chop-fallen, that I felt kinder sorry for him; I actilly thought he’d a boo-hood right out.  So, to turn the conversation, says I, Professor, what are great map is that I seed you a studyin’ over when I came in?  Says he, it’s a map of Nova Scotia.  That, says he, is a valuable province, a real clever province; we hant got the like on it, but its most plagily in our way.  Well, says I, send for Sam Patch (that are man was a great diver, says the Clockmaker, and the last dive he took was off the falls of Niagara, and he was never heerd of agin till tother day, when Captain Enoch Wentworth, of the Susy Ann Whaler, saw him in the South Sea.  Why, says Capt.  Enoch to him, why Sam, says he, how on airth did you get here?  I thought you was drowned at the Canadian lines.  Why, says he, I didn’t get on airth here at all, but I came right slap through it.  In that are Niagara dive, I went so everlasting deep, I thought it was just as short to come up tother side, so out I came in those parts.  If I don’t take the shine off the Sea Serpent, when I get back to Boston, then my name’s not Sam Patch.)

Well, says I, Professor, send for Sam Patch, the diver, and let him dive down and stick a torpedo in the bottom of the Province and blow it up; or if that won’t do, send for some of our steam tow boats from our great Eastern cities, and tow it out to sea; you know there’s nothing our folks can’t do, when they once fairly take hold on a thing in airnest.  Well, that made him laugh; he seemed to forget about the nutmegs, and says he, that’s a bright scheme, but it won’t do; we shall want the Province some day, and I guess we’ll buy it of King William; they say he is over head and ears in debt, and owes nine hundred millions of pounds starling—­we’ll buy it, as we did Florida.  In the meantime we must have a canal from Bay Fundy to Bay Varte, right through Cumberland neck, by Shittyack, for our fishing vessels to go to Labradore.  I guess you must ax leave first, said I; that’s jist what I was cyphering at, says he, when you came in.  I believe we won’t ax them at all, but jist fall to and do it; its A road of NEEDCESSITY.  I once heard Chief Justice Marshall of Baltimore say; ’If the people’s highway is dangerous —­a man may take down a fence—­and pass through the fields as a way of NEEDCESSITY;’ and we shall do it on that principle, as the way round by Isle Sable is dangerous.  I wonder the Novascotians don’t do it for their own convenience.  Said I, it would’nt make a bad speculation that.  The critters don’t know no better, said he.

Well, says I, the St. John’s folks, why don’t they? for they are pretty cute chaps them.  They remind me, says the Professor, of Jim Billings.  You knew Jim Billings, did’nt you, Mr. Slick?  Oh yes, said I, I knew him.  It was he that made such a talk by shipping blankets to the West Indies; the same, says he.  Well, I went to see him the other day at Mrs. Lecain’s Boarding House, and