put in a heap together. Well, I don't know, said I, but
somehow or another, I guess you'd have found preaching
the best speculation in the long run; them are Unitarians
pay better than Uncle Sam (we call, said the Clockmaker,
the American public Uncle Sam, as you call the British
John Bull.)

That remark seemed to grig him a little; he felt oneasy
like, and walked twice across the room, fifty fathoms
deep in thought: at last he said, which way are you from,
Mr. Slick, this hitch? Why, says I, I've been away up
south a speculating in nutmegs. I hope, says the Professor,
they were a good article, the real right down genuine
thing. No mistake, says I,--no mistake, Professor: they
were all prime, first chop, but why did you ax that are
question? Why, says he, that eternal scoundrel, that
Captain John Allspice of Nahant, he used to trade to
Charleston, and he carried a cargo once there of fifty
barrels of nutmegs: well, he put half a bushel of good
ones into each eend of the barrel, and the rest he filled
up with wooden ones, so like the real thing, no soul
could tell the difference until HE BIT ONE WITH HIS TEETH,
and that he never thought of doing, until he was first
BIT HIMSELF. Well, its been a standing joke with them
southerners agin us ever since. It was only tother day
at Washington, that everlasting Virginy duellist General
Cuffy, afore a number of senators, at the President's
house, said to me, 'Well Everett,' says he--'you know I
was always dead agin your Tariff bill, but I have changed
my mind since your able speech on it; I shall vote for