The Attaché; or, Sam Slick in England — Complete. Thomas Chandler Haliburton

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘Oh, it’s a capital gun entirely,’ said he.

      “ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘if it ’tis, try it now, and see what sort of a fist you’ll make of it.’

      “So Paddy takes the rifle, lookin’ as knowin’ all the time as if he had ever seed one afore. Well, there was a great red squirrel, on the tip-top of a limb, chatterin’ away like any thing, chee, chee, chee, proper frightened; he know’d it warn’t me, that was a parsecutin’ of him, and he expected he’d be hurt. They know’d me, did the little critters, when they seed me, and they know’d I never had hurt one on ’em, my balls never givin’ ’em a chance to feel what was the matter of them; but Pat they didn’t know, and they see’d he warn’t the man to handle ‘old Bull-Dog.’ I used to call my rifle Bull-Dog, cause she always bit afore she barked.

      “Pat threw one foot out astarn, like a skullin’ oar, and then bent forrards like a hoop, and fetched the rifle slowly up to the line, and shot to the right eye. Chee, chee, chee, went the squirrel. He see’d it was wrong. ‘By the powers!’ sais Pat, ‘this is a left-handed boot,’ and he brought the gun to the other shoulder, and then shot to his left eye. ‘Fegs!’ sais Pat, ‘this gun was made for a squint eye, for I can’t get a right strait sight of the critter, either side.’ So I fixt it for him and told him which eye to sight by. ‘An excellent gun entirely,’ sais Pat, ‘but it tante made like the rifles we have.’

      “Ain’t they strange critters, them Irish, Squire? That feller never handled a rifle afore in all his born days; but unless it was to a priest, he wouldn’t confess that much for the world. They are as bad as the English that way; they always pretend they know every thing.

      “ ‘Come, Pat,’ sais I, ‘blaze away now.’ Back goes the hind leg agin, up bends the back, and Bull-Dog rises slowly to his shoulder; and then he stared, and stared, until his arm shook like palsy. Chee, chee, chee, went the squirrel agin, louder than ever, as much as to say, ‘Why the plague don’t you fire? I’m not a goin’ to stand here all day, for you this way,’ and then throwin’ his tail over his back, he jumped on to the next branch.

      “ ‘By the piper that played before Moses!’ sais Pat, ‘I’ll stop your chee, chee, cheein’ for you, you chatterin’ spalpeen of a devil, you’. So he ups with the rifle agin, takes a fair aim at him, shuts both eyes, turns his head round, and fires; and “Bull-Dog,” findin’ he didn’t know how to hold her tight to the shoulder, got mad, and kicked him head over heels, on the broad of his back. Pat got up, a makin’ awful wry faces, and began to limp, to show how lame his shoulder was, and to rub his arm, to see if he had one left, and the squirrel ran about the tree hoppin’ mad, hollerin’ out as loud as it could scream, chee, chee, chee.

      “ ‘Oh bad luck to you,’ sais Pat, ‘if you had a been at t’other eend of the gun,’ and he rubbed his shoulder agin, and cried like a baby, ‘you wouldn’t have said chee, chee, chee, that way, I know.’

      “Now when your gun, Squire, was a knockin’ over Blue-nose, and makin’ a proper fool of him, and a knockin’ over Jonathan, and a spilin’ of his bran-new clothes, the English sung out chee, chee, chee, till all was blue agin. You had an excellent gun entirely then: let’s see if they will sing out chee, chee, chee, now, when we take a shot at them. Do you take?” and he laid his thumb on his nose, as if perfectly satisfied with the application of his story. “Do you take, Squire? you have an excellent gun entirely, as Pat says. It’s what I call puttin’ the leake into ’em properly. If you had a written this book fust, the English would have said your gun was no good; it wouldn’t have been like the rifles they had seen. Lord, I could tell you stories about the English, that would make even them cryin’ devils the Mississippi crocodiles laugh, if they was to hear ’em.”

      “Pardon me, Mr. Slick,” I said, “this is not the temper with which you should visit England.”

      “What is the temper,” he replied with much warmth, “that they visit us in? Cuss ’em! Look at Dickens; was there ever a man made so much of, except La Fayette? And who was Dickens? Not a Frenchman that is a friend to us, not a native that has a claim on us; not a colonist, who, though English by name is still an American by birth, six of one and half a dozen of t’other, and therefore a kind of half-breed brother. No! he was a cussed Britisher; and what is wus, a British author; and yet, because he was a man of genius, because genius has the ‘tarnal globe for its theme, and the world for its home, and mankind for its readers, and bean’t a citizen of this state or that state, but a native of the univarse, why we welcomed him, and feasted him, and leveed him, and escorted him, and cheered him, and honoured him, did he honour us? What did he say of us when he returned? Read his book.

      “No, don’t read his book, for it tante worth readin’. Has he said one word of all that reception in his book? that book that will be read, translated, and read agin all over Europe—has he said one word of that reception? Answer me that, will you? Darned the word, his memory was bad; he lost it over the tafrail when he was sea-sick. But his notebook was safe under lock and key, and the pigs in New York, and the chap the rats eat in jail, and the rough man from Kentucky, and the entire raft of galls emprisoned in one night, and the spittin’ boxes and all that stuff, warn’t trusted to memory, it was noted down, and printed.

      “But it tante no matter. Let any man give me any sarce in England, about my country, or not give me the right po-sition in society, as Attache to our Legation, and, as Cooper says, I’ll become belligerent, too, I will, I snore. I can snuff a candle with a pistol as fast as you can light it; hang up an orange, and I’ll first peel it with ball and then quarter it. Heavens! I’ll let daylight dawn through some o’ their jackets, I know.

      “Jube, you infarnal black scoundrel, you odoriferous nigger you, what’s that you’ve got there?”

      “An apple, massa.”

      “Take off your cap and put that apple on your head, then stand sideways by that port-hole, and hold steady, or you might stand a smart chance to have your wool carded, that’s all.”

      Then taking a pistol out of the side-pocket of his mackintosh, he deliberately walked over to the other side of the deck, and examined his priming.

      “Good heavens, Mr. Slick!” said I in great alarm, “what are you about?”

      “I am goin’,” he said with the greatest coolness, but at the same time with equal sternness, “to bore a hole through that apple, Sir.”

      “For shame! Sir,” I said. “How can you think of such a thing? Suppose you were to miss your shot, and kill that unfortunate boy?”

      “I won’t suppose no such thing, Sir. I can’t miss it. I couldn’t miss it if I was to try. Hold your head steady, Jube—and if I did, it’s no great matter. The onsarcumcised Amalikite ain’t worth over three hundred dollars at the furthest, that’s a fact; and the way he’d pyson a shark ain’t no matter. Are you ready, Jube?”

      “Yes, massa.”

      “You shall do no such thing, Sir,” I said, seizing his arm with both my hands. “If you attempt to shoot at that apple, I shall hold no further intercourse with you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sir.”

      “Ky! massa,” said Jube, “let him fire, Sar; he no hurt Jube; he no foozle de hair. I isn’t one mossel afeerd. He often do it, jist to keep him hand in, Sar. Massa most a grand shot, Sar. He take off de ear oh de squirrel so slick, he neber miss it, till he go scratchin’ his head. Let him appel hab it, massa.”

      “Oh, yes,” said Mr. Slick, “he СКАЧАТЬ