From him I learned that Agnes only came home during the two vacations of the year, and that her mother was about the same with respect to visions of poisoning and smothering, which humiliated them all very much except Big Adam, who said he considered it an honor for the people to believe that he would poison his mistress if he had opportunity, for they all knew she deserved it. Mrs. Biggs and the children had changed but little, except that the children had grown larger and more unruly, and their mother more shrivelled than formerly. Big Adam was quite a novelty in Twin Mounds, by reason of his great size and hoarse voice, and a crowd always gathered at the office when he was there in the evening, to hear him tell about the great farm he was expected to cultivate alone. Although I was always hoping he would kill himself with dissipation, Clinton Bragg continued to be only about as worthless as when I had first known him, and there was no change in his manner except that he made up with every old wreck who came to town, and induced him by treats to listen to his brags about himself. Bragg came from a place somewhere in the East which was given over to the manufacture of knives and forks, and the three or four proprietors of the works comprised the aristocracy. These, lacking better company, associated occasionally with the small tradesmen and professional men of the town, which led them to talk a great deal of the excellent society in which they moved, and judging them by their representative in Twin Mounds, they became very unpopular wherever they went, by reason of this unpleasant egotism. His father, a hard-working but ignorant man, by close attention to the business of keeping a keg house, had risen to the dignity of a merchant, and was reputed to be well-to-do, although, as is usually the case, I doubt if he had half the money with which he was credited. Bragg considered this fork-making community as the greatest the world had ever produced, and made himself very disagreeable in talking about it. Being a great liar naturally, and as no one in Twin Mounds knew differently, he used a citizen of the town where he had lived to traduce citizens of Twin Mounds, and if a lawyer lost a case, or won it, he told cheerful anecdotes of his brilliant friend Bighead, the leader of his profession in Forkston. No difference what happened in Twin Mounds, it reminded him of a friend of his in the town where knives were made, who always did whatever was in hand in a much more creditable manner.