The Clockmaker or The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville

Series of short stories written originally for The Nova Scotian in the early 1830s. The narrator while riding through Nova Scotia meets an itinerant clock seller - Samual Slick of Slickville, Connecticut. The stories concern the views and opinions of Slick about - well, almost anything. And, for the most part, they are funny. A great deal of the book is a satire or parody of the moralizing story popular at the time: although occasionally, the stories themselves do fall into the moralizing trap themselves. If nothing else, great history as told by a contemporary neighbour of a young United States. The period is equidistant between the revolutionary war and the civil war. In one story, Sam Slick expounds on the great freedoms of the American people: all men created equal. The narrator points out that it is the British Empire (and hence Nova Scotia) where slavery is abolished. Maybe, says the narrator, the American constitution meant all white people are created equal. The humour is often of this type where paradoxes and false syllogisms are revealed.