extended commerce, for the seat of manufactories, the 
 support of a large population, and for wielding a controlling 
 power on the American continent." 
 
 These and other good words said of Nova Scotia in " The 
 Season Ticket," which was published anonymously and after 
 the author had finally left the province, cannot have been 
 written to win local popularity, but from a genuine appreci- 
 ation of his native land. 
 
 To attain the prosperity which nature seemed to have 
 destined for them, Nova Scotians wanted, according to Hali- 
 burton, more zeal and concentration in their work ; less 
 attention to politics (though not less watchfulness of political 
 place-holders) ; less false pride (which set some people against 
 agriculture and other honorable industries); more confidence 
 in domestic enterprises ; and at the same time a little less 
 self-complacency, that they might recognize their faults and 
 reform them. 
 
 Only a very loose thinker can confound the satirist of a 
 nation's weaknesses, like Haliburton, or even a caricaturist 
 
 69
 
 of them, like Dickens, with the pessimists who, blind 
 to their country's resources, magnify and parade and harp 
 upon its drawbacks. To call attention to the remediable 
 faults of one's countrymen is the action of a friend ; to ad- 
 vertise the irremediable disadvantages of one's country is the 
 action of an enemy. There can be little doubt that Huli- 
 burton's satirical criticisms have borne wholesome fruit, first 
 in some country towns and districts and later in slow old 
 Halifax itself. Yet, in the opinion of some observers, every 
 one of the defects which he pointed out remains to-day, if 
 not in the whole province, at least in sections of it. At all 
 events Haliburton's vicarious sarcasms had not produced the 
 swift and signal results which he doubtless fancied he dis- 
 cerned, and which Sam Slick complacently notes in " Nature 
 and Human Nature" (c. 18). " I have held the mirror up 
 to these fellows," he says, " to see themselves in, and it has 
 scared them so they have shaved slick up and made them- 
 selves decent. . . . The blisters I have put on their 
 vanity stung 'em so they jumped high enough to see the right 
 road, and the way they travel ahead now is a caution to 
 snails." 
 
 Since Haliburton's death, Dudley Warner has written his 
 " Baddeck " ; Miss Reeves has laid the scene of her " Pilot 
 Fortune " in Digby County ; C. G. D. Roberts and Grace 
 Dean McLeod have written various tales of the Province ; 
 Professor de Mille has made Nova Scotia the theatre of the 
 adventures of the " B.O.W.C." and the "Grand Pre" School "; 
 Carman, Roberts, Lockhart and Eaton have sung of Acadian 
 scenery; the Abbe Casgrain has made his " Pe'lerinage au 
 Pays d'Evangeline " ; 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
 
 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 
 obsolescent, 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 hospitality, he thought. One of his characters 
 notices " the injurious 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. In "The Old Judge" 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 to 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
 
 (which I call the naked truth) between every two of Madeira. 
 Ah, here is the brandy, lawyer ! Your very good health, sir 
 — pray help yourself ; and Mr. Prothonotary, here's better 
 manners to you in future. Seniores priores, sir, that's the 
 rule." 
 
 It was a fancy of the old Greeks that the gods sent a judi- 
 cial blindiu'ss 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 
 rent 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 flame that promised to devour them. Haliburton de- 
 scribes (Old Judge, c. 16) how the walls of a Nova Scotian 
 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
 
 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 Yarmouth, 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 market at the capital. At the other harbors 
 farther to the eastward, the coal trade and the fisheries 
 engross most of the conversation. You hear continually of 
 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
 
 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 Chesoncooker 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 lGth chapter of the same book. 
 And the equally picturesque costume of the Digby Acadienne 
 is sketched in " The Old Judge " (c. 16). 
 
 Among the features of the Acadian climate which our 
 author faithfully and graphically describes, are 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 
 sylvan summer life in Nova Scotia that has yet appeared in 
 prose. 
 
 There is a wholesome moral in the contrast between the 
 big, untidy, bleak and comfortless farmhouse described in the 
 first series of "The Clock maker " (c. 28), and the neat, well- 
 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
 
 picture of Captain Dechainps 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 
 narroiver 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 
 
 75
 
 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 that " 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 humorous 
 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 Peabody finds the cause of this popu- 
 larity in the fact that the Irish are " the boys for Lamen- 
 76
 
 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, / 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 Europe 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
 
 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. 25) : " 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 Kong to Labrador." In " The Attache " 
 (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 Review for 
 January, 1844, Felton attributed what he terms "the antiquated 
 political absurdities" of the judge to "the belittling effects of the 
 
 79
 
 hi fact, the main cause of discontent among educated and 
 pelf reliant colonists, 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, 
 
 " Perhaps in this neglected spot 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 certain description." George 
 Washington, Mr. Hopewell hinted, might never have led the 
 insurgent 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 under 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 Drura- 
 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. Cro/ton, in " The 
 Atlantic Monthly " for March, 1892, 
 
 80
 
 to prevent dangerous disaffection : their representatives " will 
 be safety-valves to let off steam." Our author thought the 
 North American colonies had reached a period 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 (Natui'e and Human Nature, 
 c. 19) things can't and wont remain long as they 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." We 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 
 (Season 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 81
 
 provide a safe, easy and expeditious route to Eraser's River, 
 mi 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 
 82
 
 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 be 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, as our author found them, 
 shrewd, quick, energetic, enterprising. They were generous, 
 too, and, in his opinion, "those who have desci'ibed 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 off" 
 (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
 
 thai if a young English commissariat otlieei went to his 
 aative Onion County, Connecticut, he could marry the richest 
 •lc i t-1 in it, merely on account of the imposing length of his 
 title I >eputy -Assistant Commissary-( General. 
 
 The acampa 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 
 K.'\. Mr. Hopewell laments (Attache*, c. 29) that "emancipa- 
 tion and temperance have superseded the Scriptures in the 
 States. Formerly they preached religion there, hut now they 
 only preach about niggers and rum." In the fourth chapter of 
 "The Season Ticket," the chronicler very minutely notes and 
 comments on the various evasions of the prohibitory law in 
 Maine. 
 
 Sam Slick thus epigrammatically characterises his country- 
 men : " Drag is a good dog and Holdfast is a hetter one, but 
 what do you sa}' to a cross of the two 1 ? And that's just what 
 we are." 
 
 Americans, Halihurton 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, 
 believing slaves to be generally happier than peasants, may 
 be 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
 
 church (the Roinan Catholic, as successive censuses would 
 
 indicate) ; and there would be a civil war on the question of 
 
 state-rights. " General Government and State Government," 
 
 said Mr. Slick, "every now and then square off and spar, and 
 
 the first blow given will bring a genu-ine set-to." 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Among Haliburton's distinctive gifts was 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 to hide 'em," 
 philosophises Mr. Slick. "No man, nor woman nother," 
 opined the same philosopher, "can be a general favorite and 
 be true." " A long face is plaguy apt to cover a long con- 
 science," says Parson Hopewell. The only good of a college 
 education is " to show how devilish little other people know," 
 according to some cynic introduced by our author. And 
 various personages of his utter the following discerning 
 observations : " There is a private spring to every one's 
 affections ; if he can find that and touch it, the door will fly 
 open." '• A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy ; 
 the smile that accepts the lover bafore words are spoken, and 
 the smile that alights on the first-born baby and assures it of 
 a mother's love." "A good temper must be kept cool ; even 
 sugar, when fermented, makes vinegar." " Though there be 
 more refinement in the citizen, there is less heart than in the 
 country man. Before you can impart its brightness to steel, 
 you must harden its texture." 
 
 The last two quotations illustrate our author's singular and 
 unfailing facility for finding similes and metaphors to eluci- 
 
 85
 
 date a speaker's meaning. I..: m ■ add another quaintly 
 expressive figure. I think it is in "The Old Judge" that 
 si.mebody talks of " a dusky night, when the moon looks like 
 a dose of castor oil in a glass of cider." 
 
