of the Bay of Fundy.  A rail road will go from Halifax to Windsor and make them one town, easier to send goods from one to tother, than from Governor Campbell’s House to Admiral Cockburn’s.  A bridge makes a town, a river makes a town, a canal makes a town, but a rail road is bridge, river, thoroughfare, canal, all in one; what a wappin large place that would make, would’nt it?  It would be the dandy, that’s a fact.  No, when you go back, take a piece of chalk, and the first dark night, write on every door in Halifax, in large letters—­a rail road—­and if they don’t know the meanin of it, says you its a Yankee word; if you’ll go to Sam Slick, the Clockmaker, (the chap that fixed a Yankee handle on to a Halifax blade, and I made him a scrape of my leg, as much as to say, that’s you,) every man that buys a Clock shall hear all about a rail road.

No.  XVIII

The Grahamite and the Irish Pilot.

I think, said I, this is a happy country, Mr. Slick.  The people are fortunately all of one origin, there are no national jealousies to divide, and no very violent politics to agitate them.  They appear to be cheerful and contented, and are a civil, good natured, hospitable race.  Considering the unsettled state of almost every part of the world, I think I would as soon cast my lot in Nova-Scotia as in any part I know of.  Its a clever country, you may depend, said be, a very clever country; full of mineral wealth, aboundin in superior water privileges and noble harbors, a large part of it prime land, and it is in the very heart of the fisheries.  But the folks put me in mind of a sect in our country they call the Grahamites—­they eat no meat and no exciting food, and drink nothin stronger than water.  They call it Philosophy (and that is such a pretty word it has made fools of more folks than them afore now,) but I call it tarnation nonsense.  I once travelled all through the State of Maine with one of them are chaps.  He was as thin as a whippin post.  His skin looked like a blown bladder arter some of the air had leaked out, kinder wrinkled and rumpled like, and his eye as dim as a lamp that’s livin on a short allowance of ile.  He put me in mind of a pair of kitchen tongs, all legs, shaft and head, and no belly; a real gander gutted lookin critter, as holler as a bamboo walkin cane, and twice as yaller.  He actilly looked as if he had been picked off a rack at sea, and dragged through a gimlet hole.  He was a lawyer.  Thinks I, the Lord a massy on your clients, you hungry half starved lookin critter, you, you’ll eat em up alive as sure as the Lord made Moses.  You are just the chap to strain at a goat and swallow a camel, tank, shank and flank, all at a gulp.  Well, when we came to an inn, and a beef steak was sot afore us for dinner, he’d say:  oh that is too good for me, its too exciting, all fat meat is diseased meat, give me some bread and cheese.  Well, I’d say, I don’t know