The Attache, page 209 by Thomas Chandler Haliburton
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bring over the old hoss and his fixins, free, for it was me first started that line. The way old Mr. Glenelg stared, when I told him it was thirty-six miles shorter to go from Bristol to New York by the way of Halifax, than to go direct warn't slow. It stopt steam for that hitch, that's a fact, for he thort I was mad. He sent it down to the Admiralty to get it ciphered right, and it took them old seagulls, the Admirals a month to find it out.
"And when they did, what did they say? Why, cuss 'em, says they, 'any fool knows that.' Says I, 'If that's the case you are jist the boys then that ought to have found it out right off at oncet.'
"Yes, Old Clay ought to go free, but be won't; and guess I am able to pay freight for him, and no thanks to nobody. Now, I'll tell you what, English trottin' is about a mile in two minutes and forty-seven seconds, and that don't happen oftener than oncet in fifty years, if it was ever done at all, for the English brag so there is no telling right. Old Clay can do his mile in two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. He has done that, and I guess he could do more. I have got a car, that is as light as whalebone, and I'll bet to do it with wheels and drive myself. I'll go in up to the handle, on Old Clay. I have a hundred thousand dollars of hard cash made in the colonies, I'll go half of it on the old hoss, hang me if I don't, and I'll make him as well knowd to England as he is to Nova Scotia.
"I'll allow him to be beat at fust, so as to lead 'em on, and Clay is as cunnin' as a coon too, if he don't get the word g'lang (go along) and the Indgian skelpin' yell with it, he knows I ain't in airnest, and he'll allow me to beat him and bully him like nothin'. He'll pretend to do his best, and sputter away like a hen scratchin' gravel, but he won't go one mossel faster, for he knows I never lick a free hoss.
"Won't it be beautiful? How they'll all larf and crow, when they see me a thrashin' away at the hoss, and then him goin' slower, the