Canada seemed to be a kind of Valley of Jehoshaphat for Secessionists.
We scented the aroma somewhat at Saratoga; nothing to speak of, nothing
to lay hold of; but you were conscious of a chill on your warm loyalty.
There were petty smirks and sneers and quips that you could feel, and
not see or hear. You SENSED, to use a rustic expression, the presence
of a class that was not palpably treasonable, but rather half cotton.
But at Canada it comes out all wool. The hot South opens like a double
rose, red and full. The English article is cooler and supercilious. I
say nothing, for my role is to see; but Halicarnassus and the Anakim
exchange views with the greatest nonchalance, in spite of pokes and
scowls and various subtabular hints.
"What is the news?" says one to the other, who is reading the morning
paper.
"Prospect of English intervention," says the other to one.
"Then we are just in season to see Canada for the last time as a
British province," says the first.
"And must hurry over to England, if we design to see St. George and the
dragon tutelizing Windsor Castle," says the second; whereupon a John
Bull yonder looks up from his 'am and heggs, and the very old dragon
himself steps down from the banner-folds, and glares out of those irate
eyes, and the ubiquitous British tourist, I have no doubt, took out his
notebook, and put on his glasses and wrote down for home consumption
another instance of the insufferable assurance of these Yankees.
"Where have you been?" I ask Halicarnassus, coming in late to breakfast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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