alist,' 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 countesses, Parliament men, and them that call
themselves gentlemen and ladies, for spies."

"How very absurd!" I said.

"Oh yes, very absurd," said Mr. Slick; "whenever I say anythin' agin
England, it's very absurd, it's all prejudice. Nothin' is strange,
though, when it is said of us, and the absurder it is, the truer it is.
I can bam as well as any man when bam is the word, but when fact is the
play, I am right up and down, and true as a trivet. I won't deceive you;
I'll prove it.

"There was a Kurnel Dun--dun--plague take his name, I can't recollect
it, but it makes no odds--I know _he_ is Dun for, though, that's a fact.
Well, he was a British kurnel, that was out to Halifax when I was there.
I know'd him by sight, I didn't know him by talk, for I didn't fill then
the dignified situation I now do, of Attache. I was only a clockmaker
then, and I suppose he wouldn't have dirtied the tip eend of his white
glove with me then, any more than I would sile mine with him now, and
very expensive and troublesome things them white gloves be too; there is
no keepin' of them clean. For my part, I don't see why a man can't make
his own skin as clean as a kid's, any time; and if a feller can't be let
shake hands with a gall except he has a glove on, why ain't he made to
cover his lips, and kiss thro' kid skin too.

"But to get back to the kurnel, and it's a pity he hadn't had a glove
over his mouth, that's a fact. Well, he went home to England with his
regiment, and one night when he was dinin' among some first chop men,
nobles and so on, they sot up considerable late over their claret