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The Boys' Life of Mark Twain

by Albert Bigelow Paine · English · Gutenberg #3463 · 474,951 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Boys' Life of Mark Twain

Author: Albert Bigelow Paine


        
Release date: October 4, 2004 [eBook #3463]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3463

Credits: Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOYS' LIFE OF MARK TWAIN ***




Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger





THE BOYS' LIFE OF MARK TWAIN

By Albert Bigelow Paine



CONTENTS

          PREFACE
I.        THE FAMILY OF JOHN CLEMENS
II.       THE NEW HOME, AND UNCLE JOHN QUARLES'S FARM
III.      SCHOOL
IV.       EDUCATION OUT OF SCHOOL
V.        TOM SAWYER AND HIS BAND
VI.       CLOSING SCHOOL-DAYS
VII.      THE APPRENTICE
VIII.     ORION'S PAPER
IX.       THE OPEN ROAD
X.        A WIND OF CHANCE
XI.       THE LONG WAY To THE AMAZON
XII.      RENEWING AN OLD AMBITION
XIII.     LEARNING THE RIVER
XIV.      RIVER DAYS
XV.       THE WRECK OF THE "PENNSYLVANIA"
XVI.      THE PILOT
XVII.     THE END OF PILOTING
XVIII.    THE SOLDIER
XIX.      THE PIONEER
XX.       THE MINER
XXI.      THE TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE
XXII.     "MARK TWAIN"
XXIII.    ARTEMUS WARD AND LITERARY SAN FRANCISCO
XXIV.     THE DISCOVERY OF "THE JUMPING FROG"
XXV.      HAWAII AND ANSON BURLINGAME
XXVI.     MARK TWAIN, LECTURER
XXVII.    AN INNOCENT ABROAD, AND HOME AGAIN
XXVIII.   OLIVIA LANGDON.  WORK ON THE "INNOCENTS"
XXIX.     THE VISIT TO ELMIRA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
XXX.      THE NEW BOOK AND A WEDDING
XXXI.     MARK TWAIN IN BUFFALO
XXXII.    AT WORK ON "ROUGHING IT"
XXXIII.   IN ENGLAND
XXXIV.    A NEW BOOK AND NEW ENGLISH TRIUMPHS
XXXV.     BEGINNING "TOM SAWYER"
XXXVI.    THE NEW HOME
XXXVII.   "OLD TIMES, "SKETCHES," AND "TOM SAWYER"
XXXVIII.  HOME PICTURES
XXXIX.    TRAMPING ABROAD
XL.       "THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER"
XLI.      GENERAL GRANT AT HARTFORD
XLII.     MANY INVESTMENTS
XLIII.    BACK TO THE RIVER, WITH BIXBY
XLIV.     A READING-TOUR WITH CABLE
XLV.      "THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN"
XLVI.     PUBLISHER TO GENERAL GRANT
XLVII.    THE HIGH-TIDE OF FORTUNE
XLVIII.   BUSINESS DIFFICULTIES.  PLEASANTER THINGS
XLIX.     KIPLING AT ELMIRA.  ELSIE LESLIE.  THE "YANKEE"
L.        THE MACHINE.  GOOD-BY TO HARTFORD.  "JOAN" IS BEGUN
LI.       THE FAILURE OF WEBSTER & CO.  AROUND THE WORLD.  SORROW
LII.      EUROPEAN ECONOMIES
LIII.     MARK TWAIN PAYS HIS DEBTS
LIV.      RETURN AFTER EXILE
LV.       A PROPHET AT HOME
LVI.      HONORED BY MISSOURI
LVII.     THE CLOSE OF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE
LVIII.    MARK TWAIN AT SEVENTY
LIX.      MARK TWAIN ARRANGES FOR HIS BIOGRAPHY
LX.       WORKING WITH MARK TWAIN
LXI.      DICTATIONS AT DUBLIN, N. H.
LXII.     A NEW ERA OF BILLIARDS
LXIII.    LIVING WITH MARK TWAIN
LXIV.     A DEGREE FROM OXFORD
LXV.      THE REMOVAL TO REDDING
LXVI.     LIFE AT STORMFIELD
LXVII.    THE DEATH OF JEAN
LXVIII.   DAYS IN BERMUDA
LXIX.     THE RETURN TO REDDING
LXX.      THE CLOSE OF A GREAT LIFE




PREFACE

This is the story of a boy, born in the humblest surroundings, reared
almost without schooling, and amid benighted conditions such as to-day
have no existence, yet who lived to achieve a world-wide fame; to attain
honorary degrees from the greatest universities of America and Europe; to
be sought by statesmen and kings; to be loved and honored by all men in
all lands, and mourned by them when he died. It is the story of one of
the world's very great men--the story of Mark Twain.




I.

THE FAMILY OF JOHN CLEMENS

A long time ago, back in the early years of another century, a family
named Clemens moved from eastern Tennessee to eastern Missouri--from a
small, unheard-of place called Pall Mall, on Wolf River, to an equally
small and unknown place called Florida, on a tiny river named the Salt.

That was a far journey, in those days, for railway trains in 1835 had not
reached the South and West, and John Clemens and his family traveled in
an old two-horse barouche, with two extra riding-horses, on one of which
rode the eldest child, Orion Clemens, a boy of ten, and on the other
Jennie, a slave girl.

In the carriage with the parents were three other children--Pamela and
Margaret, aged eight and five, and little Benjamin, three years old. The
time was spring, the period of the Old South, and, while these youngsters
did not realize that they were passing through a sort of Golden Age, they
must have enjoyed the weeks of leisurely journeying toward what was then
the Far West--the Promised Land.

The Clemens fortunes had been poor in Tennessee. John Marshall Clemens,
the father, was a lawyer, a man of education; but he was a dreamer, too,
full of schemes that usually failed. Born in Virginia, he had grown up
in Kentucky, and married there Jane Lampton, of Columbia, a descendant of
the English Lamptons and the belle of her region. They had left Kentucky
for Tennessee, drifting from one small town to another that was always
smaller, and with dwindling law-practice John Clemens in time had been
obliged to open a poor little store, which in the end had failed to pay.
Jennie was the last of several slaves he had inherited from his Virginia
ancestors. Besides Jennie, his fortune now consisted of the horses and
barouche, a very limited supply of money, and a large, unsalable tract of
east Tennessee land, which John Clemens dreamed would one day bring his
children fortune.

Readers of the "Gilded Age" will remember the journey of the Hawkins
family from the "Knobs" of Tennessee to Missouri and the important part
in that story played by the Tennessee land. Mark Twain wrote those
chapters, and while they are not history, but fiction, they are based
upon fact, and the picture they present of family hardship and struggle
is not overdrawn. The character of Colonel Sellers, who gave the
Hawkinses a grand welcome to the new home, was also real. In life he was
James Lampton, cousin to Mrs. Clemens, a gentle and radiant merchant of
dreams, who believed himself heir to an English earldom and was always on
the verge of colossal fortune. With others of the Lampton kin, he was
already settled in Missouri and had written back glowing accounts; though
perhaps not more glowing than those which had come from another relative,
John Quarles, brother-in-law to Mrs. Clemens, a jovial, whole-hearted
optimist, well-loved by all who knew him.

It was a June evening when the Clemens family, with the barouche and the
two outriders, finally arrived in Florida, and the place, no doubt,
seemed attractive enough then, however it may have appeared later. It
was the end of a long journey; relatives gathered with fond welcome;
prospects seemed bright. Already John Quarles had opened a general store
in the little town. Florida, he said, was certain to become a city.
Salt River would be made navigable with a series of locks and dams. He
offered John Clemens a partnership in his business.

Quarles, for that time and place, was a rich man. Besides his store he
had a farm and thirty slaves. His brother-in-law's funds, or lack of
them, did not matter. The two had married sisters. That was capital
enough for his hearty nature. So, almost on the moment of arrival in the
new land, John Clemens once more found himself established in trade.

The next thing was to find a home. There were twenty-one houses in
Florida, and none of them large. The one selected by John and Jane
Clemens had two main rooms and a lean-to kitchen--a small place and
lowly--the kind of a place that so often has seen the beginning of
exalted lives. Christianity began with a babe in a manger; Shakespeare
first saw the light in a cottage at Stratford; Lincoln entered the world
by way of a leaky cabin in Kentucky, and into the narrow limits of the
Clemens home in Florida, on a bleak autumn day--November 30, 1835--there
was born one who under the name of Mark Twain would live to cheer and
comfort a tired world.

The name Mark Twain had not been thought of then, and probably no one
prophesied favorably for the new-comer, who was small and feeble, and not
over-welcome in that crowded household. They named him Samuel, after his
paternal grandfather, and added Langhorne for an old friend--a goodly
burden for so frail a wayfarer. But more appropriately they called him
"Little Sam," or "Sammy," which clung to him through the years of his
delicate childhood.

It seems a curious childhood, as we think of it now. Missouri was a
slave State--Little Sam's companions were as often black as white. All
the children of that time and locality had negroes for playmates, and
were cared for by them. They were fond of their black companions and
would have felt lost without them. The negro children knew all the best
ways of doing things--how to work charms and spells, the best way to cure
warts and heal stone-bruises, and to make it rain, and to find lost
money. They knew what signs meant, and dreams, and how to keep off
hoodoo; and all negroes, old and young, knew any number of weird tales.

John Clemens must have prospered during the early years of his Florida
residence, for he added another slave to his household--Uncle Ned, a man
of all work--and he built a somewhat larger house, in one room of which,
the kitchen, was a big fireplace. There was a wide hearth and always
plenty of wood, and here after supper the children would gather, with
Jennie and Uncle Ned, and the latter would tell hair-lifting tales of
"ha'nts," and lonely roads, and witch-work that would make his hearers
shiver with terror and delight, and look furtively over their shoulders
toward the dark window-panes and the hovering shadows on the walls.
Perhaps it was not the healthiest entertainment, but it was the kind to
cultivate an imagination that would one day produce "Tom Sawyer" and
"Huck Finn."

True, Little Sam was very young at this period, but even a little chap of
two or three would understand most of that fireside talk, and get
impressions more vivid than if the understanding were complete. He was
barely four when this earliest chapter of his life came to a close.

John Clemens had not remained satisfied with Florida and his undertakings
there. The town had not kept its promises. It failed to grow, and the
lock-and-dam scheme that would make Salt River navigable fell through.
Then one of the children, Margaret, a black-eyed, rosy little girl of
nine, suddenly died. This was in August, 1839. A month or two later the
saddened family abandoned their Florida home and moved in wagons, with
their household furnishings, to Hannibal, a Mississippi River town,
thirty miles away. There was only one girl left now, Pamela, twelve
years old, but there was another boy, baby Henry, three years younger
than Little Sam--four boys in all.




II.

THE NEW HOME, AND UNCLE JOHN QUARLES'S FARM

Hannibal was a town with prospects and considerable trade. It was
slumbrous, being a slave town, but it was not dead. John Clemens
believed it a promising place for business, and opened a small general
store with Orion Clemens, now fifteen, a studious, dreamy lad, for clerk.

The little city was also an attractive place of residence. Mark Twain
remembered it as "the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer
morning, . . . the great Mississippi, the magnificent Mississippi,
rolling its mile-wide tide along, .... the dense forest away on the
other side."

The "white town" was built against green hills, and abutting the river
were bluffs--Holliday's Hill and Lover's Leap. A distance below the town
was a cave--a wonderful cave, as every reader of Tom Sawyer knows--while
out in the river, toward the Illinois shore, was the delectable island
that was one day to be the meeting-place of Tom's pirate band, and later
to become the hiding-place of Huck and Nigger Jim.

The river itself was full of interest. It was the highway to the outside
world. Rafts drifted by; smartly painted steamboats panted up and down,
touching to exchange traffic and travelers, a never-ceasing wonder to
those simple shut-in dwellers whom the telegraph and railway had not yet
reached. That Hannibal was a pleasant place of residence we may believe,
and what an attractive place for a boy to grow up in!

Little Sam, however, was not yet ready to enjoy the island and the cave.
He was still delicate--the least promising of the family. He was queer
and fanciful, and rather silent. He walked in his sleep and was often
found in the middle of the night, fretting with the cold, in some dark
corner. Once he heard that a neighbor's children had the measles, and,
being very anxious to catch the complaint, slipped over to the house and
crept into bed with an infected playmate. Some days later, Little Sam's
relatives gathered about his bed to see him die. He confessed, long
after, that the scene gratified him. However, he survived, and fell into
the habit of running away, usually in the direction of the river.

"You gave me more uneasiness than any child I had," his mother once said
to him, in her old age.

"I suppose you were afraid I wouldn't live," he suggested.

She looked at him with the keen humor which had been her legacy to him.
"No, afraid you would," she said. Which was only her joke, for she had
the tenderest of hearts, and, like all mothers, had a weakness for the
child that demanded most of her mother's care. It was chiefly on his
account that she returned each year to Florida to spend the summer on
John Quarles's farm.

If Uncle John Quarles's farm was just an ordinary Missouri farm, and his
slaves just average negroes, they certainly never seemed so to Little
Sam. There was a kind of glory about everything that belonged to Uncle
John, and it was not all imagination, for some of the spirit of that
jovial, kindly hearted man could hardly fail to radiate from his
belongings.

