Trowbridge is one of the kind that listens twice and thrice to persons talking, so that he hears the key-note and the detail, and his pen is of the kind that can write what he hears. It is never too much, never too little; it is not noticeable at all, because it is all harmony.
It is entirely and utterly common.
And it is real.
In the young-books of Trowbridge, and nowhere else, I have heard boys talking together so that I knew how their faces looked, and how carelessly and loosely their various collars were worn, and their dubious hats. I have heard a grasping, grouty old man pound on the kitchen floor with his horn-headed cane—he had come over while the family were at breakfast to inform them that their dog had killed five of his sheep, and to demand the dog’s life. I have heard the lessons and other things they said in a country school-room sixty years ago, where boys were sometimes obliged, for punishment, to sit on nothing against the door. I have heard the extreme discontent in the voice of another grouty, grasping farmer when it became evident to him that he would be obliged to give up a horse that had been stolen before he bought him. But here I must quote, as nearly correctly as I can without the book:
“‘And sold him to this Mr. Badger’ (said Kit) ‘for seventy dollars.’
“‘Seventy gim-cracks!’ exclaimed Uncle Gray, aghast. ‘I should think any fool might know he’s worth more than that.’
“He was thinking of Brunlow, but Eli applied the remark to himself.
“‘I did know it,’ he growled. ‘That’s why I bought him. And mighty glad I am now I didn’t pay more.’
“‘Sartin!’ replied Uncle Gray; ‘but didn’t it occur to you ’t no honest man would want to sell an honest hoss like that for any such sum?’
“‘I didn’t know it,’ said Eli, groutily. ‘He told a pooty straight story. I got took in, that’s all.’