 Sere is one of the lessons of the French Revolution in a 
 nutshell: " Concession never stopt agitation since the world 
 was squeezed out of a curd ; it only feeds it. Throwin 1 sops 
 to varmint only brings 'em back again ; and when you have 
 nothin' left to throw to 'em, they are plaguy apt to turn to 
 and tare you to pieces." 
 
 Here and there the reader is tickled by some quaint 
 original conceit. Some stokers on the Great Western are 
 represented as having "sour, Cameronian-looking faces, that 
 seem as if they were dreadfully disappointed they were not 
 persecuted any more." A looking-glass is styled a woman's 
 greatest enemy (Season Ticket, p. 286) not because it 
 reflects falsely but because it reflects a false face. When she 
 consults her glass she is looking at her dearest friend, and is 
 unconsciously disposed to look her very best. Hence the 
 mirror gives every woman an exaggerated opinion of her own 
 attractions. 
 
 With many readers, Halliburton's popularity rests upon his 
 peculiar gifts as a raconteur. A good memory and a fertile 
 imagination both aided him in constructing his stories, of 
 which many are wholly or partly true, while many are purely 
 fictitious. " Most of the anecdotes in those books called 
 'The Clockmaker ' and 'Attache' are real ones," says the 
 chronicler of the latter work (c. 52). 
 
 Sometimes our author seems to moot a subject merely to 
 
 introduce an anecdote. And the connection between subject 
 
 and anecdote is sometimes so thin that it might be invisible 
 
 if it were not specially pointed out. This criticism applies 
 
 80
 
 more particularly to the narratives of Mr. Slick, who is 
 designed to be a somewhat inconsequent spinner of yarns, 
 and who, indeed, once pleaded guilty to making " one of my 
 ramblin' speeches," " with capital stories that illustrated 
 everything but the resolution." 
 
 It would be about as impracticable to select the best 
 dozen, or score, of Haliburton's yarns as it would be to do 
 that favorite modern puzzle — to " name the best one hundred 
 books." His tales are multitudinous. They are of all kinds 
 and characters, and illustrate most of his characteristics, 
 especially his ingenuity, power of imagination and keen relish 
 for the ludicrous. I may be permitted, however, to refer to 
 a few anecdotes which notably display these qualities — to the 
 tale of the broken-down old slave, for instance, who was 
 cunningly persuaded to buy his freedom by his master's 
 assurance that he was quite sound and had a deal of work in 
 him yet, and who then sued his master for breach of war- 
 ranty and forced him to refund the purchase-money ; to the 
 tale of a Mormon in delirium tremens (Season Ticket) who 
 fancied himself a " rooster " and his wives hens, and beat and 
 pecked at the latter because they wouldn't roost on the 
 garden-fence with their heads under their wings ; to the tale 
 of the Quaker and the marine insurance money (Clock- 
 maker, 2, 13), a nice case for casuists; to the tale of Sam 
 Slick saving a boy's life and getting "more kicks than half- 
 pence " as his reward (Nature and Human Nature, c. 4) ; 
 to the tale of the Yankee who got out of a fine imposed by a 
 grandmotherly law for smoking by brazenly denying that his 
 cigar was alight, inducing the constable to detect his false- 
 hood by taking a whiff himself, and then threatening the 
 officer with a fine for his own violation of the law ; to the 
 tale of how Sam Slick learned Gaelic and taught a pretty girl 
 
 87
 
 English "ii the object lessen Bystem (Nature and Human 
 Nature, c. •">) ; and bo the tale of the Scotch sergeant's mis 
 understandings and mortifications while inquiring about the 
 name and nature of a moose (ibid. c. 9). 
 
 Specimens of our author's broader and more farcical humor 
 m.iv I) ■ found in the finale to the Governor's dinner party, 
 and in the yam 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 fur 
 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 purchases and the Child's legs being 
 naked, he "had an artist to paint trousers an a pair of laced 
 boots upon him," to make bum "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 " better- Hag 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 double entendres, led him also to perpetrate some pretty 
 bad puns. How strong this temptation must have been on 
 occasions may be 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
 
 Haliburton felt very deeply indeed, and to which he often 
 recurred. " He who called out the militia," complains a 
 colonial Loyalist, " and quelled the late rebellion amid a 
 shower of balls, was knighted. He who assented amid a 
 shower of eggs to a bill to indemnify the rebels, was created 
 an earl. Now to pelt a governor-general with eggs is an 
 overt act of treason, for it is an attempt to throw off the 
 yolk." Reckless punning marked our author's conversation 
 as well as his writings. He was notorious for it among his 
 classmates at college. He displayed it occasionally on the 
 bench. A man once begged exemption from jury duty on 
 the ground of having a certain skin disease vulgarly known 
 as the itch. " Scratch that man ! " promptly directed the 
 judge. 
 
 Arteinus Ward was not without warrant in terminer Hali- 
 burton the founder of the American school of humor, for 
 most of its phases are illustrated in his works. The affected 
 simplicity of Mark Twain is anticipated in the second chapter 
 of "Nature and Human Nature." Prototypes of Mrs. Part- 
 ington may be found in Mrs. Figg and the female servant in 
 " The Letter-Bag " and in an old woman in " The Season 
 Ticket." Several American jests and jocular phrases are 
 apparently borrowed from Haliburton. In "The Old Judge" 
 an Indian explains to the governor, who expresses surprise 
 at seeing him drunk so soon again, that it is " all same 
 old drunk." 
 
 Mr. D. R. Locke ("Petroleum V. Nasby ") told me that he 
 once made quite a hit in a stump speech by dividing the 
 voters of his country into " men with clean shirts and Demo- 
 crats." I wonder whether he had read the definitions quoted 
 by Sam Slick of a Tory ("a gentleman every inch of him 
 and he puts on a clean shirt every day ") and of a
 
 Whig ("a gentleman every other inch of him and he puts on 
 an unbilled shirt every other day "). Everybody has laughed 
 
 at Tojtsy's i'lr.i that she was not made but "growed." About 
 fifteen years before the publication of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
 in the first series of "The Clockmakcr " (c. 12), a country girl 
 being asked where she was brought up, replied in these 
 winds : " Why, I guess 1 wasn't brought up at all, I growed 
 up." 
 
 The Tewkesbury workhouse people (or General Butler ') 
 may have taken the notion of tanning paupers' skins from the 
 Connecticut pedler mentioned in "The Season Ticket " (p. 49) 
 who bought a nigger's body "of the sheriff on spekelat ton, 
 and hired a doctor to take his hide off, and he dressed it with 
 alum and lime, and cut it into narrow pieces and made razor 
 strops of it." 
 
 From time to time some wit-borrower suggests the advisa- 
 bility of freezing, or mesmerizing, or hypnotizing passengers as 
 a sovereign remedy for sea-sickness. I wonder whether this 
 suggestion was jirst made in the Shareholder's letter in " The 
 Letter-Bag," where it is shown that this plan would be 
 economical for the company, as well as pleasant for the 
 passengers. 
 
 If one wished to libel Haliburton, one might argue plaus- 
 ibly that he furnished the model for "Peek's Bad Boy," for 
 there is in "The Letter- Bag " an epistle from a certain enfant 
 terrible, who plays a series of tricks almost as nefarious as 
 those of Peck's monstrosity. They range from putting gla IS 
 in passenger's boots, for the pleasure of hearing them swear, 
 to removing a leaf from his father's sermon, for the pleasure 
 of hearing "the old man " talk admiringly about "the beauty 
 — of — of the devil and all his works ! " 
 
 Not only have modern funny men taken hints from Mali 
 90
 
 burton, but modern journalists have sometimes appropriated 
 his anecdotes holus-bolus or with variations. The following 
 from the French passenger's missive in "The Letter-Bag" 
 was adapted by one or more newspapers not very long ago, 
 and spoiled in the adapting: " To-day steward took hold of 
 de skylight and said 'look out.' Well, I put up my head for 
 to 'look out,' and he shut down de sash on it and gave me a 
 cut almost all over my face with pains of glass, and said, 
 ' Dat is not de way to look out, you should have took your 
 head in.' Dat is beating de English into your head wit de 
 devil to it likewise." A Halifax weekly, in 1885, offered a 
 prize for the best original story, and awarded half of the prize 
 money to a mere rechauffe of a yarn spun in " Wise Saws." 
 
