what you call too good, but it tante good enough for me, for I call it as tuf as laushong, and that will bear chawing all day.  When I liquidate for my dinner, I like to get about the best that’s goin, and I ant a bit too well pleased if I don’t.  Exciting indeed!! thinks I. Lord, I should like to see you excited, if it was only for the fun of the thing.  What a temptin lookin critter you’d be among the galls, would’nt you?  Why, you look like a subject the doctor boys had dropped on the road arter they had dug you up, and had cut stick and run for it.  Well, when tea came, be said the same thing, it’s too exciting, give me some water, do; that’s follorin the law of natur.  Well, says I, if that’s the case, you ought to eat beef; why, says he, how do you make out that are proposition?  Why, says I, if drinkin water instead of tea is natur, so is eatin grass accordin to natur; now all flesh is grass, we are told, so you had better eat that and call it vegetable; like a man I once seed who fasted on fish on a Friday, and when he had none, whipped a leg o’ mutton into the oven, and took it out fish, says he it’s “changed plaice,” that’s all, and “Plaice” aint a bad fish.  The Catholics fast enough, gracious knows, but then they fast on a great rousin big splendid salmon at two dollars and forty cents a pound, and lots of old Madeira to make it float light on the stomach; there’s some sense in mortifying the appetite arter that fashion, but plagy little in your way.  No, says I, friend, you may talk about natur as you please, I’ve studied natur all my life, and I vow if your natur could speak out, it would tell you, it don’t over half like to be starved arter that plan.  If you know’d as much about the marks of the mouth as I do, you’d know that you have carniverous as well as graniverous teeth, and that natur meant by that, you should eat most any thing that are door-keeper, your nose, would give a ticket to, to pass into your mouth.  Father rode a race at New York course, when he was near hand to seventy, and that’s more nor you’ll do, I guess, and he eats as hearty as a turkey cock, and he never confined himself to water neither, when he could get anything convened him better.  Says he, Sam, grandfather Slick used to say there was an old proverb in Yorkshire “a full belly makes a strong back,” and I guess if you try it, natur will tell you so too.  If ever you go to Connecticut, jist call into father’s, and he’ll give you a real right down genuine New England breakfast, and if that don’t happify your heart, then my name’s not Sam Slick.  It will make you feel about among the stiffest, I tell you.  It will blow your jacket out like a pig at sea.  You’ll have to shake a reef or two out of your waistbans and make good stowage, I guess, to carry it all under hatches.  There’s nothin like a good pastur to cover the ribs, and make the hide shine, depend on’t.