Nature and Human Nature | Page 6

'when I can't drive a nail with one blow, I hammer away till I do git it in. Some folks' heads is as hard as hackmetacks--you have to bore a hole in it first to put the nail in, to keep it from bendin', and then it is as touch as a bargain if you can send it home and clinch it.'
"Now maxims and saws are the sumtotalisation of a thing. Folks won't always add up the columns to see if they are footed right, but show 'em the amount and result, and that they are able to remember and carry away with them. No--no, put them Italics in, as I have always done. They show there is truth at the bottom. I like it, for it's what I call sense on the short-cards--do you take? Recollect always, you are not Sam Slick, and I am not you. The greatest compliment a Britisher would think he could pay you, would be to say, 'I should have taken you for an Englishman.' Now the greatest compliment he can pay me is to take me for a Connecticut Clockmaker, who hoed his way up to the Embassy to London, and preserved so much of his nationality, after being so long among foreigners. Let the Italics be--you ain't answerable for them, nor my boastin' neither. When you write a book of your own, leave out both if you like, but as you only edit my Journal, if you leave them out, just go one step further, and leave out Sam Slick also.
"There is another thing, Squire, upon which I must make a remark, if you will bear with me. In my last work you made me speak purer English than you found in my Journal, and altered my phraseology, or rather my dialect. Now, my dear Nippent--"
"Nippent!" said I, "what is that?"
"The most endearing word in the Indian language for friend," he said, "only it's more comprehensive, including ally, foster-brother, life-preserver, shaft-horse, and everything that has a human tie in it."
"Ah, Slick," I said, "how skilled you are in soft sawder! You laid that trap for me on purpose, so that I might ask the question, to enable you to throw the lavender to me."
"Dod drot that word soft sawder," said he, "I wish I had never invented it. I can't say a civil thing to anybody now, but he looks arch, as if he had found a mare's nest, and says, 'Ah, Slick! none of your soft sawder now.' But, my dear nippent, by that means you destroy my individuality. I cease to be the genuine itinerant Yankee Clockmaker, and merge into a very bad imitation. You know I am a natural character, and always was, and act and talk naturally, and as far as I can judge, the little alteration my sojourn in London with the American embassy has made in my pronunciation and provincialism, is by no means an improvement to my Journal. The moment you take away my native dialect, I become the representative of another class, and cease to be your old friend 'Sam Slick, the Clockmaker.' Bear with me this once, Squire, and don't tear your shirt, I beseech you, for in all probability it will be the last time it will be in your power to subject me to the ordeal of criticism, and I should like, I confess, to remain true to myself and to Nature to the last.
"On the other hand, Squire, you will find passages in this Journal that have neither Yankee words nor Yankee brag in them. Now pray don't go as you did in the last, and alter them by insarten here and there what you call 'Americanisms,' so as to make it more in character and uniform; that is going to t'other extreme, for I can write as pure English, if I can't speak it, as anybody can.1 My education warn't a college one, like my brothers, Eldad's and Josiah's, the doctor and lawyer; but it was not neglected for all that. Dear old Minister was a scholar, every inch of him, and took great pains with me in my themes, letters, and composition. 'Sam,' he used to say, 'there are four things needed to write well: first, master the language grammatically; second, master your subject; third, write naturally; fourth, let your heart as well as your hand guide the pen.' It ain't out of keeping therefore for me to express myself decently in composition if I choose. It warn't out of character, with Franklin, and he was a poor printer boy, nor Washington, and he was only a land-surveyor, and they growed to be 'some punkins' too.
1 The reader will perceive from a perusal of this Journal, that Mr Slick, who is always so ready to detect absurdity in