 Haliburton pointed the shafts of his sarcasm usually at 
 types and classes, seldom at individuals. He saw an unoccu- 
 pied field for a satirist at home, and he proceeded to occupy 
 it. "The absurd importance attached in this country to 
 trifles," observes one of his personages, " the grandiloquent 
 language of rural politicians, the flimsy veil of patriotism 
 under which selfishness strives to hide . . . present many 
 objects for ridicule and satire." Illustrations of his satiric 
 power may be found in his sketches of the Governor's aides- 
 de-camp in " The Old Judge," and of the Americans " who 
 ascend the Rhine that they may have an opportunity of 
 boasting of a larger American river " (Season Ticket, pp. 90, 
 91) ; in the flood of irony which is poured upon the false 
 distinctions between right and wrong that prevailed among 
 another type of Americans (Clockmaker, 2, c. 10); in the 
 " letter from a traveller before he has travelled," ridiculing 
 superficial English observers with preconceived notions about 
 America (Letter-Bag) ; in the letter from a New York 
 "Loco-foco" {ibid.), which settles the affairs of England with 
 
 self-satisfied ignorance. 
 
 91
 
 Colonial bishops an- nut exempt from the caustic atten- 
 tions of our author : " They have (Old -J u.1lc<*, o. 3) one grand 
 object in view from the momenl of their landing in a colony ; 
 
 and that is the erection of a cathedral so large as to contain 
 all the churchmen of the province, and so expensive as to 
 exhaust all the liberality of their friends ; and this unfinished 
 monument of ill-directed zeal they are sure to place in a 
 
 situation where it can he of no use \vhate\er." 
 
 As a general rule, the style of our author is less terse than 
 that of most modern American humorists. Ili^ effects are 
 produced by ludicrous situations and grotesque conceits mor ! 
 often than by tricks of construction. His sentences are 
 seldom framed to rouse the flagging attention of the reader 
 by sudden jolts or jerks. Bere and there, however, he dis- 
 plays the piquant flippancy and careless exaggeration of a 
 modern paragraphist. 
 
 He used dialogue copiously, as a means to make his books 
 and opinions popular. "Why is it," asks Sam Slick (Wise 
 Saws, c. 19), " if you read a book to a man you set him to 
 sleep ? Just because it is a book and the language aint com 
 mon. Why is it if you talk to him In; will sit up all night 
 with you 1 ? Just because it's talk, the language of natur'." 
 And written chat, he thought, was the next best medium to oral 
 chat for holding the attention of all classes (for " the test of 
 a real genu-ine 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 matter or in manner, and few of his 
 dramatis persona, if they display any peculiarities of idiom,
 
 are made to use the same dialect consistently thi*oughout. 
 Even the spelling that is used to convey provincial mispro- 
 nunciations is capriciously varied. And our author's charac- 
 ters sometimes stray from the main subject of discussion with 
 an abruptness that in real life would surprise and offend. 
 
 In these particulars Haliburton displays the carelessness 
 and want of finish which are among his chief defects. 
 Another fault also arising from carelessness is his too frequent 
 repetition, both of ideas and forms of expi'ession. 
 
 When Haliburton exerted himself he was capable of rising 
 to a high degree of eloquence and impressiveness. When he 
 wrote carelessly he was liable to become diffuse or stilted. 
 Similar comments have been made by men who have heard 
 him speak. His ordinary speeches are said to have been little 
 above the average, while parts of his set orations, notably of 
 his plea for abolishing the test oath in Nova Scotia, were 
 powerful and impressive in the extreme. 
 
 Our author is sometimes vivid and brilliant in his descrip- 
 tions of nature. Witness his detailed contrast between the 
 scenery of the White Mountains and the storied and varying 
 beauties of Killarney, in "The Season Ticket" (pp. 31, 32). 
 But he makes more hits as a portrait, than as a landscape, 
 painter. The sketch of a girl's " company face " (ibid. p. 
 327) is admirable, and so is the hypocritical thief's make-up, 
 to impose upon the jury, in "The Clockmaker " (2, c. 10). 
 In "The Attache" Sam Slick takes off, in a few characteristic 
 touches, the popular Cheltenham preacher who advertises the 
 frivolous gaieties of the place by violently denouncing them ; 
 and the fashionable Cheltenham doctor who dexterously 
 humors the whims of his hypochondriac patients, and, through 
 the gratitude of his professional brethren, constantly " gains 
 new patients by praising every London doctor individually, 
 
 93
 
 and only damning them in a lump." There is a broken-down, 
 drunken, Boured remnant of what was once an English 
 Bcholar and gentleman introduced in a Bingle chapter of "The 
 Clockmaker" (2, o. 19). The portrait is almost too gloomy 
 to reproduce in its entirety, but it is wondrously true to 
 nature the spendthrift generosity, the impatience of Yankee- 
 ism,, the fretful outbursts of jaundiced eloquence:— 
 
 "' Curse the /ocation,' he exclaimed, 'then; is no location 
 like Old England."' '"On this side the water'" he 
 found " ' nothing approaching the class of gentry. 
 What little they have here, sir, arc second hand airs copied 
 from poor models that necessity forces out here. It is the 
 farce of high life below stairs, sir, played in a poor theatre to 
 a provincial audience.' ' And again he speaks bitterly of 
 " • the sickly waxwork imitation of gentility here, the faded 
 artificial flower of fashion, the vulgar pretension, the con- 
 temptible struggle for precedence. Poor as 1 am, humble as 
 I am, and degraded as I am — for I am all three now — I have 
 seen better days, and ... I know what T am talking 
 about. There's nothing beyond respectable mediocrity here. 
 Little ponds never hold big fish ; there is nothing 
 but pollywogs, tadpoles and minims in them. Look at them 
 as they swim thro' the shallow water of the margins of their 
 little muddy pool, following some small fellow an inch long, 
 the leader of the shoal, that thinks himself a whale. 
 (Jo to every press, and see the stuff that is printed ; go to the 
 people, and see the stuff that is uttered or swallowed, and 
 then, tell me this is a location for anything above mediocrity.' 
 
 "'What keeps you here then 1 ?' said Mr. Slick, 'if it is 
 
 such an eveilastin' miserable country as you lay it out to be?' 
 
 ' I'll tell you, sir,' said he, and he drained off the whole of the 
 
 brandy, as if to prepare for the effort — 'I will tell you what 
 
 94
 
 keeps me,' and he placed his hand on his knees, and looking 
 the Clockmaker steadily in the face until every muscle worked 
 with emotion — 'I'll tell you, sir, if you must know — my mis- 
 fortune.'" Then he fell from his chair. 
 
 Next to Saui Slick himself the Reverend Mr. Hopewell is 
 the personage with whom we are made most intimate in the 
 pages of Haliburton. Mr. Hopewell is morally consistent 
 throughout. We are given his character in pieces, but the 
 pieces fit. He utters no ignoble sentiment and does no 
 questionable deed. He disliked puritans and ascetics, and 
 used to say that youth, innocence and cheerfulness were the 
 Three Graces. " The sight of the sea, a great storm, a starry 
 sky or even a mere flower " would send him into a reverie or 
 rouse him to an ecstasy. He thundered like a Hebrew prophet 
 against the impious notion of utilizing the water-power of 
 Niagara. His saintly tolerance did not prevent his telling 
 his pharisaic flock their besetting sins and weaknesses. 
 Displaced by them, he strove to persuade himself that he was 
 at fault and not they; he would rather have found himself in 
 the wrong than believe them so base and ungrateful. In this 
 true evangelist, it is likely that Haliburton reproduced some 
 traits of his revered friend, the Abbe Sigogne. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that this American clergy- 
 man is sometimes made to display an almost incredibly 
 minute intimacy with Canadian and British politics and 
 personages. He knows, for example, all about Lord Durham 
 and Mr. Poulett Thompson — their acts, characters and 
 inner motives. Very possibly our author wished to fortify 
 his own political opinions by the endorsement of so high- 
 minded an observer. A slight oversight is also noticeable in 
 regard to Mr. Hopewell's age. In the second series of " The 
 Clockmaker'' (c. 15), he declares himself to be ninety-five. 
 
