dollars, if speculation turns out well.  I am off, says I, whenever you say go.  Tuesday, says he, in the Hamburgh packet.  Now, says he, I’m in a tarnation hurry; I’m goin a pleasurin to-day in the Custom House Boat, along with Josiah Bradford’s galls down to Nahant.  But I’ll tell you what I am at:  the Emperor of Russia has ordered the Poles to cut off their queues on the 1st of January; you must buy them all up, and ship them off to London for the wig makers.  Human hair is scarce and risin.  Lord a massy! says I, how queer they will look, wont they.  Well, I vow, that’s what the sea folks call sailing under bare poles, come true, aint it?  I guess it will turn out a good spec, says he; and a good one it did turn out—­ he cleared ten thousand dollars by it.  When I was at Warsaw, as I was a sayin, there was a Russian officer there who had lost both his arms in battle; a good natured contented critter, as I een amost ever see’d, and he was fed with spoons by his neighbors, but arter awhile they grew tired of it, and I guess he near about starved to death at last.  Now Halifax is like that are spooney, as I used to call him; it is fed by the outports, and they begin to have enough to do to feed themselves—­it must larn to live without ’em.  They have no river, and no country about them; let them make a rail road to Minas Basin, and they will have arms of their own to feed themselves with.  If they don’t do it, and do it soon, I guess they’ll get into a decline that no human skill will cure.  They are proper thin now; you can count their ribs een a most as far as you can see them.  The only thing that will either make or save Halifax, is a rail road across the country to Bay of Fundy.

It will do to talk of, says one; you’ll see it some day says another; yes, says a third, it will come, but we are too young yet.  Our old minister had a darter, a real clever lookin gall as you’d see in a day’s ride, and she had two or three offers of marriage from sponsible men—­most particular good specs—­but minister always said ’Phoebe, you are too young—­the day will come—­but you are too young yet dear.’  Well, Phoebe did’nt think so at all; she said she guessed she knew better nor that:  so the next offer she had, she said she had no notion to lose another chance—­off she sot to Rhode Island and got married; says she, father’s too old, he don’t know.  That’s jist the case at Halifax.  The old folks say the country is too young—­the time will come, and so on; and in the mean time the young folks won’t wait, and run off to the States, where the maxim is, ’youth is the time for improvement; a new country is never too young for exertion—­push on—­keep movin—­go ahead.’  Darn it all, said the Clockmaker, rising with great animation, clinching his fist, and extending his arm—­darn it all, it fairly makes my dander rise, to see the nasty idle loungin good for nothin do little critters—­they aint fit to tend a bear trap, I vow.  They ought to be quilted round and round a room, like a lady’s lap dog, the matter of two hours a day, to keep them from dyin of apoplexy.  Hush, hush, said I, Mr. Slick, you forget.  Well, said he, resuming his usual composure—­well, it’s enough to make one vexed though, I declare—­is’nt it?