whether they had not better try and bribe the great Matt.  Ward to use his influence in obtaining them recognition as American territory.  The honour of being admitted as a sovereign state is too great to be hoped for.  He has already discovered signs of our decay, and therefore informs the reader that “the weaker rival ever nurses the bitterest hate.”  This information is followed by extracts from various English writers commenting upon America, at one of whom he gets so indignant, that he suggests as an appropriate American translation of the F.R.S. which is added to the author’s name, “First Royal Scavenger.”

He then gets into a fever about the remarks made by travellers upon what they conceive to be the filthy practice of indiscriminate spitting.  He becomes quite furious because he has never found any work in which “an upstart inlander has ever preached a crusade against the Turks because they did not introduce knives and forks at their tables,” &c.  Even Scripture—­and this, be it remembered, by the sanction of The Christian Advocate—­is blasphemously quoted to extenuate the American practice of expectoration.  “What, after all, is there so unbearably revolting about spitting?  Our Saviour, in one of his early miracles, ’spat upon the ground and made clay of the spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay.  And he said unto him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam.  He went his way therefore and washed, and came seeing.’  I have with a crowd of pilgrims gone down to drink from this very pool, for the water had borrowed new virtue from the miracle.”  He then states his strong inclination to learn to chew tobacco in order to show his contempt for the opinions of travellers.  What a beautiful picture to contemplate—­a popular author with a quid of Virginia before him; Nausea drawing it back with one hand, and Vengeance bringing it forward with the other!  Suddenly a bright idea strikes him:  others may do what he dare not; so he makes the following stirring appeal to his countrymen:  “Let us spit out courageously before the whole world ... let us spit fearlessly and profusely.  Spitting on ordinary occasions may be regarded by a portion of my countrymen as a luxury:  it becomes a duty in the presence of an Englishman.  Let us spit around him—­above him—­beneath him—­everywhere but on him, that he may become perfectly familiar with the habit in all its phases.  I would make it the first law of hospitality to an Englishman, that every tobacco-twist should be called into requisition, and every spittoon be flooded, in order thoroughly to initiate him into the mysteries of chewing.  Leave no room for imagination to work.  Only spit him once into a state of friendly familiarity with the barbarous custom,” &c.  What a splendid conception!—­the population of a whole continent organized under the expectorating banner of the illustrious Matt.  Ward:  field-days twice a week; ammunition supplied gratis; liberal prizes to the best marksmen.  The imagination is perfectly bewildered in the contemplation of so majestic an aggregate outburst of the great American mouth.  I would only suggest that they should gather round the margin of Lake Superior, lest in their hospitable entertainment of the “upstart islanders” they destroyed the vegetation of the whole continent.