Origin
  Evolution   Hockeyists
  Windsor

Birthplace
Overview

T.C. Haliburton


Haliburton’s
Alter Ego
Sam Slick
Go
Ahead
NS Railroad
Holding
up the Mirror
Other
End of the Gun
Sam’s
Popularity

…Among all the numerous notices of Sam Slick’s works that have appeared
from time to time, that by the Illustrated London News, on July 15th, 1842, which
was accompanied by an excellent portrait of Judge Haliburton, is the most discriminating
and appreciative.

"Sam Slick’s entree into the literary world would
appear to have been in the columns of a weekly Nova Scotian journal, in which
he wrote seven or eight years ago a series of scetches illustrative of homely
American character. There was no name attached to them, but they soon became so
popular that the editor of the Nova Scotian newspaper applied to the author for
permission to reprint them entire; and this being granted, he brought them out
in a small, unpretending duodecimo volume, the popularity of which, at first confined
to our American colonies, soon spread over the United States, by all classes of
whose inhabitants it was most cordially welcomed. At Boston, at New York, at Philadelphia,
at Baltimore, in short, in all the leading cities and towns of the Union, this
anonymous little volume was to be found on the drawing-room tables of the most
influential members of the social community; while, even in the emigrant’s solitary
farm house and the squatter’s log hut among the primeval forests of the Far West,
it was read with the deepest interest, cheering the spirits of the backwoodsman
by its wholesome, vigorous and lively pictures of every-day life. A recent traveller
[traveler] records his surprise and pleasure at meeting with a well-thumbed copy
in a log hut in the woods of the Mississippi valley.

"The primary cause
of its success, we conceive, may be found in its sound, sagacious, unexaggerated
views of human nature – not of human nature as it is modified by artificial institutions
and subjected to the despotic caprices of fashion, but as it exists in a free
and comparatively unsophisticated state, full of faith in its own impulses and
quick to sympathize with kindred humanity; adventurous, self-relying, untrammelled
[definition – not confined or limited] by social etiquette; giving full vent to
the emotions that rise within its breast; regardless of the distinctions of caste,
but ready to find friends and brethren among all of whom it may come in contact.

"Such
is the human nature delineated in Sam Slick.

"Another reason for Sam
Slick’s popularity is the humor with which the work is overflowing. Of its kind
it is decidedly original. In describing it we must borrow a phrase from architecture,
and say that it is of a ‘composite order;’ by which we mean that it combines
the qualities of English and Scotch humor – the hearty, mellow spirit of the one,
and the shrewd, caustic qualities of the other. It derives little help from the
fancy, but has its ground-work in the understanding, and affects us by its quiet
truth and force and the piquant satire with which it is flavored. In a word –
it is the sunny side of common sense."

 
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