This was addressed to one of the men who wore the paper caps, and he began at once to initiate me in the mysteries of his craft. I soon learned that the high table at which he worked was covered with shallow boxes, and that each one contained a different letter; every character in the language was hid away in the nooks and corners, and my first work was to hunt them out, and remember them for future reference. This I began immediately, and became so interested in it that I did not notice for some time that a number of the rakish-looking boys I had seen when first driving into the town had collected outside the window to look at me. These were evidently the town boys of whom I had heard, and no doubt they were waiting for me to come out and fight, to see of what kind of stuff I was made. It was the understanding in the country that all town boys were knockers, and that every country boy who went there to live must fight his way to respectability. They were less ferocious than I had expected, and as I was much stronger than any of them, I should have gone out and thrown them all over the house, but for the fact that my father did not countenance fighting. They were generally delicate-looking--from high living and idleness, I thought--and while I was engaged with pleasant thoughts to myself that when Jo came over we would capture Twin Mounds, my attention was called to the circumstance, by my friend in the paper cap, that it was noon, and that my father evidently intended that I should go out with him to dinner, for he had gone himself without making any other arrangement. I had heard them call him Martin, and he appeared to be very much of a gentleman, for before we went out he showed me through the establishment, and explained as much of it as he thought I could understand. The press was in a little room by itself--there was but one, although I remembered that in the advertisement it was said that the office was supplied with new and fast presses--and from the paper on the wall I judged that the former owner of the house had occupied that particular part of it with a bed. Back of that was a place for plunder, formerly a kitchen, and back of that still a yard and a deserted garden. There was also in the yard a large oak-tree, and to the branches of this was suspended a hammock, in which Martin said I might sometimes sleep, if I became a friend of his, as he had no doubt I should. While we walked to the hotel he explained that he was the foreman, and that, as I was to learn the trade under him, we should be a great deal together. “It is not much of a trade,” he said, “and if you are a bright boy you will speedily acquire it. You can learn it in six months, or three years, just as you please, for I have known boys to become excellent printers in six months, while others, with thicker heads, were about it three or four years. But as your father said you were to stay with me to-night, I will tell you more about it then.”