There was one thing I noticed of Twin Mounds which is probably true of every other country town--it was constantly threatened either with great prosperity or great danger, but whether the event threatening the prosperity or the danger came to pass, the town progressed about the same. There was no perceptible effect from any of the events the people were certain would prove either very disastrous or of great benefit, from which I am led to believe that no one is familiar with the art of town-building, although I have never known a man who did not profess to know all there is worth knowing about the science. Towns seem to be the natural accretion of years, and although the people in Twin Mounds often related how desperate were their struggles with adversity, the facts probably are that the place would have been fully as large as it was three years after Jo’s marriage without the great number of public meetings for public purposes, and the endless worry of individuals with reference to it. There was a very general impression that manufactories were needed, and this was talked about so much, and so many inducements were offered, that the people became discouraged, believing that the average manufacturer had a wicked heart and a hollow head to thus wrong Twin Mounds in the face of his own interest, therefore we were very much surprised to learn once, after all hope had been abandoned, that a quiet man was building a woollen mill down the river, which he completed and afterwards operated without the help of the committees which had been appointed to aid in such matters of public weal. The trouble was that the man lived in Twin Mounds, whereas we had been expecting a man and money to come from a distant point for that purpose, and had never thought of looking about home, but spent a great deal of money in sending committees away to make arrangements for a woollen mill. This circumstance, although humiliating, proved a good thing, for it taught the people that, if the town were to be built up at all, it must be by its own citizens, which knowledge was afterwards used to good advantage.