Did you see that are nigger, said he, that removed the Oyster shells? well, he’s one of our Chesapickers, one of General Cuffy’s slaves.  I wish Admiral Cockburn had a taken them all off our hands at the same rate.  We made a pretty good sale of them are black cattle, I guess, to the British; I wish we were well rid of ’em all.  The blacks and the whites in the States show their teeth and snarl, they are jist ready to fall to.  The protestants and catholics begin to lay back their ears, and turn tail for kickin.  The abolitionists and planters are at it like two bulls in a pastur.  Mob law and Lynch law are working like yeast in a barrell, and frothing at the bung hole.  Nullification and Tariff are like a charcoal pit, all covered up, but burning inside, and sending out smoke at every crack, enough to stifle a horse.  General government and state government every now and then square off and sparr, and the first blow given will bring a genuine set-to.  Surplus revenue is another bone of contention; like a shin of beef thrown among a pack of dogs, it will set the whole on ’em by the ears.  You have heerd tell of cotton rags dipt in turpentine, hav’nt you, how they produce combustion?  Well, I guess we have the elements of spontaneous combustion among us in abundance; when it does break out, if you don’t see an eruption of human gore, worse than Etna lava, then I’m mistaken.  There’ll be the very devil to pay, that’s a fact.  I expect the blacks will butcher the Southern whites, and the northerners will have to turn out and butcher them again; and all this shoot, hang, cut, stab, and burn business will sweeten our folks’ temper, as raw meat does that of a dog—­it fairly makes me sick to think on it.  The explosion may clear the air again, and all be tranquil once more, but its an even chance if it don’t leave us the three steam boat options, to be blown sky high, to be scalded to death or drowned.  If this sad picture you have drawn, be indeed true to nature, how does your country, said I, appear so attractive, as to draw to it so large a portion of our population?  It tante its attraction, said the Clockmaker, its nothin but its power of suction; it is a great whirlpool—­a great vortex—­it drags all the straw, and chips and floatin sticks, drift wood and trash into it.  The small crafts are sucked in, and whirl round and round like a squirrel in a cage—­ they’ll never come out.  Bigger ones pass through at certain times of tide, and can come in and out with good pilotage, as they do at hell gate up the Sound.  You astonish me, said I, beyond measure; both your previous conversations with me, and the concurrent testimony of all my friends who have visited the States, give a different view of it.  Your friends! said the Clockmaker, with such a tone of ineffable contempt, that I felt