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  ...just now Mrs Pawkins kept a boarding-house, and Major Pawkins rather 'loafed' his time away than otherwise.
'You have come to visit our country, sir, at a season of great commercial depression,' said the major.
'At an alarming crisis,' said the colonel.
'At a period of unprecedented stagnation,' said Mr Jefferson Brick.
'I am sorry to hear that,' returned Martin. 'It's not likely to last, I hope?'
Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known perfectly well that If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body, they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.  
'It's not likely to last, I hope?' said Martin.
'Well!' returned the major, 'I expect we shall get along somehow, and come right in the end.'
'We are an elastic country,' said the Rowdy Journal.
'We are a young lion,' said Mr Jefferson Brick.
'We have revivifying and vigorous principles within ourselves,' observed the major. 'Shall we drink a bitter afore dinner, colonel?'
The colonel assenting to this proposal with great alacrity, Major Pawkins proposed an adjournment to a...   Dickens, Charles

Excerpt from Martin Chuzzlewit · This quote is tagged America · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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