afore they ever sot foot in this country, I expect.  When they get a bawbee, they know what to do with it, that’s a fact; they open their pouch and drop it in, and its got a spring like a fox trap—­it holds fast to all it gets, like grim death to a dead nigger.  They are proper skin flints, you may depend.  Oatmeal is no great shakes at best; it tante even as good for a horse as real yeller Varginey corn, but I guess I warnt long in finding out that the grits hardly pay for the riddlin.  No, a Yankee has as little chance among them as a Jew has in New England; the sooner he clears out, the better.  You can no more put a leake into them, than you can send a chisel into Teake wood—­it turns the edge of the tool the first drive.  If the Blue Noses knew the value of money as well as they do, they’d have more cash, and fewer Clocks and tin reflectors, I reckon.  Now, its different with the Irish; they never carry a puss, for they never have a cent to put in it.  They are always in love or in liquor, or else in a row; they are the merriest shavers I ever seed.  Judge Beeler, I dare say you have heerd tell of him—­he’s a funny feller—­he put a notice over his factory gate at Lowell, ’no cigars or Irishmen admitted within these walls;’ for, said he, the one will set a flame agoin among my cottons, and t’other among my galls.  I wont have no such inflammable and dangerous things about me on no account.  When the British wanted our folks to join in the treaty to chock the wheels of the slave trade, I recollect hearin old John Adams say, we had ought to humor them; for, says he, they supply us with labor on easier terms, by shippin out the Irish.  Says he, they work better, and they work cheaper, and they don’t live so long.  The blacks, when they are past work hang on for ever, and a proper bill of expence they be; but hot weather and new rum rub out the poor rates for tother ones.  The English are the boys for tradin with; they shell out their cash like a sheef of wheat in frosty weather—­it flies all over the thrashin floor; but then they are a cross grained, ungainly, kicken breed of cattle, as I een a most ever see’d.  Whoever gave them the name of John Bull, knew what he was about, I tell you; for they are bull-necked, bull-headed folks, I vow; sulky, ugly tempered, vicious critters, a pawin and a roarin the whole time, and plaguy onsafe unless well watched.  They are as headstrong as mules, and as conceited as peacocks.

The astonishment with which I heard this tirade against my countrymen, absorbed every feeling of resentment.  I listened with amazement at the perfect composure with which he uttered it.  He treated it as one of those self evident truths, that need neither proof nor apology, but as a thing well known and admitted by all mankind.  There’s no richer sight that I know of, said he, than to see one on ’em when he first lands in one of our great cities.  He swells out as big as a balloon, his skin is ready to bust with wind—­a regular walking bag