The farm was a large one for that locality, and the farm-house was a big
double log building--that is, two buildings with a roofed-over passage
between, where in summer the lavish Southern meals were served, brought
in on huge dishes by the negroes, and left for each one to help himself.
Fried chicken, roast pig, turkeys, ducks, geese, venison just killed,
squirrels, rabbits, partridges, pheasants, prairie-chickens, green corn,
watermelon--a little boy who did not die on that bill of fare would be
likely to get well on it, and to Little Sam the farm proved a life-saver.

It was, in fact, a heavenly place for a little boy. In the corner of the
yard there were hickory and black-walnut trees, and just over the fence
the hill sloped past barns and cribs to a brook, a rare place to wade,
though there were forbidden pools. Cousin Tabitha Quarles, called
"Puss," his own age, was Little Sam's playmate, and a slave girl, Mary,
who, being six years older, was supposed to keep them out of mischief.
There were swings in the big, shady pasture, where Mary swung her charges
and ran under them until their feet touched the branches. All the woods
were full of squirrels and birds and blooming flowers; all the meadows
were gay with clover and butterflies, and musical with singing
grasshoppers and calling larks; the fence-rows were full of wild
blackberries; there were apples and peaches in the orchard, and plenty of
melons ripening in the corn. Certainly it was a glorious place!

Little Sam got into trouble once with the watermelons. One of them had
not ripened quite enough when he ate several slices of it. Very soon
after he was seized with such terrible cramps that some of the household
did not think he could live.

But his mother said: "Sammy will pull through. He was not born to die
that way." Which was a true prophecy. Sammy's slender constitution
withstood the strain. It was similarly tested more than once during
those early years. He was regarded as a curious child. At times dreamy
and silent, again wild-headed and noisy, with sudden impulses that sent
him capering and swinging his arms into the wind until he would fall with
shrieks and spasms of laughter and madly roll over and over in the grass.
It is not remembered that any one prophesied very well for his future at
such times.

The negro quarters on Uncle John's farm were especially fascinating. In
one cabin lived a bedridden old woman whom the children looked upon with
awe. She was said to be a thousand years old, and to have talked with
Moses. She had lost her health in the desert, coming out of Egypt. She
had seen Pharaoh drown, and the fright had caused the bald spot on her
head. She could ward off witches and dissolve spells.

Uncle Dan'l was another favorite, a kind-hearted, gentle soul, who long
after, as Nigger Jim in the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn tales, would
win world-wide love and sympathy.

Through that far-off, warm, golden summer-time Little Sam romped and
dreamed and grew. He would return each summer to the farm during those
early years. It would become a beautiful memory. His mother generally
kept him there until the late fall, when the chilly evenings made them
gather around the wide, blazing fireplace. Sixty years later he wrote:

   "I can see the room yet with perfect clearness. I can see all
   its belongings, all its details; the family-room of the house, with
   the trundle-bed in one corner and the spinning-wheel in another--a
   wheel whose rising and falling wail, heard from a distance, was the
   mournfulest of all sounds to me and made me homesick and low-
   spirited and filled my atmosphere with the wandering spirits of the
   dead; the vast fireplace, piled high with flaming logs from whose
   ends a sugary sap bubbled out but did not go to waste, for we
   scraped it off and ate it; . . . the lazy cat spread out on the
   rough hearthstones, the drowsy dogs braced against the jambs,
   blinking; my aunt in one chimney-corner, and my uncle in the other,
   smoking his corn-cob pipe."

It is hard not to tell more of the farm, for the boy who was one day
going to write of Tom and Huck and the rest learned there so many things
that Tom and Huck would need to know.

But he must have "book-learning," too, Jane Clemens said. On his return
to Hannibal that first summer, she decided that Little Sam was ready for
school. He was five years old and regarded as a "stirring child."

"He drives me crazy with his didoes when he's in the house," his mother
declared, "and when he's out of it I'm expecting every minute that some
one will bring him home half dead."

Mark Twain used to say that he had had nine narrow escapes from drowning,
and it was at this early age that he was brought home one afternoon in a
limp state, having been pulled from a deep hole in Bear Creek by a slave
girl.

When he was restored, his mother said: "I guess there wasn't much danger.
People born to be hanged are safe in water."

Mark Twain's mother was the original of Aunt Polly in the story of Tom
Sawyer, an outspoken, keen-witted, charitable woman, whom it was good to
know. She had a heart full of pity, especially for dumb creatures. She
refused to kill even flies, and punished the cat for catching mice. She
would drown young kittens when necessary, but warmed the water for the
purpose. She could be strict, however, with her children, if occasion
required, and recognized their faults.

Little Sam was inclined to elaborate largely on fact. A neighbor once
said to her: "You don't believe anything that child says, I hope."

"Oh yes, I know his average. I discount him ninety per cent. The rest
is pure gold."

She declared she was willing to pay somebody to take him off her hands
for a part of each day and try to teach him "manners." A certain Mrs. E.
Horr was selected for the purpose.

Mrs. Horr's school on Main Street, Hannibal, was of the old-fashioned
kind. There were pupils of all ages, and everything was taught up to the
third reader and long division. Pupils who cared to go beyond those
studies went to a Mr. Cross, on the hill, facing what is now the public
square. Mrs. Horr received twenty-five cents a week for each pupil, and
the rules of conduct were read daily. After the rules came the A-B-C
class, whose recitation was a hand-to-hand struggle, requiring no
study-time.

The rules of conduct that first day interested Little Sam. He wondered
how nearly he could come to breaking them and escape. He experimented
during the forenoon, and received a warning. Another experiment would
mean correction. He did not expect to be caught again; but when he least
expected it he was startled by a command to go out and bring a stick for
his own punishment.

This was rather dazing. It was sudden, and, then, he did not know much
about choosing sticks for such a purpose. Jane Clemens had commonly used
her hand. A second command was needed to start him in the right
direction, and he was still dazed when he got outside. He had the
forests of Missouri to select from, but choice was not easy. Everything
looked too big and competent. Even the smallest switch had a wiry look.
Across the way was a cooper's shop. There were shavings outside, and one
had blown across just in front of him. He picked it up, and, gravely
entering the room, handed it to Mrs. Horr. So far as known, it is the
first example of that humor which would one day make Little Sam famous
before all the world.

It was a failure in this instance. Mrs. Horr's comic side may have
prompted forgiveness, but discipline must be maintained.

"Samuel Langhorne Clemens," she said (he had never heard it all strung
together in that ominous way), "I am ashamed of you! Jimmy Dunlap, go
and bring a switch for Sammy." And the switch that Jimmy Dunlap brought
was of a kind to give Little Sam a permanent distaste for school. He
told his mother at noon that he did not care for education; that he did
not wish to be a great man; that his desire was to be an Indian and scalp
such persons as Mrs. Horr. In her heart Jane Clemens was sorry for him,
but she openly said she was glad there was somebody who could take him in
hand.

Little Sam went back to school, but he never learned to like it. A
school was ruled with a rod in those days, and of the smaller boys Little
Sam's back was sore as often as the next. When the days of early summer
came again, when from his desk he could see the sunshine lighting the
soft green of Holliday's Hill, with the glint of the river and the purple
distance beyond, it seemed to him that to be shut up with a Webster
spelling-book and a cross teacher was more than human nature could bear.
There still exists a yellow slip of paper upon which, in neat,
old-fashioned penmanship is written:

   MISS PAMELA CLEMENS

   Has won the love of her teacher and schoolmates by her amiable
   deportment and faithful application to her various studies.

   E. HORR, Teacher.


Thus we learn that Little Sam's sister, eight years older than himself,
attended the same school, and that she was a good pupil. If any such
reward of merit was ever conferred on Little Sam, it has failed to come
to light. If he won the love of his teacher and playmates, it was
probably for other reasons.

Yet he must have learned somehow, for he could read, presently, and was a
good speller for his age.




IV.

EDUCATION OUT OF SCHOOL

On their arrival in Hannibal, the Clemens family had moved into a part of
what was then the Pavey Hotel. They could not have remained there long,
for they moved twice within the next few years, and again in 1844 into a
new house which Judge Clemens, as he was generally called, had built
on Hill Street--a house still standing, and known to-day as the Mark
Twain home.

John Clemens had met varying fortunes in Hannibal. Neither commerce nor
the practice of law had paid. The office of justice of the peace, to
which he was elected, returned a fair income, but his business losses
finally obliged him to sell Jennie, the slave girl. Somewhat later his
business failure was complete. He surrendered everything to his
creditors, even to his cow and household furniture, and relied upon his
law practice and justice fees. However, he seems to have kept the
Tennessee land, possibly because no one thought it worth taking. There
had been offers for it earlier, but none that its owner would accept. It
appears to have been not even considered by his creditors, though his own
faith in it never died.

The struggle for a time was very bitter. Orion Clemens, now seventeen,
had learned the printer's trade and assisted the family with his wages.
Mrs. Clemens took a few boarders. In the midst of this time of hardship
little Benjamin Clemens died. He was ten years old. It was the darkest
hour.

Then conditions slowly improved. There was more law practice and better
justice fees. By 1844 Judge Clemens was able to build the house
mentioned above--a plain, cheap house, but a shelter and a home. Sam
Clemens--he was hardly "Little Sam" any more--was at this time nine years
old. His boyhood had begun.

Heretofore he had been just a child--wild and mischievous, often
exasperating, but still a child--a delicate little lad to be worried
over, mothered, or spanked and put to bed. Now at nine he had acquired
health, with a sturdy ability to look out for himself, as boys in such a
community will. "Sam," as they now called him, was "grown up" at nine
and wise for his years. Not that he was old in spirit or manner--he was
never that, even to his death--but he had learned a great number of
things, many of them of a kind not taught at school.

He had learned a good deal of natural history and botany--the habits of
plants, insects, and animals. Mark Twain's books bear evidence of this
early study. His plants, bugs, and animals never do the wrong things.
He was learning a good deal about men, and this was often less pleasant
knowledge. Once Little Sam--he was still Little Sam then--saw an old man
shot down on Main Street at noon day. He saw them carry him home, lay
him on the bed, and spread on his breast an open family Bible, which
looked as heavy as an anvil. He thought if he could only drag that great
burden away the poor old dying man would not breathe so heavily.

He saw a young emigrant stabbed with a bowie-knife by a drunken comrade,
and two young men try to kill their uncle, one holding him while the
other snapped repeatedly an Allen revolver, which failed to go off. Then
there was the drunken rowdy who proposed to raid the "Welshman's" house,
one sultry, threatening evening--he saw that, too. With a boon
companion, John Briggs, he followed at a safe distance behind. A widow
with her one daughter lived there. They stood in the shadow of the dark
porch; the man had paused at the gate to revile them. The boys heard the
mother's voice warning the intruder that she had a loaded gun and would
kill him if he stayed where he was. He replied with a tirade, and she
warned him that she would count ten--that if he remained a second longer
she would fire. She began slowly and counted up to five, the man
laughing and jeering. At six he grew silent, but he did not go. She
counted on: seven, eight, nine--

The boys, watching from the dark roadside, felt their hearts stop. There
was a long pause, then the final count, followed a second later by a gush
of flame. The man dropped, his breast riddled. At the same instant the
thunder-storm that had been gathering broke loose. The boys fled wildly,
believing that Satan himself had arrived to claim the lost soul.

That was a day and locality of violent impulse and sudden action.
Happenings such as these were not infrequent in a town like Hannibal.
And there were events connected with slavery. Sam once saw a slave
struck down and killed with a piece of slag, for a trifling offense. He
saw an Abolitionist attacked by a mob that would have lynched him had not
a Methodist minister defended him on a plea that he must be crazy. He
did not remember in later years that he had ever seen a slave auction,
but he added:

   "I am suspicious that it was because the thing was a commonplace
   spectacle and not an uncommon or impressive one. I do vividly
   remember seeing a dozen black men and women, chained together, lying
   in a group on the pavement, waiting shipment to a Southern slave-
   market. They had the saddest faces I ever saw."

Readers of Mark Twain's books--especially the stories of Huck and Tom,
will hardly be surprised to hear of these early happenings that formed so
large a portion of the author's early education. Sam, however, did not
regard them as education--not at the time. They got into his dreams. He
set them down as warnings, or punishments, intended to give him a taste
for a better life. He felt that it was his conscience that made such
things torture him. That was his mother's idea, and he had a high
respect for her opinion in such matters. Among other things, he had seen
her one day defy a vicious and fierce Corsican--a common terror in the
town--who had chased his grown daughter with a heavy rope in his hand,
declaring he would wear it out on her. Cautious citizens got out of the
way, but Jane Clemens opened her door to the fugitive; then, instead of
rushing in and closing it, spread her arms across it, barring the way.
The man raved, and threatened her with the rope, but she did not flinch
or show any sign of fear. She stood there and shamed and defied him
until he slunk off, crestfallen and conquered. Any one as brave as his
mother must have a perfect conscience, Sam thought, and would know how to
take care of it. In the darkness he would say his prayers, especially
when a thunderstorm was coming, and vow to begin a better life. He
detested Sunday-school as much as he did day-school, and once his brother
Orion, who was moral and religious, had threatened to drag him there by
the collar, but, as the thunder got louder, Sam decided that he loved
Sunday-school and would go the next Sunday without being invited.