 95
 
 Y- 1 in "The At 'aclir," a work written five years later and 
 recording subsequent events, he is represented as going to 
 England with Mr. Slick and delighting the Datives by bis 
 
 sermons and discourses. 
 
 ****** 
 
 In most respects Sam Slick is a typical wide-awake Yankee 
 man of business. 
 
 lit 1 is shift)* and versatile. When he wants to get a 
 particular deck seat on a steamer, he inquires innocently if a 
 certain sail in Bight can be a Chinese junk. The occupant of 
 the coveted seat crosses the deck and joins the curious crowd 
 who are gazing at the mysterious craft. .Slick takes the seat 
 and, when it is reclaimed, pretends ignorance of the English 
 language ! When living at Boston, lie has a fast horse which 
 will not cross a bridge because it has once fallen through one. 
 This horse he sells for a high figure, advertising, with literal 
 truth, that he would not sell it at any price if he did not 
 want to leave Boston. Another fast trotter of his has " the 
 heaves." Slick advertises that his only reason for selling is 
 that the animal is " too heavey for harness." The unwary 
 buyer returns to reproach Slick, and only loses some more 
 money by betting that the latter had advertised the horse as 
 too heavy for harness. At a time when there is a high duty 
 of 30 per cent, on lead, and no duty on works of art, he 
 realizes a very handsome sum by investing heavily in leaden 
 busts of Washington, and melting the Father of his Country 
 after he has passed the custom house. 
 
 Sam Slick feels a keen pleasure in "besting" a body in a 
 l rade — especially when the other party thinks himself know- 
 ing and wary. To take in another smart " down -Easter " 
 was to him an intense triumph. He compares it (Clockmaker 
 3, 12) with great minuteness to coaxing a shy fish to take the 
 96
 
 bait. " There's nothin' a'most I like so much as to see folk 
 cheat themselves," he says in another place. It is by his 
 suggestion that Ichabod Gates manages to sell his goods to 
 the townspeople at twice their cost, by binding each customer 
 to keep the secret of his selling so cheap ! 
 
 He is often discursive in his yarns and sometimes indirect 
 in his bargaining ; but like a good sporting dog, as he says of 
 himself, if he did beat about the bush, he generally put up 
 the birds. 
 
 He wants to turn everything to practical use. At Niagara 
 he is struck first by the water-power, and secondly by the 
 grandeur of the Falls ! In noting the beauties of Mount 
 Auburn Cemetery at Boston, he does not omit that it is " the 
 grandest place for courtin' in I know of, it's so romantic." 
 
 He natters, wheedles, and " soft-sawders " everlastingly ; 
 but he never cringes to anyone. 
 
 He is a shrewd and close observer of character as well as 
 of externals, of classes as well as of individuals. So keen are 
 his perceptions that he is enabled, after only a short experi- 
 ence in the new field of London fashionable life, to formulate 
 the cynical " rules of society," which are to be found in Chapter 
 35 of " The Attache." 
 
 Conceited and boastful of his country, he saw some of its 
 faults and dangers, and criticised it freely himself. In one of 
 his bilious moods he denies that it is the attractions of the 
 United States that draw so large an immigration : " It's 
 nothin' but its powers of suction ; it's a great whirlpool — a 
 great vortex— it drags all the straw and chips and floatin' 
 sticks, drift-wood and trash into it." But, if he abused it 
 himself, he would not let others abuse it. He was particularly 
 down upon tourists making superficial observations in his 
 country in search of " facts " to verify their preconceived ideas. 
 7 97
 
 He dearly loved to "bam" these gentry by such shocking 
 tales as the "Gouging School " and the " Black Stole," which 
 he tells in the 20th chapter of "The AttacheV' 
 
 Illustrating the desirability of travelling in a cheerful, 
 instead of a censorious frame of mind, he observes that " the 
 bee, though he find every rose has a thorn, comes back loaded 
 with honey from his rambles ; and why shouldn't other tourists 
 do the same 1 " Our author, it will be noticed, has endowed 
 Sam Slick with his own unfailing knack of hitting on an apt 
 simile at will. 
 
 Self-conceited, Mr. Slick was too sublimely so to be con- 
 scious of the failing. " That he is a vain man cannot be 
 denied — -self-taught men are apt to be so everywhere," said 
 his chronicler. Some of Slick's boastfulness is doubtless due to 
 his comfortable confidence in himself, But some of it is put 
 on with a definite purpose. " Braggin'," observes our shifty 
 New Englander in "Nature and Human Nature," " saves 
 advertisin' ; " it makes people talk and think of you, and 
 incidentally of your wares. " I always do it," confesses Slick ; 
 " for, as the Nova Scotia magistrate said, who sued his debtor 
 before himself, ' what's the use of being a justice, if you can't 
 do yourself justice ? ' " 
 
 When Slick, as attache to the American Legation, has 
 become a regular party-goer in London, he becomes proud of 
 his position, and attempts to suit himself to his environment 
 by gaudy overdressing. At this juncture his father, animated 
 by another weakness not unknown among Americans, comes 
 inopportunely to visit him. " Colonel " Slick has undertaken 
 the costly task of proving his title to a supposititious peerage. 
 At the advent of this uncouth relation Sam could sympathise 
 with the young lady who " wasn't at all exclusive, but was 
 really obliged to draw the line at pa." Sam, however, though 
 98
 
 mortified, is far too manly to give the cold shoulder to his 
 parent, though he does attempt to bottle him up with much 
 tact and some success. But the old man commits himself 
 sometimes, notwithstanding, as when the hero of Bunker Hill 
 sought an interview with the hero of Waterloo, and advised 
 the great duke to sleep with his son Sam, as the latter was a 
 wonderfully cute man and wise counsellor. 
 
 Sam Slick is hardly the typical Yankee of his time when 
 he pours contempt and ridicule on the mock modesty and 
 suggestive squeamishness of so many of his countrymen. 
 " Fastidiousness," he says in " Nature and Human Nature," 
 is the envelope of indelicacy. To see harm in ordinary words 
 betrays a knowledge and not an ignorance of evil." Once, at 
 least, his antipathy to false refinement carried Slick too far — 
 when he makes an ultra-proper spinster wax playful and famil- 
 iar by suggesting, in purposely misleading terms, that she has 
 made a conquest. This in my opinion is the most unworthy 
 action recorded of Mr. Slick, and I am glad to say he had the 
 grace to be ashamed of it. 
 
 In religion Slick detests cant, and distrusts those who use 
 it. He likes to expose sanctimonious humbugs. Hypocrisy, 
 he thinks, " has enlisted more folks for Old Scratch than any 
 recruitin' Serjeant he has " (Attache, c. 36). " When the 
 fox turns preacher," he observes in " Wise Saws," "the geese 
 had better not go to night meetin's." He considers ascetic 
 morality impracticable, and to preach it injurious, for the 
 masses. "Puritans," he says in "Nature and Human 
 Nature," "whether in or out of church make more sinners 
 than they save by a long chalk. They aint content with real 
 sin. . . . Their eyes are like the great magnifier at the Poly- 
 technic, that shows you awful monsters in a drop of water, 
 which were never intended for us to see, or Providence would 
 
 99
 
 have made our eyes like Lord Rosse's telescope. Of sects he 
 ivs, "Call 'em this dictionary name and that new-fangled 
 name, but give me the tree that bears the best fruit." Of 
 sermons he observes, "I don't like preaching to the narves 
 instead of to the judgment." He is a little cynical in some 
 particulars, lie traces the influence of the clergy to having 
 the women on their side, and, in a story which he tells, the 
 Reverend rascal Meldrum attributes the prosperity he enjoys 
 for a season to his soft-sawdering the gentle sex. Sometimes 
 SI irk is actually irreverent, as for instance in his speculations 
 on negroes' souls, which he locates in their heels. 
 
