Mr. Slick has often alluded to this subject, and always in a most decided manner; I am inclined to think he is right.  Mr. Howe’s papers on the rail road I read till I came to his calculations, but I never could read figures, ‘I can’t cypher,’ and there I paused; it was a barrier:  I retreated a few paces, took a running leap, and cleared the whole of them.  Mr. Slick says he has under and not over rated its advantages.  He appears to be such a shrewd, observing, intelligent man, and so perfectly at home on these subjects, that I confess I have more faith in this humble but eccentric Clockmaker, than in any other man I have met with in this Province.  I therefore pronounce ‘there will be a rail road.’

No.  XIV

Sayings and Doings in Cumberland.

I reckon, said the Clockmaker, as we strolled through Amherst, you have read Hook’s story of the boy that one day asked one of his father’s guests who his next door neighbor was, and when he heerd his name, asked him if he warnt a fool.  No, my little feller, said he, he beant a fool, he is a most particular sensible man; but why did you ax that are question?  Why, said the little boy, mother said tother day you were next door to a fool, and I wanted to know who lived next door to you.  His mother felt pretty ugly, I guess, when she heerd him run right slap on that are breaker.  Now these Cumberland folks have curious next door neighbors, too; they are placed by their location right atwixt fire and water; they have New Brunswick politics on one side, and Nova Scotia politics on tother side of them, and Bay Fundy and Bay Varte on tother two sides; they are actilly in hot water; they are up to their croopers in politics, and great hands for talking of House of Assembly, political Unions, and what not.  Like all folks who wade so deep, they can’t always tell the natur of the ford.  Sometimes they strike their shins agin a snag of a rock; at other times they go whap into a quicksand, and if they don’t take special care they are apt to go souse over head and ears into deep water.  I guess if they’d talk more of rotations, and less of elections, more of them are dykes, and less of banks, and attend more to top-dressing, and lees to re-dressing, it ed be better for ’em.  Now you mention the subject, I think I have observed, said I, that there is a great change in your countrymen in that respect.  Formerly, whenever you met an American, you had a dish of politics set before you, whether you had an appetite for it or not; but lately I have remarked they seldom allude to it.  Pray to what is this attributable?  I guess, said he, they have enough of it to home, and are sick of the subject.  They are cured the way our pastry cooks cure their prentices of stealing sweet notions out of their shops.  When they get a new prentice they tell him he must never so much as look at all them are nice things; and if he dares to lay the weight