Sam's days were not all disturbed by fierce events. They were mostly
filled with pleasanter things. There were picnics sometimes, and
ferryboat excursions, and any day one could roam the woods, or fish,
alone or in company. The hills and woods around Hannibal were never
disappointing. There was the cave with its marvels. There was Bear
Creek, where he had learned to swim. He had seen two playmates drown;
twice, himself, he had been dragged ashore, more dead than alive; once by
a slave girl, another time by a slave man--Neal Champ, of the Pavey
Hotel. But he had persevered, and with success. He could swim better
than any playmate of his age.

It was the river that he cared for most. It was the pathway that led to
the great world outside. He would sit by it for hours and dream. He
would venture out on it in a quietly borrowed boat, when he was barely
strong enough to lift an oar. He learned to know all its moods and
phases.

More than anything in the world he hungered to make a trip on one of the
big, smart steamers that were always passing. "You can hardly imagine
what it meant," he reflected, once, "to a boy in those days, shut in as
we were, to see those steamboats pass up and down, and never take a trip
on them."

It was at the mature age of nine that he found he could endure this no
longer. One day when the big packet came down and stopped at Hannibal,
he slipped aboard and crept under one of the boats on the upper deck.
Then the signal-bells rang, the steamer backed away and swung into
midstream; he was really going at last. He crept from beneath the boat
and sat looking out over the water and enjoying the scenery. Then it
began to rain--a regular downpour. He crept back under the boat, but his
legs were outside, and one of the crew saw him. He was dragged out and
at the next stop set ashore. It was the town of Louisiana, where there
were Lampton relatives, who took him home. Very likely the home-coming
was not entirely pleasant, though a "lesson," too, in his general
education.

And always, each summer, there was the farm, where his recreation was no
longer mere girl plays and swings, with a colored nurse following about,
but sports with his older boy cousins, who went hunting with the men, for
partridges by day and for 'coons and 'possums by night. Sometimes the
little boy followed the hunters all night long, and returned with them
through the sparkling and fragrant morning, fresh, hungry, and
triumphant, just in time for breakfast. So it is no wonder that Little
Sam, at nine, was no longer Little Sam, but plain Sam Clemens, and grown
up. If there were doubtful spots in his education--matters related to
smoking and strong words--it is also no wonder, and experience even in
these lines was worth something in a book like Tom Sawyer.

The boy Sam Clemens was not a particularly attractive lad. He was rather
undersized, and his head seemed too large for his body. He had a mass of
light sandy hair, which he plastered down to keep from curling. His eyes
were keen and blue and his features rather large. Still, he had a fair,
delicate complexion when it was not blackened by grime and tan; a gentle,
winning manner; a smile and a slow way of speaking that made him a
favorite with his companions. He did not talk much, and was thought to
be rather dull--was certainly so in most of his lessons--but, for some
reason, he never spoke that every playmate in hearing did not stop,
whatever he was doing, to listen. Perhaps it would be a plan for a new
game or lark; perhaps it was something droll; perhaps it was just a
casual remark that his peculiar drawl made amusing. His mother always
referred to his slow fashion of speech as "Sammy's long talk." Her own
speech was even more deliberate, though she seemed not to notice it. Sam
was more like his mother than the others. His brother, Henry Clemens,
three years younger, was as unlike Sam as possible. He did not have the
"long talk," and was a handsome, obedient little fellow whom the
mischievous Sam loved to tease. Henry was to become the Sid of Tom
Sawyer, though he was in every way a finer character than Sid. With the
death of little Benjamin, Sam and Henry had been drawn much closer
together, and, in spite of Sam's pranks, loved each other dearly. For
the pranks were only occasional, and Sam's love for Henry was constant.
He fought for him oftener than with him.

Many of the home incidents in the Tom Sawyer book really happened. Sam
did clod Henry for getting him into trouble about the colored thread
with which he sewed his shirt when he came home from swimming; he did
inveigle a lot of boys into whitewashing a fence for him; he did give
painkiller to Peter, the cat. As for escaping punishment for his
misdeeds, as described in the book, this was a daily matter, and his
methods suited the occasions. For, of course, Tom Sawyer was Sam Clemens
himself, almost entirely, as most readers of that book have imagined.
However, we must have another chapter for Tom Sawyer and his doings--the
real Tom and his real doings with those graceless, lovable associates,
Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn.




V.

TOM SAWYER AND HIS BAND

In beginning "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" the author says, "Most of the
adventures recorded in this book really occurred," and he tells us that
Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, though not from a single
individual, being a composite of three boys whom Mark Twain had known.

The three boys were himself, almost entirely, with traces of two
schoolmates, John Briggs and Will Bowen. John Briggs was also the
original of Joe Harper, the "Terror of the Seas." As for Huck Finn, the
"Red-Handed," his original was a village waif named Tom Blankenship, who
needed no change for his part in the story.

The Blankenship family picked up an uncertain livelihood, fishing and
hunting, and lived at first under a tree in a bark shanty, but later
moved into a large, barn-like building, back of the Clemens home on Hill
Street. There were three male members of the household: Old Ben, the
father, shiftless and dissolute; young Ben, the eldest son--a doubtful
character, with certain good traits; and Tom--that is to say, Huck, who
was just as he is described in the book--a ruin of rags, a river-rat,
kind of heart, and accountable for his conduct to nobody in the world.
He could come and go as he chose; he never had to work or go to school;
he could do all the things, good and bad, that other boys longed to do
and were forbidden. To them he was the symbol of liberty; his knowledge
of fishing, trapping, signs, and of the woods and river gave value to his
society, while the fact that it was forbidden made it necessary to Sam
Clemens's happiness.

The Blankenships being handy to the back gate of the Hill Street house,
he adopted them at sight. Their free mode of life suited him. He was
likely to be there at any hour of the day, and Tom made cat-call signals
at night that would bring Sam out on the shed roof at the back and down a
little trellis and flight of steps to the group of boon companions,
which, besides Tom, usually included John Briggs, Will Pitts, and the two
younger Bowen boys. They were not malicious boys, but just mischievous,
fun-loving boys--little boys of ten or twelve--rather thoughtless, being
mainly bent on having a good time.

They had a wide field of action: they ranged from Holliday's Hill on the
north to the cave on the south, and over the fields and through all the
woods between. They explored both banks of the river, the islands, and
the deep wilderness of the Illinois shore. They could run like turkeys
and swim like ducks; they could handle a boat as if born in one. No
orchard or melon-patch was entirely safe from them. No dog or slave
patrol was so watchful that they did not sooner or later elude it. They
borrowed boats with or without the owner's consent--it did not matter.

Most of their expeditions were harmless enough. They often cruised up to
Turtle Island, about two miles above Hannibal, and spent the day
feasting. There were quantities of turtles and their eggs there, and
mussels, and plenty of fish. Fishing and swimming were their chief
pastimes, with incidental raiding, for adventure. Bear Creek was their
swimming-place by day, and the river-front at night-fall--a favorite spot
being where the railroad bridge now ends. It was a good distance across
to the island where, in the book, Tom Sawyer musters his pirate band, and
where later Huck found Nigger Jim, but quite often in the evening they
swam across to it, and when they had frolicked for an hour or more on the
sandbar at the head of the island, they would swim back in the dusk,
breasting the strong, steady Mississippi current without exhaustion or
dread. They could swim all day, those little scamps, and seemed to have
no fear. Once, during his boyhood, Sam Clemens swam across to the
Illinois side, then turned and swam back again without landing, a
distance of at least two miles as he had to go. He was seized with a
cramp on the return trip. His legs became useless and he was obliged to
make the remaining distance with his arms.

The adventures of Sam Clemens and his comrades would fill several books
of the size of Tom Sawyer. Many of them are, of course, forgotten now,
but those still remembered show that Mark Twain had plenty of real
material.

It was not easy to get money in those days, and the boys were often
without it. Once "Huck" Blankenship had the skin of a 'coon he had
captured, and offered to sell it to raise capital. At Selms's store, on
Wild Cat Corner, the 'coon-skin would bring ten cents. But this was not
enough. The boys thought of a plan to make it bring more. Selms's back
window was open, and the place where he kept his pelts was pretty handy.
Huck went around to the front door and sold the skin for ten cents to
Selms, who tossed it back on the pile. Then Huck came back and, after
waiting a reasonable time, crawled in the open window, got the
'coon-skin, and sold it to Selms again. He did this several times that
afternoon, and the capital of the band grew. But at last John Pierce,
Selms's clerk, said:

"Look here, Mr. Selms, there's something wrong about this. That boy has
been selling us 'coonskins all the afternoon."

Selms went back to his pile of pelts. There were several sheep-skins and
some cow-hides, but only one 'coon-skin--the one he had that moment
bought.

Selms himself, in after years, used to tell this story as a great joke.

One of the boys' occasional pastimes was to climb Holliday's Hill and
roll down big stones, to frighten the people who were driving by.
Holliday's Hill above the road was steep; a stone once started would go
plunging downward and bound across the road with the deadly momentum of a
shell. The boys would get a stone poised, then wait until they saw a
team approaching, and, calculating the distance, would give the boulder a
start. Dropping behind the bushes, they would watch the sudden effect
upon the party below as the great missile shot across the road a few
yards before them. This was huge sport, but they carried it too far.
For at last they planned a grand climax that would surpass anything
before attempted in the stone-rolling line.

A monstrous boulder was lying up there in the right position to go
down-hill, once started. It would be a glorious thing to see that
great stone go smashing down a hundred yards or so in front of some
peaceful-minded countryman jogging along the road. Quarrymen had been
getting out rock not far away and had left their picks and shovels handy.
The boys borrowed the tools and went to work to undermine the big stone.
They worked at it several hours. If their parents had asked them to work
like that, they would have thought they were being killed.

Finally, while they were still digging, the big stone suddenly got loose
and started down. They were not ready for it at all. Nobody was coming
but an old colored man in a cart; their splendid stone was going to be
wasted.

One could hardly call it wasted, however; they had planned for a
thrilling result, and there was certainly thrill enough while it lasted.
In the first place the stone nearly caught Will Bowen when it started.
John Briggs had that moment quit digging and handed Will the pick. Will
was about to take his turn when Sam Clemens leaped aside with a yell:

"Lookout, boys; she's coming!"

She came. The huge boulder kept to the ground at first, then, gathering
momentum, it went bounding into the air. About half-way down the hill it
struck a sapling and cut it clean off. This turned its course a little,
and the negro in the cart, hearing the noise and seeing the great mass
come crashing in his direction, made a wild effort to whip up his mule.

The boys watched their bomb with growing interest. It was headed
straight for the negro, also for a cooper-shop across the road. It made
longer leaps with every bound, and, wherever it struck, fragments and
dust would fly. The shop happened to be empty, but the rest of the
catastrophe would call for close investigation. They wanted to fly, but
they could not move until they saw the rock land. It was making mighty
leaps now, and the terrified negro had managed to get exactly in its
path. The boys stood holding their breath, their mouths open.

Then, suddenly, they could hardly believe their eyes; a little way above
the road the boulder struck a projection, made one mighty leap into the
air, sailed clear over the negro and his mule, and landed in the soft
dirt beyond the road, only a fragment striking the shop, damaging, but
not wrecking it. Half buried in the ground, the great stone lay there
for nearly forty years; then it was broken up. It was the last rock the
boys ever rolled down. Nearly sixty years later John Briggs and Mark
Twain walked across Holliday's Hill and looked down toward the river
road.

Mark Twain said: "It was a mighty good thing, John, that stone acted the
way it did. We might have had to pay a fancy price for that old darky I
can see him yet."[1]

It can be no harm now, to confess that the boy Sam Clemens--a pretty
small boy, a good deal less than twelve at the time, and by no means
large for his years--was the leader of this unhallowed band. In any
case, truth requires this admission. If the band had a leader, it was
Sam, just as it was Tom Sawyer in the book. They were always ready to
listen to him--they would even stop fishing to do that--and to follow his
plans. They looked to him for ideas and directions, and he gloried in
being a leader and showing off, just as Tom did in the book. It seems
almost a pity that in those far-off barefoot days he could not have
looked down the years and caught a glimpse of his splendid destiny.

But of literary fame he could never have dreamed. The chief ambition
--the "permanent ambition"--of every Hannibal boy was to be a pilot. The
pilot in his splendid glass perch with his supreme power and princely
salary was to them the noblest of all human creatures. An elder Bowen
boy was already a pilot, and when he came home, as he did now and then,
his person seemed almost too sacred to touch.

Next to being a pilot, Sam thought he would like to be a pirate or a
bandit or a trapper-scout--something gorgeous and awe-inspiring, where
his word, his nod, would still be law. The river kept his river ambition
always fresh, and with the cave and the forest round about helped him to
imagine those other things.