 Slick believes in treating criminals summarily, and even in 
 lynching on occasion. He uses drastic measures with bullies, 
 bad boys, and balky horses. He holds that there are " no 
 good scholars since birch rods went out of school and senti- 
 ment went in." 
 
 "So he won't leave the vessel, eh?" said Skipper Love, 
 Slick's friend and co-believer in effective energy. " Well, a 
 critter that won't move must be made to go, that's all. There's 
 a motive power in all natur'. There's a current or a breeze 
 for a vessel, an ingine for a rail-car, necessity for poverty, love 
 for the feminine gender, and glory for the hero. But for men 
 I like persuasion. It seems to convene better with a free and 
 enlightened citizen. Now here," said he, opening his clo 
 and taking out his rope-yarn, "here is a persuader that noth- 
 ing can stand. Oh, he won't come, eh 1 Well, we'll see ! " 
 
 Mr. Slick was an outrageous and successful flirt, and could 
 blarney the fair sex like an Irishman. He believed with 
 Byron that impudence — " brisk confidence " the poet calls it 
 — was the quality most effective with woman. He gives a 
 philosophic reason for this belief in "Nature and Human 
 Nature " (c. 14): "She didn't know whether it was impu- 
 100
 
 dence or admiration ; but when a woman arbitrates on a case 
 she is interested in she always gives an award in her own 
 favor." For sour and sulky females, however, he approved 
 of stern discipline. He even once whipped a shrew. Women, 
 he asserted, require " the identical same treatment " as 
 horses. " Incourage the timid ones, be gentle and steady 
 with the fractious ones, but lather the sulky ones like blazes." 
 To this resemblance of women to horses in disposition, and 
 the desirability of treating them alike, he recurs several times. 
 In "The Season Ticket," Jemmy, a London hearse-driver, 
 declares — and the sentiment certainly seems more natural in 
 an Englishman of the lower classes than in a typical Yankee 
 — that "it's better to have the wife under the whip than on 
 the lead, and to have her well under command than for her 
 to take the bit into her mouth and play the devil." And 
 still another of our author's characters in the last chapter of 
 this his latest work, argues, in favor of divorce, that if one 
 may swap or change an unmanageable horse, a fortiori one 
 should be allowed to get rid of an unmanageable wife. For, 
 he says, " a horse don't pretend to be better than it is ; it is 
 no hypocrite. . . . But a woman aint so easy judged of, I 
 can tell you." Yet Mr. Slick is not an habitual detractor of 
 the fair sex ; he admits the faith, patience, courage and 
 gratitude of women, and he is particularly fond of their 
 society. 
 
 Constantly urging people to work and make money, he yet 
 sees that sudden riches often beget false pretentiousness and 
 conceit : " A cabbage," he says, " has plaguy large leaves to 
 the bottom, and spreads them out as wide as an old woman's 
 petticoats, to hide the ground it sprung from and conceal its 
 extraction." When he becomes rich himself, he avoids 
 ostentation and often uses his money in doing kindly acts. 
 
 101 
 
 /
 
 hiilt'cil lie is gt'iicrally amiable, except to fops, drones, brag- 
 garts, hypocrites, and detractors of his country. He helps 
 and cheers (Wise Saws, c. 13) a man who had given up the 
 battle of life, complaining that it was vain to swim forever 
 against the current. " Try an eddy," he advised, in one of 
 the happiest of his many happy metaphors ; " you ought to 
 know enough of the stream of life to find one, and then you 
 would work up river as if it was Hood-tide. At the end of 
 the eddy is still water.'' 
 
 To believe that any human being, much less one who starts 
 life under considerable disadvantages, could know all that 
 Mr. Slick says he knows, would tax one's credulity overmuch. 
 So various indeed are his accomplishments " that he seems to 
 be not one but all mankind's epitome." He is equally at 
 home in the politics of England, Canada and the United 
 States. He paints, he plays the piano and the bugle, he 
 dances, he is skilled in wood-craft and angling, he rows and 
 paddles neatly, he shoots like Leather Stocking or Dr. Carver. 
 He can speculate in any line with equal success. He has a 
 fair smattering of medicine and chemistry. He offers a 
 hawker of cement a much better receipt, of his own invention. 
 He has been in almost every country, including Poland, South 
 America, and Persia. In the latter country he has learned 
 the art of stupefying fishes and making them float on the 
 surface. He dyes a drunken hypocrite's face with a dye 
 which he got from Indians " in the great lone land ;" and 
 when the hypocrite repents he has a drastic wash ready to 
 efface the stain. " I actilly larned French in a voyage to 
 Calcutta," he says, " and German on my way home." He 
 knew a little Gaelic too, which he had learned on a new and 
 agreeable system that, unfortunately, would never do in the 
 public schools. 
 102
 
 At Rome in Juvenal's time it was the hungry Greek, in 
 Johnson's "London" it was the "fasting monsieur," who 
 knew all the sciences. And let it be granted that the typical 
 Jack-of-all-trades in this century and on this continent is the 
 inquisitive and acquisitive Yankee. Yet Sam Slick beats the 
 record of his shifty countrymen. He has been everywhere 
 where a lively reminiscence can be located, and he is endowed 
 with any art or attainment which comes in handy "to point 
 a moral or adorn a tale," to snub a snob or help a friend. 
 
 He understands every phase of human nature, male and 
 female, black, white and red, high and low, rich and poor. 
 He is equally familiar with every social stratum. In 
 " Nature and Human Natui'e " he minutely describes two 
 picnics soon after each other. At one of them the belles are 
 Indian half-breeds, at the other fashionable Halifax young 
 ladies. The ex-clockmaker has presumably obtained the 
 entree into the illogically exclusive society of Halifax. At all 
 events he shows a minute knowledge of its various phenomena, 
 not omitting the customary airs of a military parvenu. 
 
 I am afraid that this over-equipment of his hero is due to 
 carelessness or forgetfulness on Haliburton's part. When 
 Mr. Slick credits himself in all gravity with each new 
 accomplishment, I do not think that, in the author's inten- 
 tion, he is only adding another fib to his record. Were this 
 so, lying would be his most prominent characteristic. Now 
 Slick is quite capable of using ambiguous terms to help him 
 to dispose of a horse or a clock, but I am mistaken if he 
 is meant to be viewed as a serious and habitual liar. 
 
 To draw the long bow for the sake of making fun, or with 
 a wink to his hearers, as it were, is quite another thing, and 
 of this pastime Mr. Slick was very fond. "Once," he said, 
 " I drawed a mutton chop so nateral that my dog broke his 
 
 103
 
 teeth in truing the pane] to pieces to get at it; and at 
 another time I painted a shingle so Like Btone that, when I 
 threw il in the water, it sunk right Lterlash to the bottom." 
 He imposes upon a certain great linguist by professing to 
 know all the North American Indian dialects, and informs 
 him that the redskins form new words by " guinmiiieation," 
 a term which should be used in Indian grammar, he says, in 
 preference to "agglutination," because glue was unknown 
 and gum well known to the Indians ! The best glue in 
 America, he gravely adds, is made from negro hides ; whence 
 the saying, " It sticks like grim death to a dead nigger." In 
 another place he traces the origin of the phrase " he's been 
 through the mill " to a local accident at Slickville. 
 
