d Old Bull say, if
I was to tell him of one pair of hosses carryin' three or four people,
forty or fifty miles a-day, day in and day out, hand runnin' for a
fortnight? Why, he'd either be too civil to tell me it was a lie, or
bein' afeerd I'd jump down his throat if he did, he'd sing dumb, and let
me see by his looks, he thought so, though.

"I intend to take the consait out of these chaps, and that's a fact. If
I don't put the leak into 'em afore I've done with them, my name ain't
Sam Slick, that's a fact. I'm studyin' the ins and the outs of this
place, so as to know what I am about, afore I take hold; for I feel
kinder skittish about my men. Gentlemen are the lowest, lyinest,
bullyinest, blackguards there is, when they choose to be; 'specially if
they have rank as well as money. A thoroughbred cheat, of good blood,
is a clipper, that's a fact. They ain't right up-and-down, like a cow's
tail, in their dealin's; and they've got accomplices, fellers that
will lie for 'em like any thing, for the honour of their company; and
bettin', onder such circumstances, ain't safe.

"But, I'll tell you what is, if you have got a hoss that can do it, and
no mistake: back him, hoss agin hoss, or what's safer still, hoss agin
time, and you can't be tricked. Now, I'll send for Old Clay, to come in
Cunard's steamer, and cuss 'em they ought to bring over the old hoss and
his fixins, free, for it was me first started that line. The way old Mr.
Glenelg stared, when I told him it was thirty-six miles shorter to go
from Bristol to New York by the way of Halifax, than to go direct warn't
slow. It stopt steam for that hitch, that's a fact, for he thort I was
mad. He sent it down to the Admiralty to get it ciphered right, and it
took them old seagulls, the Admirals a month to find it out.

"And when they did, what did they say? Why, cuss 'em, says they, 'any
fool knows that.' Says I, 'If that's the case you are jist the boys then
that ought to have found it out right off at oncet.'

"Yes, Old Clay ought to go free, but he won't; and guess I am able to
pay freight for him, and no thanks to nobody. Now, I'll tell you what,
English trottin' is about a mile in two minutes and forty-seven seconds,
and that don't happen oftener than oncet in fifty years, if it was ever
done at all, for the English brag so there is no telling right. Old Clay
_can_ do his mile in two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. He _has_ done
that, and I guess he _could_ do more