--but concealed another, which
was gambling. It would not do to gamble where his uncle could hear of
it; he knew that quite well.
Tom's Eastern polish was not popular among the young people. They could
have endured it, perhaps, if Tom had stopped there; but he wore gloves,
and that they couldn't stand, and wouldn't; so he was mainly without
society. He brought home with him a suit of clothes of such exquisite
style and cut in 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.
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 reasons 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