expect us to disbelieve it, nevertheless; for your
travellers who come to America, pick up here and there,
some absurd ontruth or another; or, if they are all picked
up already, invent one; and although every man, woman,
and child is ready to take their bible oaths it is a bam,
yet the English believe this one false witness in preference
to the whole nation.

"You must excuse me, Squire; you have a right to your
opinion, though it seems you have no right to blart it
out always; but I am a freeman, I was raised in Slickville,
Onion County, State of Connecticut, United States of
America, which _is_ a free country, and no mistake; and
I have a right to my opinion, and a right to speak it,
too; and let me see the man, airl or commoner,
parliamenterer or sodger officer, that dare to report
me, I guess he'd wish he'd been born a week later, that's
all. I'd make a caution of him, _I_ know. I'd polish his
dial-plate fust, and then I'd feel his short ribs, so as
to make him larf, a leetle jist a leetle the loudest he
ever heerd. Lord, he'd think thunder and lightnin' a mint
julip to it. I'd ring him in the nose as they do pigs in
my country, to prevent them rootin' up what they hadn't
ought."

Having excited himself by his own story, he first imagined
a case and then resented it, as if it had occurred. I
expressed to him my great regret that he should visit
England with these feelings and prejudices, as I had
hoped his conversation would have been as rational and