The Story of a Country Town

by E. W. Howe

My father’s usual humor had returned, and he drove along without speaking, except occasionally to the horses. Once or twice he began to sing the songs for which he was famous, but he was evidently not in tune that day, for he soon gave it up.

I had never been to Twin Mounds, as there was a post-office and a small trading-place several miles nearer, and had no idea how it looked, and knew nothing of it, except that it had a brick court-house, a stone jail, several wooden stores, a school-house, and about six hundred very wicked people. This I had incidentally learned from listening to people talk who had been there, and I was so occupied in thinking it all over that I had no inclination to talk, and it occurred to me that after I grew up, perhaps I shall be a thinking man, like my father, for we did not exchange a word during the long drive. Several times as we drove along I caught him looking at me, and I thought he was wondering how I would get on in the new business, but as he looked away quickly when I caught him at it, I concluded he was at his old habit of mentally accusing me of being dull, which made me very wretched. I never knew what his objection to me was, but I always believed that when he looked at me, and then resumed his thinking, he was accusing me of something.

At last we came in sight of the place—we came upon it suddenly, after reaching a high place which overlooked it—and I occupied myself in wondering where the house in which we were to live, and the office in which I was to work, were located, until we stopped at a place where horses were cared for, adjoining, and evidently belonging to a hotel, in front of which a swinging sign was displayed under a bell, announcing that the Twin Mounds House was kept there. I noticed that all the business places were in a square, in the centre of which was the brick court-house, and in one corner of the yard the stone jail. In a valley north of the town ran a river, and on its banks were mills, and the site of Twin Mounds had evidently been timbered originally, for in the people’s yards I saw great oak and hickory trees, and the woods adjoined the town on every side. Great numbers of impudent boys, dressed in a rakish fashion with which I was not at all familiar, abounded, and while I was thinking I should certainly have trouble with these, my father started down the street with long strides, telling me to follow.

Stopping in front of a low wooden building which had evidently been used at some time in its history as a dwelling, and on the front porch of which was a board sign reading “Printing Office,” we went in, where we found three men—two with paper caps on, who were throwing their arms violently around over a high stand, and the other, a pale man seated at a desk, who was evidently the retiring proprietor. This man and one of those with a paper cap on his head spoke pleasantly to my father, and looked inquiringly at me.

“This is the son I have told you about,” he explained, pointing at me as if I were a bag of corn. “He is ready to commence learning the printer’s trade.”

This was addressed to one of the men who wore the paper caps, and he began at once to initiate me in the mysteries of his craft. I soon learned that the high table at which he worked was covered with shallow boxes, and that each one contained a different letter; every character in the language was hid away in the nooks and corners, and my first work was to hunt them out, and remember them for future reference. This I began immediately, and became so interested in it that I did not notice for some time that a number of the rakish-looking boys I had seen when first driving into the town had collected outside the window to look at me. These were evidently the town boys of whom I had heard, and no doubt they were waiting for me to come out and fight, to see of what kind of stuff I was made. It was the understanding in the country that all town boys were knockers, and that every country boy who went there to live must fight his way to respectability. They were less ferocious than I had expected, and as I was much stronger than any of them, I should have gone out and thrown them all over the house, but for the fact that my father did not countenance fighting. They were generally delicate-looking—from high living and idleness, I thought—and while I was engaged with pleasant thoughts to myself that when Jo came over we would capture Twin Mounds, my attention was called to the circumstance, by my friend in the paper cap, that it was noon, and that my father evidently intended that I should go out with him to dinner, for he had gone himself without making any other arrangement.

I had heard them call him Martin, and he appeared to be very much of a gentleman, for before we went out he showed me through the establishment, and explained as much of it as he thought I could understand. The press was in a little room by itself—there was but one, although I remembered that in the advertisement it was said that the office was supplied with new and fast presses—and from the paper on the wall I judged that the former owner of the house had occupied that particular part of it with a bed. Back of that was a place for plunder, formerly a kitchen, and back of that still a yard and a deserted garden. There was also in the yard a large oak-tree, and to the branches of this was suspended a hammock, in which Martin said I might sometimes sleep, if I became a friend of his, as he had no doubt I should.

While we walked to the hotel he explained that he was the foreman, and that, as I was to learn the trade under him, we should be a great deal together.

“It is not much of a trade,” he said, “and if you are a bright boy you will speedily acquire it. You can learn it in six months, or three years, just as you please, for I have known boys to become excellent printers in six months, while others, with thicker heads, were about it three or four years. But as your father said you were to stay with me to-night, I will tell you more about it then.”

Going into the hotel, we found a large number of men seated at a long table in a long room, every one eating hurriedly, as though oppressed with the fear that the supply in the kitchen was likely to give out before they were filled. Near the head of the table sat my father and the pale proprietor, and between them and Martin the other man who wore the paper cap, whose name seemed to be Adams, from which circumstance I thought there was no other hotel in the place. Opposite him sat Clinton Bragg, I noticed with some astonishment, forgetting for a moment that Twin Mounds was his home, and he looked as sullen and mean as ever, but he was not so well dressed as when I had seen him at Fairview. He could not help being aware of my father’s presence, but they had evidently mutually agreed not to renew their acquaintance, though I noticed that Bragg stopped working his jaws when my father was speaking to his companion, and listened to what was being said, as though he wondered how it came we were both there.