 But if Sam Slick, as might be guessed from these last 
 incidents, is not a trustworthy etymologist, he is a past-master 
 of slang. His sayings are quoted widely, to illustrate col- 
 loquial terms, all through Bartlett's "Dictionary of Ameri- 
 canisms." Some of Slick's slangy expressions are very original 
 and forcible, as for example the following : " If I had a got a 
 hold of him, I'd a lammed him wuss than the devil beatin' 
 tan-bark ! " 
 
 He confesses that he hates poets, " lock, stock and barrel." 
 As he sometimes purposely shocks the British sense of 
 decorum by his Yankee irreverence, so he likes to ruffle one's 
 sentimentality by some anti-poetical simile. Poets have 
 thought of figure after figure to describe the changing music 
 of a running stream. Here is Slick's contribution — "the 
 noise water makes tumblin' over stones in a brook, a splut- 
 terin' like a toothless old woman scoldin' with a mouthful of 
 hot tea in her lantern cheek ! " 
 
 It is hard to determine in some cases whether Sam Slick's 
 utterances are intended to illustrate his character, or merely 
 104
 
 to voice the author's personal views. This doubt of course 
 arises only when the clockmaker utters sentiments equally or 
 more in keeping with another character than his own — with 
 that, for instance, of an Englishman or Nova Scotian, or of a 
 well-read and well-bred gentleman. There is, however, a 
 specially strong probability that Haliburton generally en- 
 dorsed Sam Slick's criticisms on Nova Scotia. As a politician, 
 our author had learned to dread that many-headed monster, a 
 constituency, and to show outward respect for popular weak- 
 nesses. He would naturally shrink from lashing the pet feel- 
 ings of his countrymen only, and would find it expedient to 
 tell them unpalatable truths through the medium of a foreign 
 observer. For the clockmaker's satiric utterances — -so often 
 grotesquely and purposely exaggerated — the public could not 
 hold him responsible. "A satirist," says Sam Slick in 
 " Nature and Human Nature," speaking of his already pub- 
 lished sayings and doings, "a satirist finds it convenient 
 sometimes to shoot from behind a shelter." And again, in 
 the same book, he observes to "the Squire," who was a Nova 
 Scotian : "If you was writin' and not me you would have to 
 call Halifax, to please the people, that flourishing great 
 capital," and so forth. For these reasons I have treated 
 Slick's views about Nova Scotia and Nova Scotians else- 
 where, with the personal opinions of our author. Enough to 
 say here, to complete this list of Mr. Slick's traits, that it 
 went against his grain to see a province giving its scant 
 enthusiasm too exclusively to politics, and wasting its energies 
 in pressing the government to create prosperity, instead of 
 seizing the existing openings for industry, as he and other 
 
 wide awake Yankees were so profitably doing. 
 
 ****** 
 
 That so young a country as Nova Scotia should have reared 
 
 105
 
 so great a writer as Haliburton is somewhat surprising. To 
 what additional eminence In- might have attained, had his 
 earlier efforts been addressed to a more critical circle, must 
 remain a matter of conjecture. But it is not unlikely that 
 he might have taken rank among the very greatest literary 
 names of the century, if he had been a little less genial and 
 self-indulgent, or if he had had higher educational advantages 
 and a more stimulating literary environment at the outset of 
 his career. As it was, Haliburton generally wrote forcibly, 
 and often smoothly and classically, while in detached passages 
 he could be terse and even brilliant. But the attractions of 
 his style are not sustained, and he is sometimes a little slip- 
 shod or diffuse. He is accordingly more to be admired as a 
 humorist than as a stylist, and more than either, perhaps, as 
 a thorough student and acute judge of human nature. He 
 noted with almost equal keenness and accuracy the idiosyn- 
 crasies of individuals, classes and nations. He intuitively 
 recognized the tendencies of the age ; he observed the cur- 
 rents of public opinion, and gauged their volume and their 
 force with approximate correctness. He foretold some im- 
 portant events that have happened already and others that 
 seem extremely probable to-day. 
 
 I have only touched lightly and incidentally on what strike 
 me as being his faults. I felt that they bear but a small ratio 
 to the merits of this great Canadian writer — to his exuberant 
 humor, his sound judgment, his wide horizon, and the general 
 beneficence of his aims. And above all, I could never ignore 
 his strong efforts to arouse a broader patriotism that might 
 guard forever the imperial birthright whose grandeur he was 
 great enough to understand. 
 
 106
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY JOHN PARKER ANDERSON. 
 
 WORKS. 
 
 A General Description of Nova Scotia. Illustrated by a new and 
 correct map. Printed at the Royal Acadian School : 
 Halifax, N.S., 1823, 8vo. 
 
 A new edition. Printed at the Royal Acadian School. 
 
 Reprinted for and sold by Clement H. Belcher : 
 Halifax, 1825, 8vo. 
 
 [This work is wrongly ascribed to Haliburton in Morgan's 
 Bibliotheca Canadensis, where it is also assigned its real 
 author — Walter Bromley, Master of the Royal Acadian 
 School, Halifax, N.S. The book was published anony- 
 mously, but bears marked internal evidence of its 
 authorship. — A. B. de M.] 
 
 An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia. In two 
 volumes. Illustrated by a map of the Province, and 
 several engravings. 2 vols. Joseph Howe: Halifax, 
 1829, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. Snow : London, 1839, 8vo. 
 
 Kentucky. A tale. London, 1834, 8vo. 
 
 This work is wrongly ascribed to Haliburton in the 
 English Catalogue, Morgan's Bibliotheca Canadensis, 
 Halkett and Laing, and by other authorities. It is a 
 London edition with a different title page of "The 
 Harpe's Head, a Legend of Kentucky," Philadelphia, 
 1833, by James Hall, Judge in the Circuit Court of 
 Illinois. 
 
 The Clockmaker ; or, The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of 
 Slickville. Series I. Halifax, 1837, 12mo. Joseph 
 Howe. Appeared originally in The Nova Scotian in 
 1835-6. 
 
 107
 
 First series. Richard Bentley : London, 1837, 12mo. 
 
 Second series. Richard Bentley: London, 1838, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. First and second series. Richard 
 
 BenUey: London, 1838,121110. 
 
 Third series. Richard Bentley: London, 1840, 12mo. 
 
 "The Duke of Kent's Lod^e," "Too Knowing by 
 Half," " Behind the Scenes," and " Facing a Woman " 
 in the third series were printed in Bentley's Miscellany 
 liefore appearing in book-form. 
 
 Reprinted. 3 vols. London, 1838-43, 8vo. 
 
 First series. Lea and Bla/nchard : Philadelphia, 1837, 
 
 12mo. 
 
 Other editions : William White, Concord, 1838, 12mo. 
 
 Israel S. Boyd, Concord, 1839, 18mo ; Philadelphia, 
 1838, 12mo, in 2 vols. ; Paris, 1841, 8vo. W. If. Colyer, 
 New York, 1841, 12mo ; London, 1845, 8vo. Richard 
 BenUey, London, 1848, 8vo. T. B. Peterson, Phila- 
 delphia, 1857, 12mo. Dirk d- Fitzgerald, New York, 
 1858, 12mo. George Ruutlfly, London, 18(12, 8vo; 
 London, 1870, 12mo. Hard &• Houghton, New York, 
 1872, 18mo. 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 Brnllry : London, 1839, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. Lea & 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, Svo. 
 
 108
 
 Other editions : Joseph Hoice : Halifax, 1840, 8vo ; 
 
 Philadelphia, 1840, 8vo ; New York, 1840, 8vo ; Lon- 
 don, 1843, 8vo ; New York, 1847, 12mo ; London, 1858, 
 8vo. Routledge: 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 ; Routledge: 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 Colburn, 1849, 8vo. 
 
 "The Old Judge " appeared originally in Eraser's Mag- 
 azine, February, 1847, pp. 141-147 ; March, pp. 308- 
 321 ; April, pp. 429-446 ; May, pp. 511-528 ; June, 
 pp. 700-713 ; July, pp. 76-87 ; August, pp. 204-212 ; 
 September, pp. 324-334 ; October, pp. 447-461 ; 
 November, pp. 576-587 ; December, pp. 696-710. 
 Other editions : Stringer cfc Toivnsend, New York, 
 1849, 8vo. Hurst & Blackett, London, 1860, 8vo. 
 Dick cfc Fitzgerald, New York, 1862, 8vo. Munro, 
 New York, 1880, 4to. 
 
