A satirist, like an Irishman, finds it
convenient sometimes to shoot from behind a shelter. Like him, too, he
may occasionally miss his shot, and firing with intent to do bodily
harm is almost as badly punished as if death had ensued. And besides,
an anonymous book has a mystery about it. Moreover, what more right
has a man to say to you, 'Stand and deliver your name,' than to say,
'Stand and fork out your purse'--I can't see the difference for the
life of me. Hesitation betrays guilt. If a person inquires if you are
to home, the servant is directed to say No, if you don't want to be
seen, and choose to be among the missing. Well, if a feller asks if I
am the Mr Slick, I have just as good a right to say, 'Ask about and
find out.'
"People sometimes, I actilly believe, take you for me. If they do, all
I have to say is they are fools not to know better, for we neither act
alike, talk alike, nor look alike, though perhaps we may think alike
on some subjects. You was bred and born here in Nova Scotia, and not
in Connecticut, and if they ask you where I was raised, tell them I
warn't raised at all, but was found one fine morning pinned across a
clothes line, after a heavy washing to hum. It is easy to distinguish
an editor from the author, if a reader has half an eye, and if he
hain't got that, it's no use to offer him spectacles, that's a fact.
Now, by trade I am a clockmaker, and by birth I have the honour to be
a Yankee.
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