The cave was the joy of his heart. It was a real cave, not merely a
hole, but a marvel of deep passages and vaulted chambers that led back
into the bluffs and far down into the earth, even below the river, some
said. Sam Clemens never tired of the cave. He was willing any time to
quit fishing or swimming or melon-hunting for the three-mile walk, or
pull, that brought them to its mystic door. With its long corridors, its
royal chambers hung with stalactites, its remote hiding-places, it was
exactly suitable, Sam thought, to be the lair of an outlaw, and in it he
imagined and carried out adventures which his faithful followers may not
always have understood, though enjoying them none the less for that
reason.

In Tom Sawyer, Indian Joe dies in the cave. He did not die there in real
life, but was lost there once and was very weak when they found him. He
was not as bad as painted in the book, though he was dissolute and
accounted dangerous; and when one night he died in reality, there came a
thunder-storm so terrific that Sam Clemens at home, in bed, was certain
that Satan had come in person for the half-breed's soul. He covered his
head and said his prayers with fearful anxiety lest the evil one might
decide to save another trip by taking him along then.

The treasure-digging adventure in the book had this foundation in fact:
It was said that two French trappers had once buried a chest of gold
about two miles above Hannibal, and that it was still there. Tom
Blankenship (Huck) one morning said he had dreamed just where the
treasure was, and that if the boys--Sam Clemens and John Briggs--would go
with him and help dig, he would divide. The boys had great faith in
dreams, especially in Huck's dreams. They followed him to a place with
some shovels and picks, and he showed them just where to dig. Then he
sat down under the shade of a pawpaw-bush and gave orders.

They dug nearly all day. Huck didn't dig any himself, because he had
done the dreaming, which was his share. They didn't find the treasure
that day, and next morning they took two long iron rods to push and drive
into the ground until they should strike something. They struck a number
of things, but when they dug down it was never the money they found.
That night the boys said they wouldn't dig any more.

But Huck had another dream. He dreamed the gold was exactly under the
little pawpaw-tree. This sounded so circumstantial that they went back
and dug another day. It was hot weather, too--August--and that night
they were nearly dead. Even Huck gave it up then. He said there was
something wrong about the way they dug.

This differs a good deal from the treasure incident in the book, but it
shows us what respect the boys had for the gifts of the ragamuffin
original of Huck Finn. Tom Blankenship's brother Ben was also used, and
very importantly, in the creation of our beloved Huck. Ben was
considerably older, but certainly no more reputable, than Tom. He
tormented the smaller boys, and they had little love for him. Yet
somewhere in Ben Blankenship's nature there was a fine, generous strain
of humanity that provided Mark Twain with that immortal episode--the
sheltering of Nigger Jim. This is the real story:

   A slave ran off from Monroe County, Missouri, and got across the
   river into Illinois. Ben used to fish and hunt over there in the
   swamps, and one day found him. It was considered a most worthy act
   in those days to return a runaway slave; in fact, it was a crime not
   to do it. Besides, there was for this one a reward of fifty
   dollars--a fortune to ragged, out-cast Ben Blankenship. That money,
   and the honor he could acquire, must have been tempting to the waif,
   but it did not outweigh his human sympathy. Instead of giving him
   up and claiming the reward, Ben kept the runaway over there in the
   marshes all summer. The negro fished, and Ben carried him scraps of
   other food. Then, by and by, the facts leaked out. Some wood-
   choppers went on a hunt for the fugitive and chased him to what was
   called Bird Slough. There, trying to cross a drift, he was drowned.

Huck's struggle in the book is between conscience and the law, on one
side, and deep human sympathy on the other. Ben Blankenship's struggle,
supposing there was one, would be between sympathy and the offered
reward. Neither conscience nor law would trouble him. It was his native
humanity that made him shelter the runaway, and it must have been strong
and genuine to make him resist the lure of the fifty-dollar prize.

There was another chapter to this incident. A few days after the
drowning of the runaway, Sam Clemens and his band made their way to the
place and were pushing the drift about, when, all at once, the negro shot
up out of the water, straight and terrible, a full half-length in the
air. He had gone down foremost and had been caught in the drift. The
boys did not stop to investigate, but flew in terror to report their
tale.

Those early days seem to have been full of gruesome things. In "The
Innocents Abroad," the author tells how he once spent a night in his
father's office and discovered there a murdered man. This was a true
incident. The man had been stabbed that afternoon and carried into the
house to die. Sam and John Briggs had been playing truant all day and
knew nothing of the matter. Sam thought the office safer than his home,
where his mother was probably sitting up for him. He climbed in by a
window and lay down on the lounge, but did not sleep. Presently he
noticed what appeared to be an unusual shape on the floor. He tried to
turn his face to the wall and forget it, but that would not do. In agony
he watched the thing until at last a square of moonlight gradually
revealed a sight that he never forgot. In the book he says:

   "I went away from there. I do not say that I went in any sort of
   hurry, but I simply went--that is sufficient. I went out of the
   window, and I carried the sash along with me. I did not need the
   sash, but it was handier to take it than to leave it, and so I took
   it. I was not scared, but I was considerable agitated."

Sam was not yet twelve, for his father was no longer living when the boy
had reached that age. And how many things had crowded themselves into
his few brief years! We must be content here with only a few of them.
Our chapter is already too long.

Ministers and deacons did not prophesy well for Sam Clemens and his mad
companions. They spoke feelingly of state prison and the gallows. But
the boys were a disappointing lot. Will Bowen became a fine river-pilot.
Will Pitts was in due time a leading merchant and bank president. John
Briggs grew into a well-to-do and highly respected farmer. Huck Finn
--which is to say, Tom Blankenship--died an honored citizen and justice of
the peace in a Western town. As for Sam Clemens, we shall see what he
became as the chapters pass.

[1] John Briggs died in 1907; earlier in the same year the writer of this
memoir spent an afternoon with him and obtained from him most of the
material for this chapter.




VI.

CLOSING SCHOOL-DAYS

Sam was at Mr. Cross's school on the Square in due time, and among the
pupils were companions that appealed to his gentler side. There were the
Robards boys--George, the best Latin scholar, and John, who always won
the good-conduct medal, and would one day make all the other boys envious
by riding away with his father to California, his curls of gold blowing
in the wind.

There was Buck Brown, a rival speller, and John Garth, who would marry
little Helen Kercheval, and Jimmy MacDaniel, whom it was well to know
because his father kept a pastry-shop and he used to bring cakes and
candy to school.

There were also a number of girls. Bettie Ormsley, Artemisia Briggs, and
Jennie Brady were among the girls he remembered in later years, and Mary
Miller, who was nearly double his age and broke his heart by getting
married one day, a thing he had not expected at all.

Yet through it all he appears, like Tom Sawyer, to have had one faithful
sweetheart. In the book it is Becky Thatcher--in real life she was Laura
Hawkins. The Clemens and Hawkins families lived opposite, and the
children were early acquainted. The "Black Avenger of the Spanish Main"
was very gentle when he was playing at house-building with little Laura,
and once, when he dropped a brick on her finger, he cried the louder and
longer of the two.

For he was a tender-hearted boy. He would never abuse an animal, except
when his tendency to mischief ran away with him, as in the "pain-killer"
incident. He had a real passion for cats. Each summer he carried his
cat to the farm in a basket, and it always had a place by him at the
table. He loved flowers--not as a boy botanist or gardener, but as a
companion who understood their thoughts. He pitied dead leaves and dry
weeds because their lives were ended and they would never know summer
again or grow glad with another spring. Even in that early time he had
that deeper sympathy which one day would offer comfort to humanity and
make every man his friend.

But we are drifting away from Sam Clemens's school-days. They will not
trouble us much longer now. More than anything in the world Sam detested
school, and he made any excuse to get out of going. It is hard to say
just why, unless it was the restraint and the long hours of confinement.

The Square in Hannibal, where stood the school of Mr. Cross, was a grove
in those days, with plum-trees and hazel-bushes and grape-vines. When
spring came, the children gathered flowers at recess, climbed trees, and
swung in the vines. It was a happy place enough, only--it was school.
To Sam Clemens, the spelling-bee every Friday afternoon was the one thing
that made it worth while. Sam was a leader at spelling--it was one of
his gifts--he could earn compliments even from Mr. Cross, whose name, it
would seem, was regarded as descriptive. Once in a moment of inspiration
Sam wrote on his late:

      "Cross by name and Cross by nature,
       Cross jumped over an Irish potato."

John Briggs thought this a great effort, and urged the author to write it
on the blackboard at noon. Sam hesitated.

"Oh, pshaw!" said John, "I wouldn't be afraid to do it."

"I dare you to do it," said Sam.

This was enough. While Mr. Cross was at dinner John wrote in a large
hand the fine couplet. The teacher returned and called the school to
order. He looked at the blackboard, then, searchingly, at John Briggs.
The handwriting was familiar.

"Did you do that?" he asked, ominously.

It was a time for truth.

"Yes, sir," said John.

"Come here!" And John came and paid handsomely for his publishing
venture. Sam Clemens expected that the author would be called for next;
but perhaps Mr. Cross had exhausted himself on John. Sam did not often
escape. His back kept fairly warm from one "flailing" to the next.

Yet he usually wore one of the two medals offered in that school--the
medal for spelling. Once he lost it by leaving the first "r" out of
February. Laura Hawkins was on the floor against him, and he was a
gallant boy. If it had only been Huck Brown he would have spelled that
and all the other months backward, to show off. There were moments of
triumph that almost made school worth while; the rest of the time it was
prison and servitude.

But then one day came freedom. Judge Clemens, who, in spite of
misfortune, had never lost faith in humanity, indorsed a large note for a
neighbor, and was obliged to pay it. Once more all his property was
taken away. Only a few scanty furnishings were rescued from the wreck.
A St. Louis cousin saved the home, but the Clemens family could not
afford to live in it. They moved across the street and joined
housekeeping with another family.

Judge Clemens had one hope left. He was a candidate for the clerkship of
the surrogate court, a good office, and believed his election sure. His
business misfortunes had aroused wide sympathy. He took no chances,
however, and made a house-to house canvas of the district, regardless of
the weather, probably undermining his health. He was elected by a large
majority, and rejoiced that his worries were now at an end. They were,
indeed, over. At the end of February he rode to the county seat to take
the oath of office. He returned through a drenching storm and reached
home nearly frozen. Pneumonia set in, and a few days later he was
dying. His one comfort now was the Tennessee land. He said it would
make them all rich and happy. Once he whispered:

"Cling to the land; cling to the land and wait. Let nothing beguile it
away from you."

He was a man who had rarely displayed affection for his children. But
presently he beckoned to Pamela, now a lovely girl of nineteen, and,
putting his arm around her neck, kissed her for the first time in years.

"Let me die," he said.

He did not speak again. A little more, and his worries had indeed ended.
The hard struggle of an upright, impractical man had come to a close.
This was in March, 1847. John Clemens had lived less than forty-nine
years.

The children were dazed. They had loved their father and honored his
nobility of purpose. The boy Sam was overcome with remorse. He recalled
his wildness and disobedience--a thousand things trifling enough at the
time, but heartbreaking now. Boy and man, Samuel Clemens was never
spared by remorse. Leading him into the room where his father lay, his
mother said some comforting words and asked him to make her a promise.

He flung himself into her arms, sobbing: "I will promise anything, if you
won't make me go to school! Anything!"

After a moment his mother said: "No, Sammy, you need not go to school any
more. Only promise me to be a better boy. Promise not to break my
heart!"

He gave his promise to be faithful and industrious and upright, like his
father. Such a promise was a serious matter, and Sam Clemens, underneath
all, was a serious lad. He would not be twelve until November, but his
mother felt that he would keep his word.

Orion Clemens returned to St. Louis, where he was receiving a salary of
ten dollars a week--high wage for those days--out of which he could send
three dollars weekly to the family. Pamela, who played the guitar and
piano very well, gave music lessons, and so helped the family fund.
Pamela Clemens, the original of Cousin Mary, in "Tom Sawyer," was a sweet
and noble girl. Henry was too young to work, but Sam was apprenticed to
a printer named Ament, who had recently moved to Hannibal and bought a
weekly paper, "The Courier." Sam agreed with his mother that the
printing trade offered a chance for further education without attending
school, and then, some day, there might be wages.




VII.

THE APPRENTICE

The terms of Samuel Clemens's apprenticeship were the usual thing for
that day: board and clothes--"more board than clothes, and not much of
either," Mark Twain used to say.

"I was supposed to get two suits of clothes a year, but I didn't get
them. I got one suit and took the rest out in Ament's old garments,
which didn't fit me in any noticeable way. I was only about half as big
as he was, and when I had on one of his shirts I felt as if I had on a
circus-tent. I had to turn the trousers up to my ears to make them short
enough."

Another apprentice, a huge creature, named Wales McCormick, was so large
that Ament's clothes were much too small for him. The two apprentices,
fitted out with their employer's cast-off garments, were amusing enough,
no doubt. Sam and Wales ate in the kitchen at first, but later at the
family table with Mr. and Mrs. Ament and Pet McMurry, a journeyman
printer. McMurry was a happy soul, as one could almost guess from his
name. He had traveled far and learned much. What the two apprentices
did not already know, Pet McMurry could teach them. Sam Clemens had
promised to be a good boy, and he was so, by the standards of boyhood.
He was industrious, regular at his work, quick to learn, kind, and
truthful. Angels could hardly be more than that in a printing-office.
But when food was scarce, even an angel--a young printer-angel--could
hardly resist slipping down the cellar stairs at night, for raw potatoes,
onions, and apples, which they cooked in the office, where the boys slept
on a pallet on the floor. Wales had a wonderful way of cooking a potato
which his fellow apprentice never forgot.

