The Story of a Country Town

by E. W. Howe

Some of the other men were flashily dressed, and some of them plainly, and they talked a great deal to each other about their business, and by listening to this I learned which of them occupied shops, and stores, and offices, and which one was the driver of the stage that made two trips a week to a railroad station a long way off.

The dinner was served in large plates, distributed at convenient distances apart, and two smart girls in stiff aprons and dresses were in attendance should any one think anything additional could be had by asking for it, and both of them seemed to be on very confidential terms with the boarders, for they talked to them familiarly, and called them tiresome, and impudent, and I don’t know what all. A small man with a hump on his back, who occasionally came into the room, I took to be the proprietor, and Martin told me afterwards that I was right, and that while he was rather an agreeable man, his health was wretched. After most of the boarders had gone out, his wife came in with her family, and from her conversation I learned that she conducted a shop for making bonnets and dresses in the parlor of the house, and that business was dreadfully dull.

I spent the afternoon in studying the mystery of the boxes, and was encouraged to find all the letters of my name. My father was very busy at the desk with the pale proprietor, posting himself with reference to his future work, and was very careful and thorough in his inquiries into the details, from which I believed he would speedily become accustomed to his new position. The pale proprietor was evidently not accustomed to so much work in one afternoon, for he yawned frequently, and seemed bored, but my father kept him at it steadily.

Half the boys belonging in the town appeared at the window before night to look at me, and I noticed with alarm that they were not all pale and sickly, as the first lot had been, which evidently meant trouble ahead. Several of them wore their father’s boots and coats, with leather belts around their bodies, which they buckled up from tune to time as the afternoon wore away, and most of them chewed plug tobacco, which was passed around by a boy I judged belonged to a storekeeper. Occasionally they got up a game, and tried to play at it, but the interest soon flagged, and they returned to the window to look at me. Once when they became more noisy than usual, the printer named Adams dashed out, and drove them away as he would chase so many hens, but they soon came back again, and stared at me. I pretended not to notice them, as though they were of no consequence, but they made me very miserable, for they were evidently the town boys I had been warned against.

There was one who appeared late in the afternoon who looked particularly like a fighter, and the others immediately gathered around him to tell him of my arrival. He was so bow-legged that I thought it would be impossible to get him off his feet when the inevitable clash came, for I was certain he was the boy picked out to do me bodily injury, and as soon as he had been told of my appearance among them, he walked straight over to the window, and, flattening his nose against the glass, looked at me with great impudence. I thought I would turn upon him suddenly, and frighten him, but he seemed rather glad that I had turned my head, that he might see my eyes and face. Indeed, instead of being abashed, he made the ugliest face at me I have ever seen, and, drawing back from the window, spit at me through a vacancy in his lower row of teeth. He remained around there for an hour or more, walking on his hands, and turning somersaults, for my benefit, and once he lay down flat in the road, and invited four of the others to hold him there. The ease with which he got up made me more uncomfortable than ever. Although they called him “Shorty,” he was really a very long boy of his age, and wore a coat which hung about him in shreds, and instead of a shirt he had on a brown duster, tucked into a pair of pants as much too small as the coat was too large. To add to my discomfort, I heard Adams say to Martin that the town authorities really ought to do something with Shorty Wilkinson for he was always fighting and hurting somebody.

When we went to supper at the hotel the same men were there, and, as I expected, Bragg was in better humor, promising by dark to be agreeable. His principal characteristic was sullen indifference, and I wondered if a bomb exploded under his chair would disturb him. They all disliked him, evidently, from which circumstance I imagined he regarded them as a herd, as he had regarded the people of Fairview. Nobody spoke to him or he to any one, and his only tribute to the approaching darkness was a noticeable softening in his indifference, for occasionally he stopped his jaws—he munched his food like an animal, and impatiently, as though he disliked the disagreeable necessity of having a habit in common with such people—to listen to what was being said; but at dinner he was oblivious to everything. He went out before me, and when I passed through the office I saw him looking at a copy of the “Union of States,” and I was glad we had not yet taken charge, for I was sure he was making fun of it.

After Martin came out we walked down to the house where we were to live, which was a considerable distance down the street from where the hotel was kept, and which was in a lonely location on the brow of a hill overlooking the valley and the mills. Directly opposite, and across the river, were the mounds which gave the town its name, a pair of little mountains where it was said the Indians built signal fires when they occupied the country, and where they buried their dead, for human bones were often found there by curious persons who dug among the rocks. The house was built of stone, in the centre of a great many lots, surrounded by heavy hardwood trees, and as we went through the rooms Martin explained that it had been occupied long before he came there by an Indian agent, and that Twin Mounds was originally an agency, where the Indians came to draw their supplies. But the agency and the Indians had been removed further west years ago, and the house sold to an eccentric bachelor, who occupied it alone until a few months before, when he died, and the place being offered for sale, it came into possession of my father. It was two stories high, built in such a manner as to contain six large rooms of about the same size, and there were iron shutters at all the windows and doors, and the roof was of slate, which Martin said was a precaution the agent had taken against the treachery of his wards. It was in good repair, but I feared we should be very lonely in it, and felt better when we were out in the street again.

Returning to the office, I sat with him until dark on the little porch in front, on top of which was the long “Printing Office” sign, and I became convinced that I should learn rapidly under him, for he took great pains to prepare me for the work, and delivered a sort of lecture with reference to printing in general which was very instructive. He said after a while that he would go out and swing in the hammock, leaving me alone, and while wondering what I should do to amuse myself, I remembered the letter Agnes had given me. I opened it eagerly, and after finding a light with some difficulty, read:—

My Dear Ned: I tried to get an opportunity to say good-bye to you on Sunday night, but it did not present itself, therefore I write you this letter.

You said to me once that I loved every one in Fairview alike, which is very near the truth now that you are away, for I thought more of you than any of them, and express the sentiment since we are no longer to be together. I hope it will be a comfort to you to know that I esteem you as my best friend, and in your new home I desire you to think of me in the same way, for I shall never change. If I have been a blessing to you, as you have said, so you have been to me, and we have mutually enjoyed the friendship of the years we were together.