he white people, among whom the boys knew of no
distinctions, they were aware that there was an impassable gulf; and it
would not be easy to give a notion of just the sort of consideration in
which they held them. But they held the Dumb Negro himself in almost
superstitious regard as one who, though a deaf-mute, knew everything
that was going on, and could make you understand anything he wished. He
was, in fact, a master of most eloquent pantomime; he had gestures that
could not be mistaken, and he had a graphic dumb-show for persons and
occupations and experiences that was delightfully vivid. For a dentist,
he gave an upward twist of the hand from his jaw, and uttered a howl
which left no doubt that he meant tooth-pulling; and for what would
happen to a boy if he kept on misbehaving, he crossed his fingers before
his face and looked through them in a way that brought the jail-window
clearly before the eyes of the offender.

The boys knew vaguely that his family helped runaway slaves on their way
North, and in a community that was for the most part bitterly
pro-slavery these negroes were held in a sort of respect for their
courageous fidelity to their race. The men were swarthy, handsome
fellows, not much darker than Spaniards, and they were so little afraid
of the chances which were often such fatal mischances to colored people
in that day that one of them travelled through the South, and passed
himself in very good company as a Cherokee Indian of rank and education.

As far as the boys knew, the civic affairs of the place were transacted
entirely by two constables. Of mayors and magistrates, such as there
must have been, they knew nothing, and they had not the least notion
what the Whigs whom they were always trying to elect were to do when
they got into office. They knew that the constables were both Democrats,
but, if they thought at all about the fact, they thought their Democracy
the natural outcome of their dark constabulary nature, and by no means
imagined that they were constables because they were Democrats. The
worse of the two, or the more merciless, was also the town-crier, whose
office is now not anywhere known in America, I believe; though I heard a
town-crier in a Swiss village not many years ago. In the Boy's Town the
crier carried a good-sized bell; when he started out he rang it till he
reached the street corner, and then he stopped, and began some such
proclamation as, "O, yes! O, yes! O, yes! There