How one wishes for a photograph of Sam Clemens at that period! But in
those days there were only daguerreotypes, and they were expensive
things. There is a letter, though, written long afterward, by Pet
McMurry to Mark Twain, which contains this paragraph:

   "If your memory extends so far back, you will recall a little sandy-
   haired boy of nearly a quarter of a century ago, in the printing-
   office at Hannibal, over the Brittingham drug-store, mounted upon a
   little box at the case, who used to love to sing so well the
   expression of the poor drunken man who was supposed to have fallen
   by the wayside, 'If ever I get up again, I'll stay up--if I kin.'"

And with this portrait we must be content--we cannot doubt its truth.

Sam was soon office favorite and in time became chief stand-by. When he
had been at work a year, he could set type accurately, run the job press
to the tune of "Annie Laurie," and he had charge of the circulation.
That is to say, he carried the papers--a mission of real importance, for
a long, sagging span of telegraph-wire had reached across the river to
Hannibal, and Mexican-war news delivered hot from the front gave the
messenger a fine prestige.

He even did editing, of a kind. That is to say, when Ament was not in
the office and copy was needed, Sam hunted him up, explained the
situation, and saw that the necessary matter was produced. He was not
ambitious to write--not then. He wanted to be a journeyman printer, like
Pet, and travel and see the world. Sometimes he thought he would like to
be a clown, or "end man" in a minstrel troupe. Once for a week he served
as subject for a traveling hypnotist-and was dazzled by his success.

But he stuck to printing, and rapidly became a neat, capable workman.
Ament gave him a daily task, after which he was free. By three in the
afternoon he was likely to finish his stint. Then he was off for the
river or the cave, joining his old comrades. Or perhaps he would go with
Laura Hawkins to gather wild columbine on the high cliff above the river,
known as Lover's Leap. When winter came these two sometimes went to
Bear Creek, skating; or together they attended parties, where the
old-fashioned games "Ring-around-Rosy" and "Dusty Miller" were the chief
amusements.

In "The Gilded Age," Laura Hawkins at twelve is pictured "with her dainty
hands propped into the ribbon-bordered pockets of her apron . . . a
vision to warm the coldest heart and bless and cheer the saddest." That
was the real Laura, though her story in that book in no way resembles the
reality.

It was just at this time that an incident occurred which may be looked
back upon now as a turning-point in Samuel Clemens's life. Coming home
from the office one afternoon, he noticed a square of paper being swept
along by the wind. He saw that it was printed--was interested
professionally in seeing what it was like. He chased the flying scrap
and overtook it. It was a leaf from some old history of Joan of Arc, and
pictured the hard lot of the "maid" in the tower at Rouen, reviled and
mistreated by her ruffian captors. There were some paragraphs of
description, but the rest was pitiful dialogue.

Sam had never heard of Joan before--he knew nothing of history. He was
no reader. Orion was fond of books, and Pamela; even little Henry had
read more than Sam. But now, as he read, there awoke in him a deep
feeling of pity and indignation, and with it a longing to know more of
the tragic story. It was an interest that would last his life through,
and in the course of time find expression in one of the rarest books ever
written.

The first result was that Sam began to read. He hunted up everything he
could find on the subject of Joan, and from that went into French history
in general--indeed, into history of every kind. Samuel Clemens had
suddenly become a reader--almost a student. He even began the study of
languages, German and Latin, but was not able to go on for lack of time
and teachers.

He became a hater of tyranny, a champion of the weak. Watching a game of
marbles or tops, he would remark to some offender, in his slow drawling
way, "You mustn't cheat that boy."

And the cheating stopped, or trouble followed.




VIII.

ORION'S PAPER

A Hannibal paper, the "Journal," was for sale under a mortgage of five
hundred dollars, and Orion Clemens, returning from St. Louis, borrowed
the money and bought it. Sam's two years' apprenticeship with Ament had
been completed, and Orion felt that together they could carry on the
paper and win success. Henry Clemens, now eleven, was also taken out of
school to learn type-setting.

Orion was a better printer than proprietor. Like so many of his family,
he was a visionary, gentle and credulous, ready to follow any new idea.
Much advice was offered him, and he tried to follow it all.

He began with great hopes and energy. He worked like a slave and did not
spare the others. The paper was their hope of success. Sam, especially,
was driven. There were no more free afternoons. In some chapters
written by Orion Clemens in later life, he said:

   "I was tyrannical and unjust to Sam. He was swift and clean as a
   good journeyman. I gave him 'takes,' and, if he got through well, I
   begrudged him the time and made him work more."

Orion did not mean to be unjust. The struggle against opposition and
debt was bitter. He could not be considerate.

The paper for a time seemed on the road to success, but Orion worked too
hard and tried too many schemes. His enthusiasm waned and most of his
schemes turned out poorly. By the end of the year the "Journal" was on
the down grade.

In time when the need of money became great, Orion made a trip to
Tennessee to try to raise something on the land which they still held
there. He left Sam in charge of the paper, and, though its proprietor
returned empty-handed, his journey was worth while, for it was during his
absence that Samuel Clemens began the career that would one day make him
Mark Twain.

Sam had concluded to edit the paper in a way that would liven up the
circulation. He had never written anything for print, but he believed he
knew what the subscribers wanted. The editor of a rival paper had been
crossed in love, and was said to have tried to drown himself. Sam wrote
an article telling all the history of the affair, giving names and
details. Then on the back of two big wooden letters, used for
bill-printing, he engraved illustrations of the victim wading out
into the river, testing the depth of the water with a stick.

The paper came out, and the demand for it kept the Washington hand-press
busy. The injured editor sent word that he was coming over to thrash the
whole Journal staff, but he left town, instead, for the laugh was too
general.

Sam also wrote a poem which startled orthodox readers. Then Orion
returned and reduced him to the ranks. In later years Orion saw his
mistake.

   "I could have distanced all competitors, even then," he wrote,
   "if I had recognized Sam's ability and let him go ahead, merely
   keeping him from offending worthy persons."

Sam was not discouraged. He liked the taste of print. He sent two
anecdotes to the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post. Both were accepted
--without payment, of course, in those days--and when they appeared he
walked on air. This was in 1851. Nearly sixty years later he said:

   "Seeing them in print was a joy which rather exceeded anything in
   that line I have ever experienced since."

However, he wrote nothing further for the "Post." Orion printed two of
his sketches in the "Journal," which was the extent of his efforts at
this time. None of this early work has been preserved. Files of the
"Post" exist, but the sketches were unsigned and could hardly be
identified.

The Hannibal paper dragged along from year to year. Orion could pay
nothing on the mortgage--financial matters becoming always worse. He
could barely supply the plainest food and clothing for the family. Sam
and Henry got no wages, of course. Then real disaster came. A cow got
into the office one night, upset a type-case, and ate up two composition
rollers. Somewhat later a fire broke out and did considerable damage.
There was partial insurance, with which Orion replaced a few necessary
articles; then, to save rent, he moved the office into the front room of
the home on Hill Street, where they were living again at this time.

Samuel Clemens, however, now in his eighteenth year, felt that he was no
longer needed in Hannibal. He was a capable workman, with little to do
and no reward. Orion, made irritable by his misfortunes, was not always
kind. Pamela, who, meantime, had married well, was settled in St. Louis.
Sam told his mother that he would visit Pamela and look about the city.
There would be work in St. Louis at good wages.

He was going farther than St. Louis, but he dared not tell her. Jane
Clemens, consenting, sighed as she put together his scanty belongings.
Sam was going away. He had been a good boy of late years, but her faith
in his resisting powers was not strong. Presently she held up a little
Testament.

"I want you to take hold of the other end of this, Sam," she said, "and
make me a promise."

The slim, wiry woman of forty-nine, gray-eyed, tender, and resolute,
faced the fair-cheeked youth of seventeen, his eyes as piercing and
unwavering as her own. How much alike they were!

"I want you," Jane Clemens said, "to repeat after me, Sam, these words: I
do solemnly swear that I will not throw a card or drink a drop of liquor
while I am gone."

He repeated the vow after her, and she kissed him.

"Remember that, Sam, and write to us," she said.

"And so," writes Orion, "he went wandering in search of that comfort and
advancement, and those rewards of industry, which he had failed to find
where I was--gloomy, taciturn, and selfish. I not only missed his labor;
we all missed his abounding activity and merriment."




IX.

THE OPEN ROAD

Samuel Clemens went to visit his sister Pamela in St. Louis and was
presently at work, setting type on the "Evening News." He had no
intention, however, of staying there. His purpose was to earn money
enough to take him to New York City. The railroad had by this time
reached St. Louis, and he meant to have the grand experience of a long
journey "on the cars." Also, there was a Crystal Palace in New York,
where a world's exposition was going on.

Trains were slow in 1853, and it required several days and nights to go
from St. Louis to New York City, but to Sam Clemens it was a wonderful
journey. All day he sat looking out of the window, eating when he chose
from the food he carried, curling up in his seat at night to sleep. He
arrived at last with a few dollars in his pocket and a ten-dollar bill
sewed into the lining of his coat.

New York was rather larger than he expected. All of the lower end of
Manhattan Island was covered by it. The Crystal Palace--some distance
out--stood at Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue--the present site of
Bryant Park. All the world's newest wonders were to be seen there--a
dazzling exhibition. A fragment of the letter which Sam Clemens wrote to
his sister Pamela--the earliest piece of Mark Twain's writing that has
been preserved--expresses his appreciation of the big fair:

   "From the gallery (second floor) you have a glorious sight--the
   flags of the different countries represented, the lofty dome,
   glittering jewelry, gaudy tapestry, etc., with the busy crowd
   passing to and fro--'tis a perfect fairy palace--beautiful beyond
   description.

   "The machinery department is on the main floor, but I cannot
   enumerate any of it on account of the lateness of the hour (past one
   o'clock). It would take more than a week to examine everything on
   exhibition, and I was only in a little over two hours to-night. I
   only glanced at about one-third of the articles; and, having a poor
   memory, I have enumerated scarcely any of even the principal
   objects. The visitors to the Palace average 6,000 daily--double the
   population of Hannibal. The price of admission being fifty cents,
   they take in about $3,000.

   "The Latting Observatory (height about 280 feet) is near the Palace.
   From it you can obtain a grand view of the city and the country
   around. The Croton Aqueduct, to supply the city with water, is the
   greatest wonder yet. Immense pipes are laid across the bed of the
   Harlem River, and pass through the country to Westchester County,
   where a whole river is turned from its course and brought to New
   York. From the reservoir in the city to Westchester County
   reservoir the distance is thirty-eight miles, and, if necessary,
   they could easily supply every family in New York with one hundred
   barrels of water a day!

   "I am very sorry to learn that Henry has been sick. He ought to go
   to the country and take exercise, for he is not half so healthy as
   Ma thinks he is. If he had my walking to do, he would be another
   boy entirely. Four times every day I walk a little over a mile; and
   working hard all day and walking four miles is exercise. I am used
   to it now, though, and it is no trouble. Where is it Orion's going
   to? Tell Ma my promises are faithfully kept; and if I have my
   health I will take her to Ky. in the spring. I shall save money for
   this.

   "(It has just struck 2 A.M., and I always get up at six and am at
   work at 7.) You ask where I spend my evenings. Where would you
   suppose, with a free printers' library containing more than 4,000
   volumes within a quarter of a mile of me, and nobody at home to talk
   to?"

   "I shall write to Ella soon. Write soon.
   "Truly your Brother,

   "SAMY.

   "P.S.--I have written this by a light so dim that you nor Ma could
   not read by it."

We get a fair idea of Samuel Clemens at seventeen from this letter. For
one thing, he could write good, clear English, full of interesting facts.
He is enthusiastic, but not lavish of words. He impresses us with his
statement that the visitors to the Palace each day are in number double
the population of Hannibal; a whole river is turned from its course to
supply New York City with water; the water comes thirty-eight miles, and
each family could use a hundred barrels a day! The letter reveals his
personal side--his kindly interest in those left behind, his anxiety for
Henry, his assurance that the promise to his mother was being kept, his
memory of her longing to visit her old home. And the boy who hated
school has become a reader--he is reveling in a printers' library of
thousands of volumes. We feel, somehow, that Samuel Clemens has suddenly
become quite a serious-minded person, that he has left Tom Sawyer and Joe
Harper and Huck Finn somewhere in a beautiful country a long way behind.

He found work with the firm of John A. Gray & Green, general printers, in
Cliff Street. His pay was four dollars a week, in wild-cat money--that
is, money issued by private banks--rather poor money, being generally at
a discount and sometimes worth less. But if wages were low, living
was cheap in those days, and Sam Clemens, lodging in a mechanics'
boarding-house in Duane Street, sometimes had fifty cents left on
Saturday night when his board and washing were paid.

