productions would escape the usual fate of colonial newspaper articles. On his arrival in London, the son of Lord Abinger (the famous Sir James Scarlett) who was confined to his bed, asked him to call on his father, as there was a question which he would like to put to him. When he called, his Lordship said, “I am convinced that there is a veritable Sam Slick in the flesh now selling clocks to the Bluenoses. Am I right?” “No,” replied the Judge, “there is no such person. He was a pure accident. I never intended to describe a Yankee clockmaker or Yankee dialect; but Sam Slick slipped into my book before I was aware of it, and once there he was there to stay.”

In some respects, perhaps, the prominence given to the Yankee dialect was a mistake, for, except in very isolated communities, dialect soon changes. A Harvard professor, nearly fifty years ago, indignantly protested against Sam Slick being accepted “as a typical American.” His indignation was a little out of place. It would be equally foolish in an Englishman should he protest against Sam Weller being regarded as a typical Englishman. Do typical Americans wander about in out-of-the-way regions selling wooden clocks? Sam Slick represented a very limited class that sixty years ago was seen oftener in the Provinces than in the United States, but we have the best proof that The Clockmaker suggested a true type of some “Downeasters” of that day in the fact that the people of many places in the North-eastern States were for many years convinced that they had among them the original character whom Judge Haliburton had met and described.

Sixty years ago the Southern States were familiar with the sight of Sam Slicks, who had always good horses, and whose Yankee clocks were everywhere to be seen in settlers’ log houses.

Since Sam Slick’s day the itinerant vendor of wooden clocks has moved far west, and when met with there, is a very different personage from Sam Slick. Within the past forty years, however, veritable Sam Slicks have occasionally paid a visit to Canada. One of them sold a large number of wooden clocks throughout Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. They were warranted to keep accurate time for a year, and hundreds of notes of hand were taken for the price. The notes passed by indorsement into third hands, but, unfortunately, the clocks would not go. Actions were brought in several counties by the indorsees, and the fact that Seth’s clocks had stopped caused as much lamentation and dismay as a money panic. The first case that came up was tried before Judge Haliburton, much to the amusement of the public and to the edification of the Yankee clockmaker, who had a long homily read to him on the impropriety of cheating Bluenoses with Yankee clocks that would do anything sooner than keep time.

But a man may be a Yankee clockmaker without having the “cuteness” and common sense of Sam Slick. In his Early Reminiscences, Sir Daniel Lysons describes such an one who, while selling clocks in Canada, was tempted to stake his money and clocks, etc., on games of billiards with a knowing young subaltern. “The clocks soon passed into British possession. They then played for the waggon and horse. Finally, Sam Slick, pluck to the backbone, and still confident, staked his broad-brimmed hat and his coat; Bob won them; and putting them on in place of his own, which he gave to his friend Sam, he mounted the waggon and drove into barracks in triumph, to the immense amusement of the whole garrison.”

An English Reader has for half a century been in use in French schools, which gives Sam Slick’s chapter on “Buying a Horse” as one of its samples of classical English literature.

Experience is proving that the value attached by Sam Slick to the geographical position and natural advantages of the Province of Nova Scotia was not a mistaken one. We are, however, apt to be more grateful to those that amuse than to those who instruct us. Many persons who laughed at Sam Slick’s jokes did not relish his truths, and his popularity as an author was far greater out of Nova Scotia than in it; but it had ceased to depend on the verdict of his countrymen.

Artemus Ward pronounced him to be the “father of the American school of humor.”

The illustrations of the Clockmaker by Hervieu, and of Wise Saws by Leech, supplied the conventional type of “Brother Jonathan,” or “Uncle Sam,” with his shrewd smile, his long hair, his goatee, his furry hat, and his short striped trousers held down by long straps, a precise contrast to the conventional testy, pompous, pot-bellied John Bull, with his knee-breeches and swallow-tail coat.

Among all the numerous notices of Sam Slick’s works that have appeared from time to time, that by the Illustrated London News, on July 15th, 1842, which was accompanied by an excellent portrait of Judge Haliburton, is the most discriminating and appreciative.

A review of “Nature and Human Nature” drew attention to the fact that no writer has produced purer conceptions of the female character than