Now we will lay down the schoolmaster’s assistant, and take up another book every bit and grain as good as that, although these folks affect to sneer at it—­I mean human natur.  Ah! said I, a knowledge of that was of great service to you, certainly, in the sale of your clock to the old Deacon:  let us see how it will assist you now.  What does a clock want that’s run down? said he.  Undoubtedly to be wound up, I replied; I guess you’ve hit it this time.  The folks of Halifax have run down, and they’ll never go to all eternity, till they are wound up into motion:  the works are all good, and it is plaguy well cased and set—­it only wants a key.  Put this railroad into operation, and the activity it will inspire into business, the new life it will give the place, will surprise you.  Its like lifting a child off its crawling, and putting him on his legs to run—­see how the little critter goes ahead arter that.  A kurnel, (I don’t mean a Kurnel of militia, for we don’t valy that breed o’ cattle nothing—­they do nothing but strut about and screech all day, like peacocks,) but a kurnel of grain, when sowed, will stool into several shoots, and each shoot hear many kurnels, and will multiply itself thus —­4 times 1 is 4, and 4 times 25 is a hundred, (you see all natur cyphers, except the Blue Noses.) Jist so, this here rail-road will not perhaps beget other rail-roads, but it will beget a spirit of enterprise, that will beget other useful improvements.  It will enlarge the sphere and the means of trade, open new sources of traffic and supply—­develop resources—­and what is of more value perhaps than all—­beget motion.  It will teach the folks that go astarn or stand stock still, like the statehouse in Boston, (though they do say the foundation of that has moved a little this summer) not only to go “Ahead,” But to nullify time and space.

Here his horse (who, feeling the animation of his master, had been restive of late) set off at a most prodigious rate of trotting.  It was some time before he was reined up.  When I overtook him, the Clockmaker said, “this old Yankee horse, you see, understands our word ‘go ahead’ better nor these Blue Noses.”

What is it, he continued, what is it that ‘fetters’ the heels of a young country, and hangs like ‘a poke’ around its neck? what retards the cultivation of its soil, and the improvement of its fisheries?—­the high price of labor, I guess.  Well, what’s a rail-road?  The substitution of mechanical for human and animal labor, on a scale as grand as our great country.  Labor is dear in America, and cheap in Europe.  A rail-road, therefore, is comparatively no manner of use to them, to what it is to us—­it does wonders there, but it works miracles here.  There it makes the old man younger, but here it makes a child a giant.  To us it is river, bridge, road and canal, all one.  It saves what we han’t got to spare, men, horses, carts, vessels, barges, and what’s all in all—­time.