Luckily, he had not set out to seek his fortune, but only to see
something of the world. He lingered in New York through the summer of
1853, never expecting to remain long. His letters of that period were
few. In October he said, in a letter to Pamela, that he did not write to
the family because he did not know their whereabouts, Orion having sold
the paper and left Hannibal.

   "I have been fooling myself with the idea that I was going to leave
   New York every day for the last two weeks," he adds, which sounds
   like the Mark Twain of fifty years later. Farther along, he tells
   of going to see Edwin Forrest, then playing at the Broadway Theater:

   "The play was the 'Gladiator.' I did not like part of it much, but
   other portions were really splendid. In the latter part of the last
   act. . . the man's whole soul seems absorbed in the part he is
   playing; and it is real startling to see him. I am sorry I did not
   see him play 'Damon and Pythias,' the former character being the
   greatest. He appears in Philadelphia on Monday night."

A little farther along he says:

   "If my letters do not come often, you need not bother yourself about
   me; for if you have a brother nearly eighteen years old who is not
   able to take care of himself a few miles from home, such a brother
   is not worth one's thoughts."

Sam Clemens may have followed Forrest to Philadelphia. At any rate, he
was there presently, "subbing" in the composing-rooms of the "Inquirer,"
setting ten thousand ems a day, and receiving pay accordingly. When
there was no vacancy for him to fill, he put in the time visiting the
Philadelphia libraries, art galleries, and historic landmarks. After
all, his chief business was sight-seeing. Work was only a means to this
end. Chilly evenings, when he returned to his boarding-house, his
room-mate, an Englishman named Sumner, grilled a herring over their small
open fire, and this was a great feast. He tried writing--obituary poetry,
for the "Philadelphia Ledger"--but it was not accepted.

"My efforts were not received with approval" was his comment long after.

In the "Inquirer" office there was a printer named Frog, and sometimes,
when he went out, the office "devils" would hang over his case a line
with a hook on it baited with a piece of red flannel. They never got
tired of this joke, and Frog never failed to get fighting mad when he saw
that dangling string with the bit of red flannel at the end. No doubt
Sam Clemens had his share in this mischief.

Sam found that he liked Philadelphia. He could save a little money and
send something to his mother--small amounts, but welcome. Once he
inclosed a gold dollar, "to serve as a specimen of the kind of stuff we
are paid with in Philadelphia." Better than doubtful "wild-cat,"
certainly. Of his work he writes:

   "One man has engaged me to work for him every Sunday till the first
   of next April, when I shall return home to take Ma to Ky . . . .
   If I want to, I can get subbing every night of the week. I go to
   work at seven in the evening and work till three the next morning.
   . . . The type is mostly agate and minion, with some bourgeois,
   and when one gets a good agate 'take,' he is sure to make money. I
   made $2.50 last Sunday."

There is a long description of a trip on the Fairmount stage in this
letter, well-written and interesting, but too long to have place here.
In the same letter he speaks of the graves of Benjamin Franklin and his
wife, which he had looked at through the iron railing of the locked
inclosure. Probably it did not occur to him that there might be points
of similarity between Franklin's career and his own. Yet in time these
would be rather striking: each learned the printer's trade; each worked
in his brother's office and wrote for the paper; each left quietly and
went to New York, and from New York to Philadelphia, as a journeyman
printer; each in due season became a world figure, many-sided, human, and
of incredible popularity.

Orion Clemens, meantime, had bought a paper in Muscatine, Iowa, and
located the family there. Evidently by this time he had realized the
value of his brother as a contributor, for Sam, in a letter to Orion,
says, "I will try to write for the paper occasionally, but I fear my
letters will be very uninteresting, for this incessant night work dulls
one's ideas amazingly."

Meantime, he had passed his eighteenth birthday, winter was coming on, he
had been away from home half a year, and the first attack of homesickness
was due. "One only has to leave home to learn how to write interesting
letters to an absent friend," he wrote; and again. "I don't like our
present prospect for cold weather at all."

He declared he only wanted to get back to avoid night work, which was
injuring his eyes, but we may guess there was a stronger reason, which
perhaps he did not entirely realize. The novelty of wandering had worn
off, and he yearned for familiar faces, the comfort of those he loved.

But he did not go. He made a trip to Washington in January--a
sight-seeing trip--returning to Philadelphia, where he worked for the
"Ledger" and "North American." Eventually he went back to New York, and
from there took ticket to St. Louis. This was in the late summer of 1854;
he had been fifteen months away from his people when he stepped aboard
the train to return.

Sam was worn out when he reached St. Louis; but the Keokuk packet was
leaving, and he stopped only long enough to see Pamela, then went aboard
and, flinging himself into his berth, did not waken until the boat
reached Muscatine, Iowa, thirty-six hours later.

It was very early when he arrived, too early to rouse the family. He sat
down in the office of a little hotel to wait for morning, and picked up a
small book that lay on the writing-table. It contained pictures of the
English rulers with the brief facts of their reigns. Sam Clemens
entertained himself learning these data by heart. He had a fine memory
for such things, and in an hour or two had those details so perfectly
committed that he never forgot one of them as long as he lived. The
knowledge acquired in this stray fashion he found invaluable in later
life. It was his groundwork for all English history.




X.

A WIND OF CHANCE

Orion could not persuade his brother to remain in Muscatine. Sam
returned to his old place on the "Evening News," in St. Louis, where he
remained until the following year, rooming with a youth named Burrough, a
journeyman chair-maker with literary taste, a reader of the English
classics, a companionable lad, and for Samuel Clemens a good influence.

By spring, Orion Clemens had married and had sold out in Muscatine. He
was now located in Keokuk, Iowa. When presently Brother Sam came
visiting to Keokuk, Orion offered him five dollars a week and his board
to remain. He accepted. Henry Clemens, now seventeen, was also in
Orion's employ, and a lad named Dick Hingham. Henry and Sam slept in the
office; Dick and a young fellow named Brownell, who roomed above, came in
for social evenings.

They were pretty lively evenings. A music-teacher on the floor below did
not care for them--they disturbed his class. He was furious, in fact,
and assailed the boys roughly at first, with no result but to make
matters worse. Then he tried gentleness, and succeeded. The boys
stopped their capers and joined his class. Sam, especially, became a
distinguished member of that body. He was never a great musician, but
with his good nature, his humor, his slow, quaint speech and originality,
he had no rival in popularity. He was twenty now, and much with young
ladies, yet he was always a beau rather than a suitor, a good comrade to
all, full of pranks and pleasantries, ready to stop and be merry with any
that came along. If they prophesied concerning his future, it is not
likely that they spoke of literary fame. They thought him just
easy-going and light-minded. True, they noticed that he often carried a
book under his arm--a history, a volume of Dickens, or the tales of Poe.

He read more than any one guessed. At night, propped up in bed--a habit
continued until his death--he was likely to read until a late hour. He
enjoyed smoking at such times, and had made himself a pipe with a large
bowl which stood on the floor and had a long rubber stem, something like
the Turkish hubble-bubble. He liked to fill the big bowl and smoke at
ease through the entire evening. But sometimes the pipe went out, which
meant that he must strike a match and lean far over to apply it, just
when he was most comfortable. Sam Clemens never liked unnecessary
exertion. One night, when the pipe had gone out for the second time, he
happened to hear the young book-clerk, Brownell, passing up to his room
on the top floor. Sam called to him:

"Ed, come here!"

Brownell poked his head in the door. The two were great chums.

"What will you have, Sam?" he asked.

"Come in, Ed; Henry's asleep, and I'm in trouble. I want somebody to
light my pipe."

"Why don't you light it yourself?" Brownell asked.

"I would, only I knew you'd be along in a few minutes and would do it for
me."

Brownell scratched a match, stooped down, and applied it.

"What are you reading, Sam?"

"Oh, nothing much--a so-called funny book. One of these days I'll write
a funnier book myself."

Brownell laughed. "No, you won't, Sam," he said. "You're too lazy ever
to write a book."

Years later, in the course of a lecture which he delivered in Keokuk,
Mark Twain said that he supposed the most untruthful man in the world
lived right there in Keokuk, and that his name was Ed Brownell.

Orion Clemens did not have the gift of prosperity, and his
printing-office did not flourish. When he could no longer pay Sam's wages
he took him into partnership, which meant that Sam got no wages at all,
though this was of less consequence, since his mother, now living with
Pamela, was well provided for. The disorder of the office, however,
distressed him. He wrote home that he could not work without system, and,
a little later, that he was going to leave Keokuk, that, in fact, he was
planning a great adventure--a trip to the upper Amazon!

His interest in the Amazon had been awakened by a book. Lynch and
Herndon had surveyed the upper river, and Lieutenant Herndon's book was
widely read. Sam Clemens, propped up in bed, pored over it through long
evenings, and nightly made fabulous fortunes collecting cocoa and other
rare things--resolving, meantime, to start in person for the upper Amazon
with no unnecessary delay. Boy and man, Samuel Clemens was the same.
His vision of grand possibilities ahead blinded him to the ways and means
of arrival. It was an inheritance from both sides of his parentage.
Once, in old age, he wrote:

   "I have been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing
   things and reflecting afterward . . . . When I am reflecting on
   these occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think."

He believed, however, that he had reflected carefully concerning the
Amazon, and that in a brief time he should be there at the head of an
expedition, piling up untold wealth. He even stirred the imaginations of
two other adventurers, a Dr. Martin and a young man named Ward. To
Henry, then in St. Louis, he wrote, August 5, 1856:

   "Ward and I held a long consultation Sunday morning, and the result
   was that we two have determined to start to Brazil, if possible, in
   six weeks from now, in order to look carefully into matters there
   and report to Dr. Martin in time for him to follow on the first of
   March."

The matter of finance troubled him. Orion could not be depended on for
any specified sum, and the fare to the upper Amazon would probably be
considerable. Sam planned different methods of raising it. One of them
was to go to New York or Cincinnati and work at his trade until he saved
the amount. He would then sail from New York direct, or take boat for
New Orleans and sail from there. Of course there would always be vessels
clearing for the upper Amazon. After Lieutenant Herndon's book the ocean
would probably be full of them.

He did not make the start with Ward, as planned, and Ward and Martin seem
to have given up the Amazon idea. Not so with Samuel Clemens. He went
on reading Herndon, trying meantime to raise money enough to get him out
of Keokuk. Was it fate or Providence that suddenly placed it in his
hands? Whatever it was, the circumstance is so curious that it must be
classed as one of those strange facts that have no place in fiction.

The reader will remember how, one day in Hannibal, the wind had brought
to Sam Clemens, then printer's apprentice, a stray leaf from a book about
"Joan of Arc," and how that incident marked a turning-point in his mental
life. Now, seven years later, it was the wind again that directed his
fortune. It was a day in early November--bleak, bitter, and
gusty, with whirling snow; most persons were indoors. Samuel Clemens,
going down Main Street, Keokuk, saw a flying bit of paper pass him and
lodge against a building. Something about it attracted him and he
captured it. It was a fifty-dollar bill! He had never seen one before,
but he recognized it. He thought he must be having a pleasant dream.

He was tempted to pocket his good fortune and keep still. But he had
always a troublesome conscience. He went to a newspaper office and
advertised that he had found a sum of money, a large bill.

Once, long after, he said: "I didn't describe it very particularly, and I
waited in daily fear that the owner would turn up and take away my
fortune. By and by I couldn't stand it any longer. My conscience had
gotten all that was coming to it. I felt that I must take that money out
of danger."

Another time he said, "I advertised the find and left for the Amazon the
same day." All of which we may take with his usual literary discount
--the one assigned to him by his mother in childhood. As a matter of fact,
he remained for an ample time, and nobody came for the money. What was
its origin? Was it swept out of a bank, or caught up by the wind from
some counting-room table? Perhaps it materialized out of the unseen.
Who knows?




XI.

THE LONG WAY TO THE AMAZON

Sam decided on Cincinnati as his base. From there he could go either to
New York or New Orleans to catch the Amazon boat. He paid a visit to St.
Louis, where his mother made him renew his promise as to drink and cards.
Then he was seized with a literary idea, and returned to Keokuk, where he
proposed to a thriving weekly paper, the "Saturday Post," to send letters
of travel, which might even be made into a book later on. George Reese,
owner of the "Post," agreed to pay five dollars each for the letters,
which speaks well for his faith in Samuel Clemens's talent, five dollars
being good pay for that time and place--more than the letters were worth,
judged by present standards. The first was dated Cincinnati, November
14, 1856, and was certainly not promising literature. It was written in
the ridiculous dialect which was once thought to be the dress of humor;
and while here and there is a comic flash, there is in it little promise
of the future Mark Twain. One extract is enough:

   "When we got to the depo', I went around to git a look at the iron
   hoss. Thunderation! It wasn't no more like a hoss than a meetin'-
   house. If I was goin' to describe the animule, I'd say it looked
   like--well, it looked like--blamed if I know what it looked like,
   snorting fire and brimstone out of his nostrils, and puffin' out
   black smoke all 'round, and pantin', and heavin', and swellin', and
   chawin' up red-hot coals like they was good. A feller stood in a
   little house like, feedin' him all the time; but the more he got,
   the more he wanted and the more he blowed and snorted. After a
   spell the feller ketched him by the tail, and great Jericho! he set
   up a yell that split the ground for more'n a mile and a half, and
   the next minit I felt my legs a-waggin', and found myself at t'other
   end of the string o' vehickles. I wasn't skeered, but I had three
   chills and a stroke of palsy in less than five minits, and my face
   had a cur'us brownish-yaller-greenbluish color in it, which was
   perfectly unaccountable. 'Well,' say I, 'comment is super-flu-ous.'"

