Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES
BY
W. D. HOWELLS
AUTHOR OF “A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES”
“THE QUALITY OF MERCY” ETC.
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1896
Copyright, 1896, by W. D. Howells.
———
Electrotyped by J. A. Howells & Co., Jefferson, Ohio.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| THE COUNTRY PRINTER | 1 |
| POLICE REPORT | 45 |
| I TALK OF DREAMS | 95 |
| AN EAST-SIDE RAMBLE | 127 |
| TRIBULATIONS OF A CHEERFUL GIVER | 150 |
| THE CLOSING OF THE HOTEL | 189 |
| GLIMPSES OF CENTRAL PARK | 224 |
| NEW YORK STREETS | 245 |
IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES.
THE COUNTRY PRINTER.
My earliest memories, or those which I can make sure are not the sortof early hearsay that we mistake for remembrance later in life, concerna country newspaper, or, rather, a country printing-office. The officewas in my childish consciousness some years before the paper was;the compositors rhythmically swaying before their cases of type; thepressman flinging himself back on the bar that made the impression,with a swirl of his long hair; the apprentice rolling the forms, andthe foreman bending over the imposing-stone, were familiar to me when Icould not grasp the notion of any effect from their labors. In due timeI came to know all about it, and to understand that these activitieswent to the making of the Whig newspaper which my father edited tothe confusion of the Locofocos, and in the especial interest of HenryClay; I myself supported this leader so vigorously for the[Pg 2] Presidencyin my seventh year that it was long before I could realize that theelection of 1844 had resulted in his defeat. My father had already beena printer for a good many years, and some time in the early thirtieshe had led a literary forlorn hope, in a West Virginian town, with amonthly magazine, which he printed himself and edited with the help ofhis sister.