"
"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.
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