How Samuel Clemens could have written that, and worse, at twenty-one, and
a little more than ten years later have written "The Innocents Abroad,"
is one of the mysteries of literature. The letters were signed
"Snodgrass," and there are but two of them. Snodgrass seems to have
found them hard work, for it is said he raised on the price, which,
fortunately, brought the series to a close. Their value to-day lies in
the fact that they are the earliest of Mark Twain's newspaper
contributions that have been preserved--the first for which he received a
cash return.

Sam remained in Cincinnati until April of the following year, 1857,
working for Wrightson & Co., general printers, lodging in a cheap
boarding-house, saving every possible penny for his great adventure.

He had one associate at the boarding-house, a lank, unsmiling Scotchman
named Macfarlane, twice young Clemens's age, and a good deal of a
mystery. Sam never could find out what Macfarlane did. His hands were
hardened by some sort of heavy labor; he left at six in the morning and
returned in the evening at the same hour. He never mentioned his work,
and young Clemens had the delicacy not to inquire.

For Macfarlane was no ordinary person. He was a man of deep knowledge, a
reader of many books, a thinker; he was versed in history and philosophy,
he knew the dictionary by heart. He made but two statements concerning
himself: one, that he had acquired his knowledge from reading, and not at
school; the other, that he knew every word in the English dictionary. He
was willing to give proof of the last, and Sam Clemens tested him more
than once, but found no word that Macfarlane could not define.

Macfarlane was not silent--he would discuss readily enough the deeper
problems of life and had many startling theories of his own. Darwin had
not yet published his "Descent of Man," yet Macfarlane was already
advancing ideas similar to those in that book. He went further than
Darwin. He had startling ideas of the moral evolution of man, and these
he would pour into the ears of his young listener until ten o'clock,
after which, like the English Sumner in Philadelphia, he would grill a
herring, and the evening would end. Those were fermenting discourses
that young Samuel Clemens listened to that winter in Macfarlane's room,
and they did not fail to influence his later thought.

It was the high-tide of spring, late in April, when the prospective
cocoa-hunter decided that it was time to set out for the upper Amazon.
He had saved money enough to carry him at least as far as New Orleans,
where he would take ship, it being farther south and therefore nearer his
destination. Furthermore, he could begin with a lazy trip down the
Mississippi, which, next to being a pilot, had been one of his most
cherished dreams. The Ohio River steamers were less grand than those of
the Mississippi, but they had a homelike atmosphere and did not hurry.
Samuel Clemens had the spring fever and was willing to take his time.

In "Life on the Mississippi" we read that the author ran away, vowing
never to return until he could come home a pilot, shedding glory. But
this is the fiction touch. He had always loved the river, and his
boyhood dream of piloting had time and again returned, but it was not
uppermost when he bade good-by to Macfarlane and stepped aboard the "Paul
Jones," bound for New Orleans, and thus conferred immortality on that
ancient little craft.

Now he had really started on his voyage. But it was a voyage that would
continue not for a week or a fortnight, but for four years--four
marvelous, sunlit years, the glory of which would color all that followed
them.




XII.

RENEWING AN OLD AMBITION

A reader of Mark Twain's Mississippi book gets the impression that the
author was a boy of about seventeen when he started to learn the river,
and that he was painfully ignorant of the great task ahead. But this
also is the fiction side of the story. Samuel Clemens was more than
twenty-one when he set out on the "Paul Jones," and in a way was familiar
with the trade of piloting. Hannibal had turned out many pilots. An
older brother of the Bowen boys was already on the river when Sam Clemens
was rolling rocks down Holliday's Hill. Often he came home to air his
grandeur and hold forth on the wonder of his work. That learning the
river was no light task Sam Clemens would know as well as any one who had
not tried it.

Nevertheless, as the drowsy little steamer went puffing down into softer,
sunnier lands, the old dream, the "permanent ambition" of boyhood,
returned, while the call of the far-off Amazon and cocoa drew faint.

Horace Bixby,[2] pilot of the "Paul Jones," a man of thirty-two, was
looking out over the bow at the head of Island No. 35 when he heard a
slow, pleasant voice say, "Good morning."

Bixby was a small, clean-cut man. "Good morning, sir," he said, rather
briskly, without looking around.

He did not much care for visitors in the pilothouse. This one entered
and stood a little behind him.

"How would you like a young man to learn the river?" came to him in that
serene, deliberate speech.

The pilot glanced over his shoulder and saw a rather slender,
loose-limbed youth with a fair, girlish complexion and a great mass
of curly auburn hair.

"I wouldn't like it. Cub pilots are more trouble than they're worth. A
great deal more trouble than profit."

"I am a printer by trade," the easy voice went on. "It doesn't agree
with me. I thought I'd go to South America."

Bixby kept his eye on the river, but there was interest in his voice when
he spoke. "What makes you pull your words that way?" he asked--"pulling"
being the river term for drawling.

The young man, now seated comfortably on the visitors' bench, said more
slowly than ever: "You'll have to ask my mother--she pulls hers, too."

Pilot Bixby laughed. The manner of the reply amused him. His guest was
encouraged.

"Do you know the Bowen boys?" he asked, "pilots in the St. Louis and New
Orleans trade?"

"I know them well--all three of them. William Bowen did his first
steering for me; a mighty good boy. I know Sam, too, and Bart."

"Old schoolmates of mine in Hannibal. Sam and Will, especially, were my
chums."

Bixby's tone became friendly. "Come over and stand by me," he said.
"What is your name?"

The applicant told him, and the two stood looking out on the sunlit
water.

"Do you drink?"

"No."

"Do you gamble?"

"No, sir."

"Do you swear?"

"N-not for amusement; only under pressure."

"Do you chew?"

"No, sir, never; but I must--smoke."

"Did you ever do any steering?"

"I have steered everything on the river but a steamboat, I guess."

"Very well. Take the wheel and see what you can do with a steamboat.
Keep her as she is--toward that lower cottonwood snag."

Bixby had a sore foot and was glad of a little relief. He sat on the
bench where he could keep a careful eye on the course. By and by he said
"There is just one way I would take a young man to learn the river--that
is, for money."

"What--do you--charge?"

"Five hundred dollars, and I to be at no expense whatever."

In those days pilots were allowed to carry a learner, or "cub," board
free. Mr. Bixby meant that he was to be at no expense in port or for
incidentals. His terms seemed discouraging.

"I haven't got five hundred dollars in money," Sam said. "I've got a lot
of Tennessee land worth two bits an acre. I'll give you two thousand
acres of that."

Bixby shook his head. "No," he said, "I don't want any unimproved real
estate. I have too much already."

Sam reflected. He thought he might be able to borrow one hundred dollars
from William Moffett, Pamela's husband, without straining his credit.

"Well, then," he proposed, "I'll give you one hundred dollars cash, and
the rest when I earn it."

Something about this young man had won Horace Bixby's heart. His slow,
pleasant speech, his unhurried, quiet manner at the wheel, his evident
simplicity and sincerity--the inner qualities of mind and heart which
would make the world love Mark Twain. The terms proposed were accepted.
The first payment was to be in cash; the others were to begin when the
pupil had learned the river and was earning wages. During the rest of
the trip to New Orleans the new pupil was often at the wheel, while Mr.
Bixby nursed his sore foot and gave directions. Any literary ambitions
that Samuel Clemens still nourished waned rapidly. By the time he had
reached New Orleans he had almost forgotten he had ever been a printer.
As for the Amazon and cocoa, why, there had been no ship sailing in that
direction for years, and it was unlikely that any would ever sail again,
a fact that rather amused the would-be adventurer now, since Providence
had regulated his affairs in accordance with his oldest and longest
cherished dream.

At New Orleans Bixby left the "Paul Jones" for a fine St. Louis boat,
taking his cub with him. This was a sudden and happy change, and Sam was
a good deal impressed with his own importance in belonging to so imposing
a structure, especially when, after a few days' stay in New Orleans, he
stood by Bixby's side in the big glass turret while they backed out of
the line of wedged-in boats and headed up the great river.

This was glory, but there was sorrow ahead. He had not really begun
learning the river as yet he had only steered under directions. He had
known that to learn the river would be hard, but he had never realized
quite how hard. Serenely he had undertaken the task of mastering twelve
hundred miles of the great, changing, shifting river as exactly and as
surely by daylight or darkness as one knows the way to his own features.
Nobody could realize the full size of that task--not till afterward.

[2] Horace Bixby lived until 1912 and remained at the wheel until within
a short time of his death, in his eighty-seventh year. The writer of
this memoir visited him in 1910 and took down from his dictation the
dialogue that follows.



XIII.

LEARNING THE RIVER

In that early day, to be a pilot was to be "greater than a king." The
Mississippi River pilot was a law unto himself--there was none above him.
His direction of the boat was absolute; he could start or lay up when he
chose; he could pass a landing regardless of business there, consulting
nobody, not even the captain; he could take the boat into what seemed
certain destruction, if he had that mind, and the captain was obliged to
stand by, helpless and silent, for the law was with the pilot in
everything.

Furthermore, the pilot was a gentleman. His work was clean and
physically light. It ended the instant the boat was tied to the landing,
and did not begin again until it was ready to back into the stream.
Also, for those days his salary was princely--the Vice-President of the
United States did not receive more. As for prestige, the Mississippi
pilot, perched high in his glass inclosure, fashionably dressed, and
commanding all below him, was the most conspicuous and showy, the most
observed and envied creature in the world. No wonder Sam Clemens, with
his love of the river and his boyish fondness for honors, should aspire
to that stately rank. Even at twenty-one he was still just a boy--as,
indeed, he was till his death--and we may imagine how elated he was,
starting up the great river as a real apprentice pilot, who in a year or
two would stand at the wheel, as his chief was now standing, a monarch
with a splendid income and all the great river packed away in his head.

In that last item lay the trouble. In the Mississippi book he tells of
it in a way that no one may hope to equal, and if the details are not
exact, the truth is there--at least in substance.

For a distance above New Orleans Mr. Bixby had volunteered information
about the river, naming the points and crossings, in what seemed a casual
way, all through his watch of four hours. Their next watch began in the
middle of the night, and Mark Twain tells how surprised and disgusted he
was to learn that pilots must get up in the night to run their boats, and
his amazement to find Mr. Bixby plunging into the blackness ahead as if
it had been daylight. Very likely this is mainly fiction, but hardly the
following:

   Presently he turned to me and said: "What's the name of the first
   point above New Orleans?"

   I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
   didn't know.

   "Don't know!"

   His manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment.
   But I had to say just what I had said before.

   "Well, you're a smart one," said Mr. Bixby. "What's the name of the
   next point?"

   Once more I didn't know.

   "Well, this beats anything! Tell me the name of any point or place
   I told you."

   I studied awhile and decided that I couldn't.

   "Look here! What do you start from, above Twelve Mile Point, to
   cross over?"

   "I--I--don't know."

   "'You--you don't know,"' mimicking my drawling manner of speech.
   "What do you know?"

   "I--I--Nothing, for certain."

   Bixby was a small, nervous man, hot and quick-firing. He went off
   now, and said a number of severe things. Then:

   "Look here, what do you suppose I told you the names of those points
   for?"

   I tremblingly considered a moment--then the devil of temptation
   provoked me to say: "Well--to--to--be entertaining, I thought."

   This was a red flag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was
   crossing the river at the time) that I judged it made him blind,
   because he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course
   the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man
   so grateful as Mr. Bixby was, because he was brimful, and here were
   subjects who would talk back. He threw open a window, thrust his
   head out, and such an irruption followed as I had never heard before
   . . . . When he closed the window he was empty. Presently he
   said to me, in the gentlest way:

   "My boy, you must get a little memorandum-book, and every time I
   tell you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one way to
   be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have
   to know it just like A-B-C."

The little memorandum-book which Sam Clemens bought, probably at the next
daylight landing, still exists--the same that he says "fairly bristled
with the names of towns, points, bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc.";
but it made his heart ache to think he had only half the river set down,
for, as the watches were four hours off and four hours on, there were the
long gaps where he had slept.

It is not easy to make out the penciled notes today. The small, neat
writing is faded, and many of them are in an abbreviation made only for
himself. It is hard even to find these examples to quote:

MERIWETHER'S BEND

One-fourth less 3[3]--run shape of upper bar and go into the low place in
the willows about 200 (ft.) lower down than last year.

OUTSIDE OF MONTEZUMA

Six or eight feet more water. Shape bar till high timber on towhead gets
nearly even with low willows. Then hold a little open on right of low
willows--run 'em close if you want to, but come out 200 yards when you
get nearly to head of towhead.

