That, said the Clockmaker as soon as we were mounted, that I call ‘human natur!’ Now that clock is sold for 40 dollars—­it cost me just 6 dollars and 50 cents.  Mrs. Flint will never let Mrs. Steel have the refusal—­nor will the deacon learn until I call for the clock, that having once indulged in the use of a superfluity, how difficult it is to give it up.  We can do without any article of luxury we have never had, but when once obtained, it is not ‘in human natur’ to surrender it voluntarily.  Of fifteen thousand sold by myself and partners in this Province, twelve thousand were left in this manner, and only ten clocks were ever returned—­ when we called for them they invariably bought them.  We trust to ‘soft sawder’ to get them into the house, and to ‘human natur’ that they never come out of it.

No.  III

The Silent Girls.

Do you see them are swallows, said the Clockmaker, how low they fly?  Well I presume we shall have rain right away, and them noisy critters, them gulls how close they keep to the water, down there in the Shubenacadie; well that’s a sure sign.  If we study natur, we don’t want no thermometer.  But I guess we shall be in time to get under cover in a shingle-maker’s shed about three miles ahead on us.  We had just reached the deserted hovel when the rain fell in torrents.

I reckon, said the Clockmaker, as he sat himself down on a bundle of shingles, I reckon they are bad off for inns in this country.  When a feller is too lazy to work here, he paints his name over his door, and calls it a tavern, and as like as not he makes the whole neighbourhood as lazy as himself—­it is about as easy to find a good inn in Halifax, as it is to find wool on a goat’s back.  An inn, to be a good concarn, must be built a purpose, you can no more make a good tavern out of a common dwelling house, I expect, than a good coat out of an old pair of trowsers.  They are etarnal lazy, you may depend—­now there might be a grand spec made there, in building a good Inn and a good Church.  What a sacrilegious and unnatural union, said I, with most unaffected surprise.  Not at all, said Mr. Slick, we build both on speculation in the States, and make a good deal of profit out of ’em too, I tell you.  We look out a good sightly place, in a town like Halifax, that is pretty considerably well peopled, with folks that are good marks; and if there is no real right down good preacher among them, we build a handsome Church, touched off like a New-York liner, a real taking looking thing—­and then we look out for a preacher, a crack man, a regular ten horse power chap —­well, we hire him, and we have to give pretty high wages too, say twelve hundred or sixteen hundred dollars a year.  We take him at first on trial for a Sabbath or two, to try his paces, and if he takes with the folks, if he goes down well, we clinch the bargain, and let and