writtin' books on it, p'raps. Mind
what I tell you, the English ain't what they was. I'm not speakin' in
jeest now, or in prejudice. I hante a grain of prejudice in me. I've
see'd too much of the world for that I reckon. I call myself a candid
man, and I tell you the English are no more like what the English used
to be, when pigs were swine, and Turkey chewed tobacky, than they are
like the Picts or Scots, or Norman, French, or Saxons, or nothin'."

"Not what they used to be?" I said. "Pray, what do you mean?"

"I mean," said he, "jist what I say. They ain't the same people no
more. They are as proud, and overbearin', and concaited, and haughty
to foreigners as ever; but, then they ain't so manly, open-hearted, and
noble as they used to be, once upon a time. They have the Spy System
now, in full operation here; so jist take my advice, and mind your
potatoe-trap, or you will be in trouble afore you are ten days older,
see if you ain't."

"The Spy System!" I replied. "Good Heavens, Mr. Slick, how can you talk
such nonsense, and yet have the modesty to say you have no prejudice?"

"Yes, the Spy System," said he, "and I'll prove it. You know Dr.
Mc'Dougall to Nova Scotia; well, he knows all about mineralogy, and
geology, and astrology, and every thing a'most, except what he ought to
know, and that is dollar-ology. For he ain't over and above half well
off, that's a fact. Well, a critter of the name of Oatmeal, down to
Pictou, said to another Scotchman there one day, 'The great nateralist
Dr. Mc'Dougall is come to town.'

"'Who?' says Sawney.

"'Dr. Mc'Dougall, the nateralist,' says Oatmeal.

"'Hout, mon,' says Sawney, 'he is nae nateral, that chiel; he kens mair
than maist men; he is nae that fool you take him to be.'

"Now, I am not such a fool as you take _me_ to be, Squire. Whenever I
did a sum to, school, Minister used to say, 'Prove it, Sam, and if it
won't prove, do it over agin, till it will; a sum ain't right when it
won't prove.' Now, I say the English have the Spy System, and I'll prove
it; nay, more than that, they have the nastiest, dirtiest, meanest,
sneakenest system in the world. It is ten times as bad as the French
plan. In France they have bar-keepers, waiters, chamber galls, guides,
quotillions,--"

"Postilions, you mean," I said.

"Well, postilions then, for the French have queer names for people,
that's a fact; disbanded sodgers, and such trash, for spies. In England
they have airls and count