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light on former bathing facilities in East Aurora, and more especially to
show that once we had the hoodlum with us.

Hoodlumism is born of idleness; it is useful energy gone to seed. In
small towns hoodlumism is rife, and the hoodlums are usually the children
of the best citizens. Hoodlumism is the first step in the direction of
crime. The hoodlum is very often a good boy who does not know what to do;
and so he does the wrong thing. He bombards with tomatoes a good man
taking a bath, puts ticktacks on windows, ties a tin can to the dog's
tail, takes the burs off your carriage-wheels, steals your chickens,
annexes your horse-blankets, and scares old ladies into fits by appearing
at windows wrapped in a white sheet. To wear a mask, walk in and demand
the money in the family ginger-jar is the next and natural evolution.

To a great degree the Roycroft Shop has done away with hoodlumism in this
village, and a stranger wearing a silk hat, or an artist with a white
umbrella, is now quite safe upon our streets. Very naturally, the Oldest
Inhabitant will deny what I have said about East Aurora--he will tell you
that the order, cleanliness and beauty of the place have always existed.
The change has come about so naturally, and so entirely without his
assistance, that he knows nothing about it.

Truth when first presented is always denied, but later there comes a
stage when the man says, "I always believed it." And so the good old
citizens are induced to say that these things have always been, or else
they gently pooh-pooh them. However, the truth remains that I introduced
the first heating-furnace into the town; bought the first lawn-mower; was
among the first to use electricity for lights and natural gas for fuel;
and so far, am the only one in town to use natural gas for power.

Until the starting of the Roycroft Shop, there were no industries here,
aside from the regulation country store, grocery, tavern, blacksmith-shop
and sawmill--none of which enterprises attempted to supply more than
local wants.

There was Hamlin's stock-farm, devoted to raising trotting-horses, that
gave employment to some of the boys; but for the girls there was nothing.
They got married at the first chance; some became "hired girls," or, if
they had ambitions, fixed their hearts on the Buffalo Normal School,
raised turkeys, picked berries, and turned every honest penny towards the
desire to get an education so as to become teachers. Comparati