Well, with us in New England, the Sheriff attends the Judge to Court and, says I to the Sheriff, why don’t you escort that are venerable old Judge to the State House, he’s a credit to our nation that man, he’s actilly the first pot hook on the crane, the whole weight is on him, if it warnt for him the fat would be in the fire in no time, I wonder you don’t show him that respect—­it wouldn’t hurt you one morsel, I guess.  Says he, quite miffy like, don’t he know the way to Court as well as I do? if I thought he didn’t, I’d send one of my niggers to show him the road.  I wonder who was his lackey last year, that he wants me to be hisn this time.  It don’t convene to one of our free and enlightened citizens, to tag arter any man, that’s a fact; its too English and too foreign for our glorious institutions.  He’s bound by law to be there at 10 o’clock, and so be I, and we both know the way there I reckon.

I told the story to our minister, Mr. Hopewell (and he has some odd notions about him that man, though he don’t always let out what he thinks); says he, Sam, that was in bad taste, (a great phrase of the old gentleman’s that) in bad taste, Sam.  That are Sheriff was a goney; don’t cut your cloth arter his pattern, or your garment won’t become you, I tell you.  We are too enlightened, to worship our fellow citizens as the ancients did, but we ought to pay great respect to vartue and exalted talents in this life; and, arter their death, there should be statues of eminent men placed in our national temples, for the veneration of arter ages, and public ceremonies performed annually to their honor.  Arter all, Sam, said he, (and he made a considerable of a long pause, as if he was dubersome whether he ought to speak out or not) arter all, Sam, said he, atween ourselves, (but you must not let on I said so, for the fullness of time han’t yet come) half a yard of blue ribbon is a plaguy cheap way of rewarden merit, as the English do; and, although we larf at em, (for folks always will larf at what they hant got, and never can get,) yet titles aint bad things as objects of ambition, are they?  Then, tappen me on the shoulder, and lookin up and smilin, as he always did when he was pleased with an idee, Sir Samuel Slick would not sound bad, I guess, would it Sam?

When I look at the English House of Lords, said he, and see so much larning, piety, talent, honor, vartue, and refinement, collected together, I ax myself this, here question, can a system which produces and sustains such a body of men, as the world never saw before and never will see agin, be defective?  Well, I answer myself, perhaps it is, for all human institutions are so, but I guess its een about the best arter all.  It wouldn’t do here now, Sam, nor perhaps for a century to come, but it will come sooner or later with some variations.  Now the Newtown pippin, when transplanted to England, don’t produce such fruit as it does in Long Island, and English fruits don’t preserve their flavor here, neither;