feeling which he was exciting, and paraded the town serene and
happy all day; but the young fellows set a tailor to work that night,
and when Tom started out on his parade next morning, he found the old
deformed Negro bell ringer straddling along in his wake tricked out
in a flamboyant curtain-calico exaggeration of his finery,
and imitating his fancy Eastern graces as well as he could.
Tom surrendered, and after that clothed himself in the local fashion.
But the dull country town was tiresome to him, since his
acquaintanceship with livelier regions, and it grew daily more
and more so. He began to make little trips to St. Louis for refreshment.
There he found companionship to suit him, and pleasures to his taste,
along with more freedom, in some particulars, than he could have at home.
So, during the next two years, his visits to the city grew in frequency
and his tarryings there grew steadily longer in duration.
He was getting into deep waters. He was taking chances, privately,
which might get him into trouble some day–in fact, _did_.
Judge Driscoll had retired from the bench and from all business
activities in 1850, and had now been comfortably idle three years.
He was president of the Freethinkers’ Society, and Pudd’nhead Wilson
was the other member. The society’s weekly discussions were now the
old lawyer’s main interest in life. Pudd’nhead was still toiling in
obscurity at the bottom of the ladder, under the blight of that unlucky
remark which he had let fall twenty-three years before about the dog.
Judge Driscoll was his friend, and claimed that he had a mind above
the average, but that was regarded as one of the judge’s whims,
and it failed to modify the public opinion. Or rather, that was one
of the reason why it failed, but there was another and better one.
If the judge had stopped with bare assertion, it would have had a good
deal of effect; but he made the mistake of trying to prove his position.
For some years Wilson had been privately at work on a whimsical almanac,
for his amusement–a calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy,
usually in ironical form, appended to each date; and the judge thought
that these quips and fancies of Wilson’s were neatly turned and cute;
so he carried a handful of them around one day, and read them to some
of the chief citizens. But irony was not for those people;
their mental vision was not focused for it. They read those playful
trifles in the solidest terms, and decided without hesitancy that if
there had ever been any doubt that Dave Wilson was a pudd’nhead–
which there hadn’t–this revelation removed that doubt for good and all.
That is just the way in this world; an enemy can partly ruin a man,
but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and
make it perfect. After this the judge felt tenderer than ever toward
Wilson, and surer than ever that his calendar had merit.
Judge Driscoll could be a freethinker and still hold his place in
society because he was the person of most consequence to the community,
and therefore could venture to go his own way and follow out his
own notions. The other member of his pet organization was allowed the
like liberty because he was a cipher in the estimation of the public,
and nobody attached any importance to what he thought or did.
He was liked, he was welcome enough all around, but he simply
didn’t count for anything.
The Widow Cooper–affectionately called “Aunt Patsy” by everybody–
lived in a snug and comely cottage with her daughter Rowena,
who was nineteen, romantic, amiable, and very pretty, but otherwise
of no consequence. Rowena had a couple of young brothers–
also of no consequence.
The widow had a large spare room, which she let to a lodger, with board,
when she could find one, but this room had been empty for a year now,
to her sorrow. Her income was only sufficient for the family support,
and she needed the lodging money for trifling luxuries. But now, at last,
on a flaming June day, she found herself happy; her tedious wait was ended;