In Mexico, if you admire any thing, the proprietor
immediately says, "Pray do me the honour to consider it
yours, I shall be most happy, if you will permit me, to
place it upon you, (if it be an ornament), or to send it
to your hotel," if it be of a different description. All
this means in English, a present; in Mexican Spanish, a
civil speech, purporting that the owner is gratified,
that it meets the approbation of his visiter. A Frenchman,
who heard this grandiloquent reply to his praises of a
horse, astonished his friend, by thanking him in terms
equally amplified, accepting it, and riding it home.

Mr. Slick would be no less amazed, if understood literally.
He has used a peculiar style; here again, a stranger
would be in error, in supposing the phraseology common
to all Americans. It is peculiar only to a certain class
of persons in a certain state of life, and in a particular
section of the States. Of this class, Mr. Slick is a
specimen. I do not mean to say he is not a vain man, but
merely that a portion only of that, which appears so to
us, is vanity, and that the rest and by far the greater
portion too, is local or provincial peculiarity.

This explanation is due to the Americans, who have been
grossly misrepresented, and to the English, who have been
egregiously deceived, by persons attempting to delineate
character, who were utterly incapable of perceiving those
minute lights and shades, without which, a portrait
becomes a contemptible daub, or at most a mere caricature.