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Letters passed between
Lloyd and his mother and sister much less frequently than the boy wished, and when he playfully chided the latter for not writing oftener, and asked if ‘the splendour of the city’ had not engrossed her attention, she replied, ‘It is not so. It is the expense that you have to pay, for we are not able to do it’; and certainly postage was a circumstance in those days, every letter costing twenty-five cents, which the apprentice-boy, who was receiving little more than his board and clothes, had to pay. Even his clothes seem to have been partly supplied by his mother, who sent him at one time a trunkful of garments which she had managed to gather and prepare for him in her intervals of convalescence, and begged him to keep them for her sake, as the last token of love she should ever be able to send him.
Meanwhile,
Lloyd was devoting himself with diligence and enthusiasm to his trade, and had become so expert and thorough in all departments of the business that
Mr. Allen made him foreman of the office.
One of his fellow-apprentices (
Joseph B. Morss, of
Newburyport) wrote of him thus:
He made up the pages of the newspaper and prepared the1 forms for the press.
He also attended to the job-work, and was noted for his good taste in this department.
He was the most rapid compositor I ever knew, excepting one, and more correct than this one.
With fair copy before him he would easily set a thousand ems an hour for several successive hours, and there would hardly ever be more than two or three slight errors in a column of his matter, when it was proved.
He was an excellent pressman on the old Ramage and the then new Wells iron press.
In recalling his apprenticeship days in after years,
Mr. Garrison said:
I always endeavored to do my work thoroughly, if I could,2 without any errors, and therefore my proofs were very clean, as the technical phrase is. I recollect with great pleasure one who was in the office for a considerable portion of my apprenticeship, who has now gone to his reward, who was, I think, a