Black Hawk, the new world in which we had come to live, was a clean,
well-planted little prairie town, with white fences and good green yards
about the dwellings, wide, dusty streets, and shapely little trees growing
along the wooden sidewalks. In the centre of the town there were two rows
of new brick `store' buildings, a brick schoolhouse, the court-house, and
four white churches. Our own house looked down over the town, and from our
upstairs windows we could see the winding line of the river bluffs, two
miles south of us. That river was to be my compensation for the lost
freedom of the farming country.
We came to Black Hawk in March, and by the end of April we felt like town
people. Grandfather was a deacon in the new Baptist Church, grandmother
was busy with church suppers and missionary societies, and I was quite
another boy, or thought I was. Suddenly put down among boys of my own age,
I found I had a great deal to learn. Before the spring term of school was
over, I could fight, play `keeps,' tease the little girls, and use
forbidden words as well as any boy in my class. I was restrained from
utter savagery only by the fact that Mrs. Harling, our nearest neighbour,
kept an eye on me, and if my behaviour went beyond certain bounds I was not
permitted to come into her yard or to play with her jolly children.
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