CHAPTER IV.

THE GANDER PULLING.

A cunning man is generally a suspicious one, and is as
often led into error himself by his own misconceptions,
as protected from imposition by his habitual caution.

Mr. Slick, who always acted on a motive, and never on an
impulse, and who concealed his real objects behind
ostensible ones, imagined that everybody else was governed
by the same principle of action; and, therefore, frequently
deceived himself by attributing designs to others that
never existed but in his own imagination.

Whether the following story of the gander pulling was a
fancy sketch of the Attache, or a narrative of facts,
_I_ had no means of ascertaining. Strange interviews and
queer conversations he constantly had with official as
well as private individuals, but as he often gave his
opinions the form of an anecdote, for the purpose of
interesting his hearers, it was not always easy to decide
whether his stories were facts or fictions.

If, on the present occasion, it was of the latter
description, it is manifest that he entertained no very
high opinion of the constitutional changes effected in
the government of the colonies by the Whigs, during their
long and perilous rule. If of the former kind, it is to