-- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Remark of Dr. Baldwin's, concerning upstarts: We don't care
to eat toadstools that think they are truffles.
-- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
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home with his manners a good deal improved; he had lost his
surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and smooth, now;
he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech, and given
to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a good-natured
semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him from getting
into trouble.
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and fashion -- Eastern fashion, city fashion -- that it filled everybody with anguish
and was regarded as a peculiarly wanton affront. He enjoyed the
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.
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
Judge Driscoll could be a freethinker and still hold his place in
society because he was
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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; her year-worn advertisement had been answered; and not by a
She had read the letter to the family, and Rowena had danced away to see to the cleaning and airing of the room by the slave woman, Nancy, and the boys had rushed abroad in the town to spread the great news, for it was a matter of public interest, and the public would wonder and not be pleased if not informed. Presently Rowena returned, all ablush with joyous excitement, and begged for a rereading of the letter. It was framed thus:
HONORED MADAM: My brother and I have seen your advertisement, by chance,
and beg leave to take the room you offer. We are twenty-four years
of age and twins.
"Yes, I reckon they'll make a grand stir."
"Oh, indeed they will.
"Well, a body can't tell, but they'll make stir enough, without that."
"Yes, that's of course. Luigi -- Angelo. They're lovely names; and so grand and foreign -- not like Jones and Robinson and such. Thursday they are coming, and this is only Tuesday; it's a cruel long time to wait. Here comes Judge Driscoll in at the gate. He's heard about it. I'll go and open the door."
The judge was full of congratulations and curiosity. The letter was read and discussed. Soon Justice Robinson arrived with more
The boats were very uncertain in low water in these primitive times. This time the Thursday boat had not arrived at ten at night -- so the people had waited at the landing all day for nothing; they were driven to their homes by a heavy storm without having had a view of the illustrious foreigners.
Eleven o'clock came; and the Cooper house was the only one in the town that still had lights burning. The rain and thunder were booming yet, and the anxious family were still waiting, still hoping.
At last there was a knock at the door, and the family jumped to open it.
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each carrying a trunk, and proceeded upstairs
toward the guest room.