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