28 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



but if he were not principled against it, he would lay a large 

 wager that this ship never does arrive at her destined port.&quot; 

 His poem runs somewhat upon socialism, whether approv 

 ingly or condemnatory I have not yet been able quite to un 

 derstand. I rather think he has a scheme of his own for 

 remodelling society. He uses a good deal of religious phrase 

 ology ; he is liberal on doctrinal points, does not enlist under 

 any particular church banner, and says himself, that he can 

 bear &quot; any sort of religion (or irreligion) in a man, so he is 

 not a papist.&quot; Towards all persons of the Roman church he 

 entertains the most orthodox contempt and undisguised 

 hatred, as becomes, in his opinion, an Irish Protestant-born 

 man. 



There is a good-natured fellow who has been a flat-boat 

 man on the Mississippi, and more lately a squatter some 

 where in the wilds of the West. His painter and cat-fish 

 stories, with all his reckless airs and cant river phrases, have 

 much entertained us; of course he has no baggage, but a 

 &quot;heap of plunder.&quot; He has a rough, rowdy, blustering, half- 

 barbarous way with him, and you would judge from his talk 

 sometimes, that he was a perfectly lawless, heartless savage ; 

 yet again there is often evident in his behaviour to individ 

 uals a singularly delicate sense of propriety and fitness, and 

 there is not a man in the ship with whom I would sooner 

 trust the safety of a woman or child in a time of peril. The 

 great fault of the man is his terrific and uncontrollable indig 

 nation at any thing which seems to him mean or unjust, and 

 his judgment or insight of narrow-mindedness is not always 

 reliable. 



He has formed a strong friendship, or crony-ship, for an 

 Englishman on board, who is a man of about the same native 

 intelligence, but a strange contrast to him in manner, appear, 

 ance, and opinions, being short, thick-set, slow of speech, and 



