I larned to do it myself. And now, would you think it, I'm
sometimes glad of a little turn-over, or an accident, jest that I may
keep my hand in and not forget to be able to help myself or my
neighbors."

"Well, you're a cur'ous person, and I'd like to hear something more
about you. But it's high time we should wet our whistles, and it's but
dry talking without something to wash a clear way for the slack. So,
boys, be up, and fish up the jemmi-john--I hope it hain't been thumped
to bits in the rut. If it has, I shall be in a tearing passion."

"Well, now, that won't be reasonable, seeing that it's no use, and jest
wasting good breath that might bring a fair price in the market."

"What, not get in a passion if all the whiskey's gone? That won't do,
strannger, and though you have helped me out of the ditch, by, dogs, no
man shall prevent me from getting in a passion if I choose it."

"Oh, to be sure, friend--you an't up to my idee. I didn't know that it
was for the good it did you that you got in a passion. I am clear that
when a man feels himself better from a passion, he oughtn't to be shy in
getting into it. Though that wasn't a part of my edication, yet I guess,
if such a thing would make me feel more comfortable, I'd get in a
passion fifty times a day."

"Well, now, strannger, you talk like a man of sense. 'Drot the man, says
I, who hain't the courage to get in a passion! None but a miserable,
shadow-skinning Yankee would refuse to get in a passion when his jug of
whiskey was left in the road!"

"A-hem--" coughed the dealer in small wares--the speech of the old
wagoner grating harshly upon his senses; for if the Yankee be proud of
anything, it is of his country--its enterprise, its institutions; and of
these, perhaps, he has more true and unqualified reason to be pleased
and proud than any other one people on the face of the globe. He did not
relish well the sitting quietly under the harsh censure of his
companion, who seemed to regard the existence of a genuine emotion among
the people down east as a manifest absurdity; and was thinking to come
out with a defence, in detail, of the pretensions of New England, when,
prudence having first taken a survey of the huge limbs of the wagoner,
and calling to mind the fierce prejudices of the uneducated southrons
generally against all his tribe, suggested the convenient propriety of
an evasive reply.

"A-hem--" repeated the Yankee, the _argumentum ad hominem_ still
p