The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 539, March 24, 1832Various
Religion
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 539, March 24, 1832
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
"'Well now, so you be from the old country? Ay--you'll see sights here I
guess.' 'I hope I shall see many.' 'That's a fact.--Why they do say,
that if a poor body contrives to be smart enough to scrape together a few
dollars, that your King George always comes down upon 'em, and takes it
all away. Don't he?' 'I do not remember hearing of such a transaction.' 'I
guess they be pretty close about it.' 'Your papers ben't like ourn, I
reckon? Now we says and prints just what we likes.' 'You spend a good deal
of time in reading the newspapers.' 'And I'd like you to tell me how we
can spend it better. How should freemen spend their time, but looking
after their government, and watching that them fellers as we gives offices
to, doos their duty, and gives themselves no airs?' 'But I sometimes think,
sir, that your fences might be in more thorough repair, and your roads in
better order, if less time was spent in politics.' 'The Lord! to see how
little you knows of a free country? Why, what's the smoothness of a road
put against the freedom of a free-born American? And what does a broken
zig-zag signify, comparable to knowing that the men what we have been
pleased to send up to Congress, speaks handsome and straight, as we
chooses they should?' 'It is from a sense of duty, then, that you all go
to the liquor store to read the papers?' 'To be sure it is, and he'd be no
true-born American as didn't. I don't say that the father of a family
should always be after liquor, but I do say that I'd rather have my son
drunk three times in a week, than not to look after the affairs of his
country,'"
_Hogs_.
"Immense droves of hogs were continually arriving from the country by the
road that led to most of our favourite walks; they were often fed and
lodged in the prettiest valleys, and worse still, were slaughtered beside
the prettiest streams. Another evil threatened us from the same quarter,
that was yet heavier. Our cottage had an ample piazza, (a luxury almost
universal in the country houses of America,) which, shaded by a group of
acacias, made a delightful sitting-room; from this favourite spot we one
day perceived symptoms of building in a field close to it; with much
anxiety we hastened to the spot, and asked what building was to be erected
there. ''Tis to be a slaughter-house for hogs,' was the dreadful reply.
As there were several gentlemen's houses in the neighbourhood, I asked if
such an erection might not be indicted as a nuisance. 'A what?' 'A
nuisance,' I repeated, and explained what I meant. 'No, no,' was the reply,
'that may do very well for your tyrannical country, where a rich man's
nose is more thought of than a poor man's mouth; but hogs be profitable
produce here, and we be too free for such a law as that, I guess.'"
* * * * *
THE BELL ROCK LIGHT HOUSE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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