“Well, now, that won’t be reasonable, seeing that it’s no use, and jest wasting good breath that might bring a fair price in the market.”

“What, not get in a passion if all the whiskey’s gone?  That won’t do, strannger, and though you have helped me out of the ditch, by, dogs, no man shall prevent me from getting in a passion if I choose it.”

“Oh, to be sure, friend—­you an’t up to my idee.  I didn’t know that it was for the good it did you that you got in a passion.  I am clear that when a man feels himself better from a passion, he oughtn’t to be shy in getting into it.  Though that wasn’t a part of my edication, yet I guess, if such a thing would make me feel more comfortable, I’d get in a passion fifty times a day.”

“Well, now, strannger, you talk like a man of sense.  ’Drot the man, says I, who hain’t the courage to get in a passion!  None but a miserable, shadow-skinning Yankee would refuse to get in a passion when his jug of whiskey was left in the road!”

“A-hem—­” coughed the dealer in small wares—­the speech of the old wagoner grating harshly upon his senses; for if the Yankee be proud of anything, it is of his country—­its enterprise, its institutions; and of these, perhaps, he has more true and unqualified reason to be pleased and proud than any other one people on the face of the globe.  He did not relish well the sitting quietly under the harsh censure of his companion, who seemed to regard the existence of a genuine emotion among the people down east as a manifest absurdity; and was thinking to come out with a defence, in detail, of the pretensions of New England, when, prudence having first taken a survey of the huge limbs of the wagoner, and calling to mind the fierce prejudices of the uneducated southrons generally against all his tribe, suggested the convenient propriety of an evasive reply.

“A-hem—­” repeated the Yankee, the argumentum ad hominem still prominent in his eyes—­“well, now, I take it, friend, there’s no love to spare for the people you speak of down in these parts.  They don’t seem to smell at all pleasant in this country.”

“No, I guess not, strannger, as how should they—­a mean, tricky, catchpenny, skulking set—­that makes money out of everybody, and hain’t the spirit to spend it!  I do hate them, now, worse than a polecat!”

“Well, now, friend, that’s strange.  If you were to travel for a spell, down about Boston or Salem in Massachusetts, or at Meriden in Connecticut, you’d hear tell of the Yankees quite different.  If you believe what the people say thereabouts, you’d think there was no sich people on the face of the airth.”

“That’s jist because they don’t know anything about them; and it’s not because they can’t know them neither, for a Yankee is a varmint you can nose anywhere.  It must be that none ever travels in those parts—­selling their tin-kettles, and their wooden clocks, and all their notions.”