supper, the next twenty minutes were the pleasantest I had spent on
the canal, the same space at dinner excepted. At the close of the
meal it had become dusky enough for lamplight. The rain pattered
unceasingly on the deck, and sometimes came with a sullen rush
against the windows, driven by the wind as it stirred through an
opening of the forest. The intolerable dulness of the scene
engendered an evil spirit in me. Perceiving that the Englishman was
taking notes in a memorandum-book, with occasional glances round the
cabin, I presumed that we were all to figure in a future volume of
travels, and amused my ill-humor by falling into the probable vein
of his remarks. He would hold up an imaginary mirror, wherein our
reflected faces would appear ugly and ridiculous, yet still retain
all undeniable likeness to the originals. Then, with more sweeping
malice, he would make these caricatures the representatives of great
classes of my countrymen.

He glanced at the Virginia schoolmaster, a Yankee by birth, who, to
recreate himself, was examining a freshman from Schenectady College
in the conjugation of a Greek verb. Him the Englishman would
portray as the scholar of America, and compare his erudition to a
school-boy's Latin theme made up of scraps ill-selected and worse
put together. Next the tourist looked at the Massachusetts farmer,
who was delivering a dogmatic harangue on the iniquity of Sunday
mails. Here was the far-famed yeoman of New England; his religion,
writes the Englishman, is gloom on the Sabbath, long prayers every
morning and eventide, and illiberality at all times; his boasted
information is merely an abstract and compound of newspaper
paragraphs, Congress debates, caucus harangues, and the argument and
judge's charge in his own lawsuits. The book-monger cast his eye at
a Detroit merchant, and began scribbling faster than ever. In this