The Rowdy

'The Rowdy' is an adventure novel written by Octave Thanet. It follows a young man named Mike Hollins, who recently turned seventeen at the beginning of the book. He was the seventh child of Thomas Hollin, an honest black-smith who could – and did – boast that he had never scamped a piece of work, broken his word, or taken the sight of man's fists in his face without fighting. Hollin belonged to a trades-union, but it was a trades-union of the old-fashioned kind; and he despised the «new-fangled notions» of the Knights of Labor. Mrs. Hollin may be called a semi-American; although her father was an Irishman, and her mother the daughter of an Irishman with a touch of some other nationality, she herself was born in Ohio; and a race that has been a certain time in America becomes, as it were, aired off, and the strong national flavor evaporates. Annie Hollin's brogue was enlivened by American idioms; in the same way her temperament had felt the climate; she was nervous, energetic, warm-hearted, hot-tempered, and tidy.