Now, if I describe a house that has an
old hat in one window, and a pair of trousers in another, I don't stop
to turn glazier, take 'em out and put whole glass in, nor make a
garden where there is none, and put a large tree in the foreground for
effect; but I take it as I find it, and I take people in the dress I
find 'em in, and if I set 'em a talkin' I take their very words down.
Nothing gives you a right idea of a country and its people like that.
There is always some interest in natur, where truly depicted. Minister
used to say that some author (I think he said it was old Dictionary
Johnson) remarked, that the life of any man, if wrote truly, would be
interesting. I think so too; for every man has a story of his own,
adventures of his own, and some things have happened to him that never
happened to anybody else. People here abuse me for all this, they say,
after all my boastin' I don't do 'em justice. But after you and I are
dead and gone, and things have been changed, as it is to be hoped they
will some day or another for the better, unless they are like their
Acadian French neighbours, and intend to remain just as they are for
two hundred and fifty years, then these sketches will be curious; and,
as they are as true to life as a Dutch picture, it will be interestin'
to see what sort of folks were here in 1854, how they lived, and how
they employed themselves, and so on.
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