 "• The Old Judge " was translated into German in 
 1849-50, and published in 3 vols. 
 
 Le Vieux Juge, ou, esquisses de la vie dans une Colonic 
 
 A French translation of portions of " The Old Judge" 
 in the Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve, Tom. X., 
 1849, pp. 459-494. 
 
 The English in America. 2 vols. Colburn & Co.: London, 1851, 
 12mo. 
 
 Rule and Misrule of the English in America. By the author of 
 "Sam Slick, the Clockmaker," "The Letter-Bag," 
 "Attache," "Old Judge," etc. Harper & Brothers: 
 New York, 1851, 8vo. 
 
 In consequence of a work having previously appeared 
 under the name of "The English 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
 
 Traits of American Humour, by Native authors. Edited and 
 adapted by the author of "Sam Slick," "The Old 
 .Fudge," "The English in America," etc. 3 vols. 
 Cblbwrn <i- Co. : London, 1852, 8vo. 
 The first edition of this work is generally supposed to 
 have been published in 1K4.'5, but no trace of such an 
 edition ran he found in the London catalogues. 
 
 Another edition. Hurst tic Blacketi : London, 1866, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. Hurst <(■ Blurkett : London, 1873, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Sam Slick's Wise Saws and Modern Instances ; or, What he Said, 
 Did, or Invented. 2 vols. Hurst it Blacfa.it : London, 
 1853, 8vo. 
 
 Other editions. Blum-hard & Lea: Philadelphia, 
 
 1853, 12mo. Hurst <L- Blackett: London, 1859, 8vo. 
 
 The Americans at Home ; or, Byeways, Backwoods and Prairies. 
 Edited by the author of " Sam Slick." 3 vols. Hurst 
 <{• Blackett : London, 1854, 8vo. 
 
 The first edition of this work is generally stated to 
 have been published in 1843. No trace, however, of 
 any such edition can be discovered in the London 
 catalogues. 
 
 Another edition. Hurst & Blackett: London, 1873, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Nature and Human Nature. By the author of " Sam Slick, the 
 Clockmaker." 2 vols. Hurst A- Blackett ; London, 
 1855, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. Strinyer rf; Tonmscnd ; New York, 
 
 1855, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. Hurst <{• Blackett: London, 1859, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 An Address on the Present Condition, Resources and Prospects 
 of British North America, delivered by special request 
 at the City Hall, Glasgow, on the 25th March, 1857. 
 Hurst ,(■ Blackett ; London, 1857, 8vo. 
 110
 
 Another edition. Montreal, 1857, 8vo. 
 
 Speech of the Hon. Mr. Justice Haliburton, M.P., in the House 
 of Commons, on Tuesday, the 21st of April, 1860, on 
 the Repeal of the differential duties on Foreign and 
 Colonial Wood. Edward Stanford : London, 1860, 8vo. 
 The date of the speech on the title page is wrong, and 
 should be Friday, April 20. The speech was also on 
 the Repeal of the duties on wood, not, as it is invariably 
 printed, tvool. 
 
 The Season Ticket. Richard Bentley : London, 1860, 8vo. 
 
 A series of articles reprinted from the Dublin Univer- 
 sity Magazine from April, 1859, to March, 1860. 
 
 New edition. Richard Bentley : London, 1861, 8vo. 
 
 New edition. Richard Bentley : London, 1866, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. Warne : London, 1872, 12mo. 
 
 PIRATED COMPILATIONS. 
 
 Yankee Stories. Philadelphia, 1846, 12mo. 
 
 Yankee Stories. With illustrations. Lindsay & Blahiston : 
 Philadelphia, 1852, 12mo. 
 
 Yankee Yarns and Yankee Letters. T. B. Peterson : Philadelphia, 
 1852, 12mo. 
 
 Ill
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, ETC. 
 
 Allibone, S. Austin.— A Critical Dictionary of English Literature. 
 
 Philadelphia, 1859, 8vo. T. C. Haliburton, vol. i., pp. 
 
 759, 760. 
 Bibaud, Maximilien.— Le Pantheon Canadien. Montreal, 1891, 
 
 8vo. T. C. Haliburton, p. 114. 
 Biographic Gene'rale. — Nouvelle BiographieGenerale. Paris, 1858, 
 
 8vo. Article on Haliburton, signed W. in vol. xxiii, pp. 
 
 147, 148. 
 Boase, G. C. — Thomas Chandler Haliburton. (Memoir in the 
 
 Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xxiv., pp. 43-45.) 
 
 London, 1890, 8vo. 
 Bourinot, John George. — The Intellectual Development of the 
 
 Canadian People. Toronto, 1881, 8vo. Notice of Hali- 
 burton, pp. 104, 105. 
 Bryce, George. — A Short History of the Canadian People. Lon- 
 don, 1887, 8vo. Judge Haliburton, pp. 476, 477- 
 Calnek- Savary. — History of the County of Annapolis. Toronto, 
 
 1897, 8vo. Biographical Memoir of T. C. Haliburton, pp. 
 
 418-426, with portrait. 
 Campbell, Duncan. — Nova Scotia in its Historical, Mercantile and 
 
 Industrial Relations. Montreal, 1873, 8vo. References to 
 
 Judge Haliburton, pp. 117, 183, 257, 328; biography of, 
 
 pp. 334, 335. 
 Chambers, Robert.— Chambers's Cyclopedia of English Literature. 
 
 2 vols. London, 1876, 8vo. T. C. Haliburton, vol. ii., 
 
 pp. 697, 698. 
 Chambers, William and Robert.— Chambers's Encyclopedia. 
 
 Revised edition. London, 1874, 8vo. T. C. Haliburton, 
 
 vol. v., p. 197. 
 
 112
 
 Chasles, Philarete. — Etudes sur la litte'rature et les Moeurs des 
 Anglo-Americains au XIXe siecle. Paris, 1852, 8vo. 
 "Sam Slick," pp. 389-419; appeared originally in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, 15, Ap., 1841. 
 
 Anglo-American Literature and Manners; from the French 
 
 of P. Chasles. New York, 1852, 8vo. Chap. VIII., "Sam 
 Slick, the Clockmaker," pp. 222-248. 
 
 Crofton, F. Blake. — Proceedings of the Haliburton Club of the 
 University of King's College. No. 1. Haliburton : The 
 Man and the Writer. (A Study. With a Portrait.) 
 Windsor, 1889, 8vo. 
 
 Cyclopaedias. — The English Cyclopaedia. Biography, vol. iii. 
 London, 1856, 4to. T. C. Haliburton, pp. 257, 258. 
 
 The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. New 
 
 York, 1894, 8vo. T. C. Haliburton (with portrait), vol. v., 
 pp. 353, 354. 
 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica. — The Encyclopaedia Britannica, ninth 
 edition. Edinburgh, 1880, 4to. T. C. Haliburton, vol. xi., 
 p. 383. 
 
 Morgan, Henry J. — Bibliotheca Canadensis ; or, a Manual of 
 Canadian Literature. Ottawa, 1867, 8vo. Hon. Thomas 
 Chandler Haliburton, pp. 166-171. 
 
 Murdoch, Beamish.— A History of Nova Scotia. 3 vols. Halifax, 
 1865-67, 8vo. Numerous references to Haliburton. 
 
 Portraits. — Portraits of Public Characters. 2 vols. London, 
 1841, 8vo. Judge Haliburton, vol. i., pp. 291-304. 
 
 Roberts, Charles G. D. — A History of Canada. Boston, 1897, 8vo. 
 Notice of Haliburton, pp. 423, 424. 
 
