the advantage of me this hitch, any how.  Possible! says he, how’s that?  Why, says I, I guess you’ll return rather lighter than you came—­and that’s more nor I can say, any how, and then I gave him a wink and a jupe of the head, as much as to say, “do you take?” and rode on and left him starin and scratchin his head like a feller who’s lost his road.  If that citizen aint a born fool, or too far gone in the disease, depend on’t, he found “A cure for conceit.”

No.  XXIII

The Blowin Time.

The long rambling dissertation on conceit to which I had just listened, from the Clockmaker, forcibly reminded me of the celebrated aphorism “gnothi seauton,” know thyself, which, both from its great antiquity and wisdom, has been by many attributed to an oracle.

With all his shrewdness to discover, and his humor to ridicule the foibles of others, Mr. Slick was kind to the many defects of his own character; and, while prescribing “a cure for conceit,” exhibited in all he said, and all he did, the most overweening conceit himself.  He never spoke of his own countrymen, without calling them “the most free and enlightened citizens on the face of the airth,” or as “takin the shine off of all creation.”  His country he boasted to be the “best atween the poles,” “the greatest glory under heaven.”  The Yankees he considered (to use his expression) as “actilly the class-leaders in knowledge among all the Americans,” and boasted that they have not only “gone ahead of all others,” but had lately arrived at that most enviable no plus ultra point “of goin ahead of themselves.”  In short, he entertained no doubt that Slickville was the finest place in the greatest nation in the world, and the Slick family the wisest family in it.  I was about calling his attention to this national trait, when I saw him draw his reins under his foot, (a mode of driving peculiar to himself, when he wish’d to economise the time that would otherwise be lost by an unnecessary delay,) and taking off his hat, (which, like a pedlar’s pack, contained a general assortment,) select from a number of loose cigars one that appeared likely to “go,” as he called it.  Having lighted it by a lucifer, and ascertained that it was “true in draft,” he resumed his reins and remarked, This must be an everlastin fine country beyond all doubt, for the folks have nothin to do but to ride about and talk politics.  In winter, when the ground is covered with snow, what grand times they have a slayin over these here mashes with the galls, or playin ball on the ice, or goin to quiltin frolics of nice long winter evenings and then a drivin home like mad, by moonlight.  Natur meant that season on purpose for courtin.  A little tidy scrumptious lookin slay, a real clipper of a horse, a string of bells as long as a string of inions round his neck, and a sprig on his back, lookin for all the world like a bunch of apples broke off at gatherin