as if it was a funeral; they said she was goin to be buried alive like the nuns in Portengale that get a frolickin, break out of the pastur, and race off, and get catched and brought back agin.  Says the old Colonel, her father.  Deliverance, my dear, I would sooner foller you to your grave, for that would be an eend to your troubles, than to see you go off to that dismal country, that’s nothin but an iceberg aground; and he howled as loud as an Irishman that tries to wake his wife when she is dead.  Awful accounts we have of the country, that’s a fact; but if the Province is not so bad as they make it out, the folks are a thousand times worse.  You’ve seen a flock of partridges of a frosty mornin in the fall, a crowdin out of the shade to a sunny spot, and huddlin up there in the warmth—­well, the Blue Noses have nothin else to do half the time but sun themselves.  Whose fault is that?  Why it’s the fault of the legislature; they don’t encourage internal improvement, nor the investment of capital in the country:  and the result is apathy, inaction and poverty.  They spend three months in Halifax, and what do they do?  Father gave me a dollar once, to go to the fair at Hartford, and when I came back, says he, Sam, what have you got to show for it?  Now I ax what have they to show for their three months’ setting?  They mislead folks; they make ’em believe all the use of the Assembly is to bark at Councillors, Judges, Bankers, and such cattle, to keep ’em from eatin up the crops; and it actilly costs more to feed them when they are watchin, than all the others could eat if they did break a fence and get in.  Indeed some folks say they are the most breachy of the two, and ought to go to pound themselves.  If their fences are good them hungry cattle could’nt break through; and if they aint, they ought to stake ’em up, and with them well; but it’s no use to make fences unless the land is cultivated.  If I see a farm all gone to wrack, I say here’s bad husbandry and bad management; and if I see a Province like this, of great capacity, and great natural resources, poverty-stricken, I say there’s bad legislation.  No, said he, (with an air of more seriousness than I had yet observed,) How much it is to be regretted, that, laying aside personal attacks and petty jealousies, they would not unite as one man, and with one mind and one heart apply themselves sedulously to the internal improvement and developement of this beautiful Province.  Its value is utterly unknown, either to the general or local Government, and the only persons who duly appreciate it, are the Yankees.

No.  XVII

A Yankee Handle for a Halifax Blade.