 Rose, George Maclean. — A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography. 
 Toronto, 1888, 8vo. T. C. Haliburton, pp. 443, 444. 
 
 Sabin, Joseph. — A Dictionary of Books Relating to America. 
 New York, 1875, 8vo. List of Haliburton'a works, vol. 
 vii., pp. 556-558. 
 
 Sanders, L. C. — Celebrities of the Century. London, 1890, 8vo. 
 T. C. Haliburton, p. 528. 
 
 Slick, Sam. — Sam Slick, the Yankee Pedler. (A song.) London, 
 1860, s. sh. 4to. 
 
 113
 
 Statesmen. The Statesmen of England ; comprising fifty por 
 its, with biographical sketches. London, L862, foL Con- 
 tains the Eon. Mr. Justice Baliburton, with portrait. 
 
 Tallis, John. Tallis'a Drawing Eloom Portrait Gallery. London, 
 I860, He Judge Baliburton, with portrait. Third series. 
 
 w.ilf.nl, Bdward. -Men of the Time, etc. London, 1802, 8v>. 
 T. 0. Baliburton, p. S5S. 
 
 Waller, John Francis. The Imperial Dictionary of Universal 
 Biography. 3 vols. London, 1857-63, 8vo. T. C. Hali- 
 burton, vol. ii., p. 778. 
 
 Ward, ThomaBH. — Men of the Eleign, a Biographical Dictionary. 
 London, 1885, 8vo. T. C. Haliburton, p. 385. 
 
 Wilson, .lames ( rrant, and Fiske, John. Appleton's Cyclopaedia of 
 American Biography. Now York, 1887, 8vo. T. C. Hali- 
 burton, vol. iii., p. .">•». 
 
 MAGAZINE ARTICLES, ETC. 
 
 Haliburton, Thomas Chandler. — Illustrated London News, July 
 15, 1843, p. 37, with a portrait, and September '.', 
 1865, p. 245, with portrait. The Critic, with portrait, 
 February 5, 1859, p. 126. Atlantic Monthly, March, 
 1892, pp. 355-363, by F. Blake Crofton. 
 
 American* at Home. New Quarterly Review, vol. iii., 
 
 1854, p. 261. British Quarterly Review, vol. xxi., 
 
 1855, pp. 60-78. 
 
 Attache". Athenaeum, July 8, 1843, pp. 622, 623 ; July 
 
 15, 1843, pp. 648-550 ; same article, Littell's Living 
 Age, vol. iv., 184o, pp. 155-161. Monthly Review, 
 voL ii., 1843, pp. 475-483, vol. iii., 1844, pp. 558-664. 
 Spectator, duly 15, 1843, pp. (564, 665; November 9, 
 1814, p. 1073. Literary Gazette, July 8, 1843, pp. 
 141-445; November 2, 1844, pp. 699-701; November 
 9, pp. 716-718; November 16, pp. 735, 736. Cham- 
 bers's Edinburgh Journal, vol. xii., 1844, pp. 251, 253, 
 279. North American Review, vol. lviii., 1844, pp. 
 211-227, by C. C. Felton. 
 
 Bubbles of CidiihIh. Literary Gazette, January 5, 
 
 1839, pp. 3-5. Monthly Review, vol. i., L839, pp. 300, 
 301. Spectator, January 19, 1839, p. <',4. 
 
 m
 
 Hie Clockmaker. Athenaeum, April 15, 1837, pp. 262, 
 263 ; July 7, 1838, pp. 471-473 ; July 14, 1838, 
 pp. 488-490 ; November 14, 1840, pp. 902-904 ; 
 November 21, 1840, pp. 922-924. Literary Gazette, 
 April 1, 1837, pp. 204, 205; July 7, 1838, pp. 
 417-419; November 7, 1840, pp. 713-716; Novem- 
 ber 14, pp. 735-737 ; November 21, pp. 750, 751. The 
 Mirror, April 22, 1837, pp. 251-256. Spectator, April 
 
 1, 1837, pp. 306, 307 ; November 7, 1840, pp. 1073, 
 1074. Monthly Review, vol. ii., 1837, pp. 105-107 ; 
 vol. iii., 1838, pp. 8-12 ; vol. iii., 1840, pp. 497-504. 
 New York Mirror, September 8, 1838, pp. 85, 86. 
 Times, October 22, 1838 (2^ cols.) ; November 1, 1838 
 (3 cols.) ; November 27, 1840, (Hcols.) ; December 12, 
 1840 (2 cols.). Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, vol. 
 vi., 1838, pp. 92, 93. 
 
 English in America. Irish Quarterly Review, Decem- 
 ber, 1851, pp. 523-548. Quarterly Review, vol. xciv., 
 1854, p. 565, etc. 
 
 Hildreth and the North American Review. American 
 Church Review, vol. iv, p. 523. 
 
 History of Nova Scotia. North American Review, vol. 
 xxx., 1830, pp. 121-135, by C. W. Upham. 
 
 Un Humoriste Anglo- Amiricain. Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, by Emile Montegut, February 15, 1850, pp. 
 731-748. 
 
 Letter-Bag of the Great Western. Monthly Review, 
 vol. i., 1840, pp. 306-314. Literary World, vol. ii., 
 1840, pp. 250-254, 265-267. Spectator, January 18, 
 1840, pp. 65, 66. Athemeum, January 11, 1840, pp. 
 31-33. Bentley's Miscellany, vol. vii., 1840, pp. 11-16. 
 
 Lord Durham's Report. Quarterly Review, vol. lxiii., 
 1839, pp. 521, 522. 
 
 Nature and Human Nature. Literary Gazette, June 
 
 2, 1855, pp. 342-344. Athenamm, March 10, 1855, 
 pp. 286, 287. 
 
 Notions of Scorn Slid: (witli a portrait). Bentley's 
 Miscellany, vol. xiv., 1843, pp. 81-94. 
 
 115
 
 Obituary, Notice of . The Reader, September 2, 180."», 
 p. 263. London Review, September -J, 1805, p. 261. 
 Guardian, August .'{<*, 1865. Illustrated Times, Sep- 
 tember 9, 1805, p, L67. Gentleman's Magazine, 
 December, L866, pp. 787,788. Annual Register, 1n;;>, 
 pp. 195, 196. Standard, August 30, 1805. Morning 
 Post, August 29, lHiir> (lender). Athensum, Sep- 
 tember 2, 1865, pp. 309, 310. 
 
 The Old Judge. Hogg's Instructor, vol. iii., N.S., 
 1849, pp. 3 6, 29 32. 
 
 Sam Slick. Revue des Deux Mondes, by P. Chasles, 
 April 15, 1841, pp. 306-325 ; reprinted in Etudes ww 
 la Litlcratnre, 1852. 
 
 Sa/m Slick <>n tin' War Question. Letter, signed Sam 
 Slick, in Times, September 24, 1840. 
 
 Sam Slick's Wise Saws and Modern Instances. Cham- 
 bers's Edinburgh Journal, vol. xix., 1853, pp. 394-390. 
 New Quarterly Review, vol. ii., 1853, pp. 391-394. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. 
 
 Historical and Statistical account of Nova Scotia 1829 
 
 The Clockmaker 1837-40 
 
 The Bubbles of Canada 1839 
 
 Reply to the Report of the Earl of Durham 1839 
 
 The Letter-Bag of the Great Western 1840 
 
 The Attache" ; or, Sam Slick in England 1843-4 
 
 The Old Judge ; or, Life in a Colony 1849 
 
 Rule and Misrule of the English in America 1851 
 
 Traits of American Humour 1852 
 
 Sum Slick's Wise Saws and Modern Instances 1853 
 
 The Americans at Home 1854 
 
 Nature and Human Nature 1855 
 
 Address at Glasgow on the Condition, Resources and Pros- 
 pects of Mritish North America 1857 
 
 Speech in House of Commons on the Repeal of Duties on 
 
 Foreign and Colonial Wood 1800 
 
 The Season Ticket I860 
 
 116
 
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