The Quakers have been celebrated for the pertinacity with which they avoid giving a direct answer, but what Quaker could ever vie with a Yankee in this sort of fencing?  Nothing, in fact, can equal their skill in evading a question, excepting that with which they set about asking one.  I am afraid that in repeating a conversation which I overheard on board the Erie canal boat, I shall spoil it, by forgetting some of the little delicate doublings which delighted me—­yet I wrote it down immediately.  Both parties were Yankees, but strangers to each other; one of them having, by gentle degrees, made himself pretty well acquaninted with the point from which every one on board had started, and that for which he was bound, at last attacked his brother Reynard thus:-

“Well, now, which way may you be travelling?”

“I expect this canal runs pretty nearly west.”

“Are you going far with it?”

“Well, now, I don’t rightly know how many miles it may be.”

“I expect you’ll be from New York?”

“Sure enough I have been at New York, often and often.”

“I calculate, then, ’tis not there as you stop?”

“Business must be minded, in stopping and in stirring.”

“You may say that.  Well, I look then you’ll be making for the Springs?”

“Folks say as all the world is making for the Springs, and I except a good sight of them is.”

“Do you calculate upon stopping long when you get to your journey’s end?”

“’Tis my business must settle that, I expect?”

“I guess that’s true, too; but you’ll be for making pleasure a business for once, I calculate?”

“My business don’t often lie in that line.”

“Then, may be, it is not the Springs as takes you this line?”

“The Springs is a right elegant place, I reckon.”

“It is your health, I calculate, as makes you break your good rules?”

“My health don’t trouble me much, I guess.”

“No?  Why that’s well.  How is the markets, sir?  Are bread stuffs up?”

“I a’nt just capable to say.”

“A deal of money’s made by just looking after the article at the fountain’s head.”

“You may say that.”

“Do you look to be making great dealings in produce up the country?”

“Why that, I expect, is difficult to know.”

“I calculate you’ll find the markets changeable these times?”

“No markets ben’t very often without changing.”

“Why, that’s right down true.  What may be your biggest article of produce?”

“I calculate, generally, that’s the biggest, as I makes most by.”

“You may say that.  But what do you chiefly call your most particular branch?”

“Why, that’s what I can’t justly say.”

And so they went on, without advancing or giving an inch, ’till I was weary of listening; but I left them still at it, when I stepped out to resume my station on a trunk at the bow of the boat, where I scribbled in my note-book this specimen of Yankee conversation.