The Clockmaker | Page 8

Slick; "we build both on speculation in the States, and make a good deal of profit out of 'em too, I tell you. We look out a good sightly place, in a town like Halifax, that is pretty considerably well peopled, with folks that are good marks; and if there is no real right down good preacher among them, we build a handsome Church, touched off like a New York liner, a real taking looking thing--and then we look out for a preacher, a crack man, a regular ten horse power chap--well, we hire him, and we have to give pretty high wages too, say twelve hundred or sixteen hundred dollars a year. We take him at first on trial for a Sabbath or two, to try his paces, and if he takes with the folks, if he goes down well, we clinch the bargain, and let and sell the pews; and, I tell you it pays well and makes a real good investment. There were few better specs among us than inns and churches, until the railroads came on the carpet; as soon as the novelty of the new preacher wears off, we hire another, and that keeps up the steam."
"I trust it will be long, very long, my friend," said I, "ere the rage for speculation introduces 'the money-changers into the temple,' with us."
Mr. Slick looked at me with a most ineffable expression of pity and surprise. "Depend on it, sir," said he, with a most philosophical air, "this Province is much behind the intelligence of the age. But if it is behind us in that respect, it is a long chalk ahead on us in others. I never seed or heerd tell of a country that had so many natural privileges as this. Why, there are twice as many harbours and water-powers here, as we have all the way from Eastport to New OrLEENS. They have all they can ax, and more than they desarve. They have iron, coal, slate, grindstone, lime, firestone, gypsum, free-stone, and a list as long as an auctioneer's catalogue. But they are either asleep, or stone blind to them. Their shores are crowded with fish, and their lands covered with wood. A government that lays as light on 'em as a down counterp'in, and no taxes. Then look at their dykes. The Lord seems to have made 'em on purpose for such lazy folks. If you were to tell the citizens of our country that these dykes had been cropped for a hundred years without manure, they'd say, they guessed you had seen Col. Crockett, the greatest hand at a flam in our nation. You have heerd tell of a man who couldn't see London for the houses? I tell you, if we had this country, you couldn't see the harbours for the shipping. There'd be a rush of folks to it, as there is in one of our inns, to the dinner table, when they sometimes get jammed together in the door-way, and a man has to take a running leap over their heads, afore he can get in. A little nigger boy in New York found a diamond worth two thousand dollars; well, he sold it to a watchmaker for fifty cents--the little critter didn't know no better. Your people are just like the nigger boy--they don't know the value of their diamond.
"Do you know the reason monkeys are no good? because they chatter all day long; so do the niggers, and so do the Bluenoses of Nova Scotia; it's all talk and no work. Now, with us it's all work and no talk; in our ship yards, our factories, our mills, and even in our vessels, there's no talk; a man can't work and talk too. I guess if you were at the factories at Lowell we'd show you a wonder--five hundred gals at work together, all in silence. I don't think our great country has such a real natural curiosity as that--I expect the world don't contain the beat of that; for a woman's tongue goes so slick of itself, without water power or steam, and moves so easy on its hinges, that it's no easy matter to put a spring stop on it, I tell you--it comes as natural as drinkin' mint julip.
"I don't pretend to say the gals don't nullify the rule, sometimes at intermission and arter hours, but when they do, if they don't let go, then it's a pity. You have heerd a school come out, of little boys? Lord, it's no touch to it. Or a flock of geese at it? They are no more a match for 'em than a pony is for a coach-horse. But when they are at work, all's as still as sleep and no snoring. I guess we