Seba Smith's Life and Writings of Major Jack Downing, of Downingsville, Away Down East, In the State of Maine (1833) was one widely admired precedent, and, locally, Thomas McCulloch's Letters of Mephiboseth Stepsure (1821-22) was another.
SAM SLICK THE CLOCKMAKER SERIES
The practice of commenting ironically on local matters in a series of linked letters or sketches was already well established in Nova Scotia, as it was in New England. "The Clockmaker" was the second in a series of sketches, "Recollections of Nova Scotia," begun in the Halifax Nova Scotian in 1835. It is not so much the figure as the force of his language, which is shot through with colorful turns of phrase and marked by acute and pithy perceptions of human behavior, that makes Sam Slick memorable, and Haliburton is credited with such familiar phrases as "upper crust," "stick-in-the-mud," "as quick as a wink." The Clockmaker or, The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville has gone through more than 70 editions. Sam is one of the memorable humorous figures of the mid-nineteenth century, and Haliburton published a number of Sam Slick books.
Sam's boasting is warranted the achievements of Americans are to be admired if their manners are not.
Like all great humorists, Haliburton is ambivalent. Thomas Chandler Haliburton's fame rests on his invention of Sam Slick, a Yankee clock peddler who draws on his insight into "natur and human natur" to make his sales and who endlessly, and amusingly, draws attention to the failings of Nova Scotians (Bluenoses), the enlightened progressiveness of Americans, and the intolerable pride and disdain of the British.
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