The average mind would not hold a single one of these notes ten seconds,
yet by the time he reached St. Louis he had set down pages that to-day
make one's head weary even to contemplate. And those long four-hour gaps
where he had been asleep--they are still there; and now, after nearly
sixty years, the old heartache is still in them. He must have bought a
new book for the next trip and laid this one away.

To the new "cub" it seemed a long way to St. Louis that first trip, but
in the end it was rather grand to come steaming up to the big, busy city,
with its thronging waterfront flanked with a solid mile of steamboats,
and to nose one's way to a place in that stately line.

At St. Louis, Sam borrowed from his brother-in-law the one hundred
dollars he had agreed to pay, and so closed his contract with Bixby. A
few days later his chief was engaged to go on a very grand boat indeed--a
"sumptuous temple," he tells us, all brass and inlay, with a pilot-house
so far above the water that he seemed perched on a mountain. This part
of learning the river was worth while; and when he found that the
regiment of natty servants respectfully "sir'd" him, his happiness was
complete.

But he was in the depths again, presently, for when they started down the
river and he began to take account of his knowledge, he found that he had
none. Everything had changed--that is, he was seeing it all from the
other direction. What with the four-hour gaps and this transformation,
he was lost completely.

How could the easy-going, dreamy, unpractical man whom the world knew as
Mark Twain ever have persisted against discouragement like that to
acquire the vast, the absolute, limitless store of information necessary
to Mississippi piloting? The answer is that he loved the river, the
picturesqueness and poetry of a steamboat, the ease and glory of a
pilot's life; and then, in spite of his own later claims to the contrary,
Samuel Clemens, boy and man, in the work suited to his tastes and gifts,
was the most industrious of persons. Work of the other sort he avoided,
overlooked, refused to recognize, but never any labor for which he was
qualified by his talents or training. Piloting suited him exactly, and
he proved an apt pupil.

Horace Bixby said to the writer of this memoir: "Sam was always
good-natured, and he had a natural taste for the river. He had a fine
memory and never forgot what I told him."

Yet there must have been hard places all along, for to learn every crook
and turn and stump and snag and bluff and bar and sounding of that twelve
hundred miles of mighty, shifting water was a gigantic task. Mark Twain
tells us how, when he was getting along pretty well, his chief one day
turned on him suddenly with this "settler":

   "What is the shape of Walnut Bend?"

   He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of
   protoplasm. I replied respectfully and said I didn't know it had
   any particular shape. My gun-powdery chief went off with a bang, of
   course, and then went on loading and firing until he was out of
   adjectives ....I waited. By and by he said:

   "My boy, you've got to know the shape of the river perfectly. It is
   all that is left to steer by on a very dark night. Everything else
   is blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn't got the same shape
   in the night that it has in the daytime."

   "How on earth am I going to learn it, then?"

   "How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know the
   shape of it. You can't see it."

   "Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling
   variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well
   as I know the shape of the front hall at home?"

   "On my honor, you've got to know them better than any man ever did
   know the shapes of the halls in his own house."

   "I wish I was dead!"

But the reader must turn to Chapter VIII of "Life on the Mississippi" and
read, or reread, the pages which follow this extract--nothing can better
convey the difficulties of piloting. That Samuel Clemens had the courage
to continue is the best proof, not only of his great love of the river,
but of that splendid gift of resolution that one rarely fails to find in
men of the foremost rank.

[3] Depth of water. One-quarter less than three fathoms.




XIV.

RIVER DAYS

Piloting was only a part of Sam Clemens's education on the Mississippi.
He learned as much of the reefs and shallows of human nature as of the
river-bed. In one place he writes:

   In that brief, sharp schooling I got personally and familiarly
   acquainted with all the different types of human nature that are to
   be found in fiction, biography, or history.

All the different types, but most of them in the rough. That Samuel
Clemens kept the promise made to his mother as to drink and cards during
those apprentice days is well worth remembering.

Horace Bixby, answering a call for pilots from the Missouri River,
consigned his pupil, as was customary, tonne of the pilots of the "John
J. Roe," a freight-boat, owned and conducted by some retired farmers, and
in its hospitality reminding Sam of his Uncle John Quarles's farm. The
"Roe" was a very deliberate boat. It was said that she could beat an
island to St. Louis, but never quite overtake the current going
down-stream. Sam loved the "Roe." She was not licensed to carry
passengers, but she always had a family party of the owners' relations
aboard, and there was a big deck for dancing and a piano in the cabin.
The young pilot could play the chords, and sing, in his own fashion,
about a grasshopper that; sat on a sweet-potato vine, and about--

   An old, old horse whose name was Methusalem,
   Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem,
   A long time ago.

The "Roe" was a heavenly place, but Sam's stay there did not last. Bixby
came down from the Missouri, and perhaps thought he was doing a fine
thing for his pupil by transferring him to a pilot named Brown, then on a
large passenger-steamer, the "Pennsylvania." The "Pennsylvania" was new
and one of the finest boats on the river. Sam Clemens, by this time, was
accounted a good steersman, so it seemed fortunate and a good arrangement
for all parties.

But Brown was a tyrant. He was illiterate and coarse, and took a dislike
to Sam from the start. His first greeting was a question, harmless
enough in form but offensive in manner.

"Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?"--Bixby being usually pronounced "Bigsby"
in river parlance.

Sam answered politely enough that he was, and Brown proceeded to comment
on the "style" of his clothes and other personal matters.

He had made an effort to please Brown, but it was no use. Brown was
never satisfied. At a moment when Sam was steering, Brown, sitting on
the bench, would shout: "Here! Where are you going now? Pull her down!
Pull her down! Do you hear me? Blamed mud-cat!"

The young pilot soon learned to detest his chief, and presently was
putting in a good deal of his time inventing punishments for him.

I could imagine myself killing Brown; there was no law against that, and
that was the thing I always used to do the moment I was abed. Instead of
going over the river in my mind, as was my duty, I threw business aside
for pleasure, and killed Brown.

He gave up trying to please Brown, and was even willing to stir him up
upon occasion. One day when the cub was at the wheel his chief noticed
that the course seemed peculiar.

"Here! Where you headin' for now?" he yelled. "What in the nation you
steerin' at, anyway? Blamed numskull!"

"Why," said Sam in his calm, slow way, "I didn't see much else I could
steer for, so I was heading for that white heifer on the bank."

"Get away from that wheel! And get outen this pilot-house!" yelled
Brown. "You ain't fitten to become no pilot!" An order that Sam found
welcome enough. The other pilot, George Ealer, was a lovable soul who
played the flute and chess during his off watch, and read aloud to Sam
from "Goldsmith" and "Shakespeare." To be with George Ealer was to
forget the persecutions of Brown.

Young Clemens had been on the river nearly a year at this time, and,
though he had learned a good deal and was really a fine steersman, he
received no wages. He had no board to pay, but there were things he must
buy, and his money supply had become limited. Each trip of the
"Pennsylvania" she remained about two days and nights in New Orleans,
during which time the young man was free. He found he could earn two and
a half to three dollars a night watching freight on the levee, and, as
this opportunity came around about once a month, the amount was useful.
Nor was this the only return; many years afterward he said:

   "It was a desolate experience, watching there in the dark, among
   those piles of freight; not a sound, not a living creature astir.
   But it was not a profitless one. I used to have inspirations as I
   sat there alone those nights. I used to imagine all sots of
   situations and possibilities. These things got into my books by and
   by, and furnished me with many a chapter. I can trace the effects
   of those nights through most of my books, in one way and another."

Piloting, even with Brown, had its pleasant side. In St. Louis, young
Clemens stopped with his sister, and often friends were there from
Hannibal. At both ends of the line he visited friendly boats, especially
the "Roe," where a grand welcome was always waiting. Once among the
guests of that boat a young girl named Laura so attracted him that he
forgot time and space until one of the "Roe" pilots, Zeb Leavenworth,
came flying aft, shouting:

"The 'Pennsylvania' is backing out!"

A hasty good-by, a wild flight across the decks of several boats, and a
leap across several feet of open water closed the episode. He wrote to
Laura, but there was no reply. He never saw her again, never heard from
her for nearly fifty years, when both were widowed and old. She had not
received his letter.

Occasionally there were stirring adventures aboard the "Pennsylvania."
In a letter written in March, 1858, the young pilot tells of an exciting
night search in the running ice for Hat Island soundings:

Brown, the pilot, stood in the bow with an oar, to keep her head out, and
I took the tiller. We would start the men, and all would go well until
the yawl would bring us on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would
drop like so many tenpins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the
bottom of the boat. After an hour's hard work we got back, with ice half
an inch thick on the oars . . . . The next day was colder still. I
was out in the yawl twice, and then we got through, but the infernal
steamboat came near running over us . . . . The "Maria Denning" was
aground at the head of the island; they hailed us; we ran alongside, and
they hoisted us in and thawed us out. We had been out in the yawl from
four in the morning until half-past nine without being near a fire.
There was a thick coating of ice over men and yawl, ropes, and
everything, and we looked like rock-candy statuary.

He was at the right age to enjoy such adventures, and to feel a pride in
them. In the same letter he tells how he found on the "Pennsylvania" a
small clerkship for his brother Henry, who was now nearly twenty, a
handsome, gentle boy of whom Sam was lavishly fond and proud. The young
pilot was eager to have Henry with him--to see him started in life. How
little he dreamed what sorrow would come of his well-meant efforts in the
lad's behalf! Yet he always believed, later, that he had a warning, for
one night at the end of May, in St. Louis, he had a vivid dream, which
time would presently fulfil.

An incident now occurred on the "Pennsylvania" that closed Samuel
Clemens's career on that boat. It was the down trip, and the boat was in
Eagle Bend when Henry Clemens appeared on the hurricane deck with an
announcement from the captain of a landing a little lower down. Brown,
who would never own that he was rather deaf, probably misunderstood the
order. They were passing the landing when the captain appeared on the
deck.

"Didn't Henry tell you to land here?" he called to Brown.

"No, sir."

Captain Klinefelter turned to Sam. "Didn't you hear him?"

"Yes, sir!"

Brown said: "Shut your mouth! You never heard anything of the kind!"

Henry appeared, not suspecting any trouble.

Brown said, fiercely, "Here, why didn't you tell me we had got to land at
that plantation?"

"I did tell you, Mr. Brown," Henry said, politely.

"It's a lie!"

Sam Clemens could stand Brown's abuse of himself, but not of Henry. He
said: "You lie yourself. He did tell you!"

For a cub pilot to defy his chief was unheard of. Brown was dazed, then
he shouted:

"I'll attend to your case in half a minute!" And to Henry, "Get out of
here!"

Henry had started when Brown seized him by the collar and struck him in
the face. An instant later Sam was upon Brown with a heavy stool and
stretched him on the floor. Then all the repressed fury of months broke
loose; and, leaping upon Brown and holding him down with his knees,
Samuel Clemens pounded the tyrant with his fists till his strength gave
out. He let Brown go then, and the latter, with pilot instinct, sprang
to the wheel, for the boat was drifting. Seeing she was safe, he seized
a spy-glass as a weapon and ordered his chastiser out of the pilot-house.
But Sam lingered. He had become very calm, and he openly corrected
Brown's English.

"Don't give me none of your airs!" yelled Brown. "I ain't goin' to stand
nothin' more from you!"

"You should say, `Don't give me any of your airs,'" Sam said, sweetly,
"and the last half of your sentence almost defies correction."

A group of passengers and white-aproned servants, assembled on the deck
forward, applauded the victor. Sam went down to find Captain
Klinefelter. He expected to be put in irons, for it was thought to be
mutiny to strike a pilot.

The captain took Sam into his private room and made some inquiries. Mark
Twain, in the "Mississippi" boot remembers them as follows:

"Did you strike him first?" Captain Klinefelter asked.

"Yes, sir."

"What with?"

"A stool, sir."

"Hard?"

"Middling, sir."

"Did it knock him down?"

"He--he fell, sir."

"Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?"

"Yes, sir."

"What did you do?"

"Pounded him, sir."

"Pounded him?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you pound him much--that is, severely?"

"One might call it that, sir, maybe."

"I am mighty glad of it! Hark ye--never mention that I said that! You
have been guilty of a great crime; and don't ever be guilty of it again
on this boat, but--lay for him ashore! Give him a good, sound thrashing,
do you hear? I'll pay the expenses."

In a letter which Samuel Clemens wrote to Orion's wife, immediately after
this incident, he gives the details of the encounter with Brown and
speaks of Captain Klinefelter's approval.[4] Brown declared he would
leave the boat at New Orleans if Sam Clemens remained on it, and the
captain told him to go, offering to let Sam himself run the daylight
watches back to St. Louis, thus showing his faith in the young steersman.
The "cub," however, had less confidence, and advised that Brown be kept
for the up trip, saying he would follow by the next boat. It was a
decision that probably saved his life.

That night, watching on the levee, Henry joined him, when his own duties
were finished, and the brothers made the round together. It may have
been some memory of his dream that made Samuel Clemens say:

"Henry, in case of accident, whatever you do, don't lose your head--the
passengers will do that. Rush for the hurricane-deck and to the
life-boat, and obey the mate's orders. When the boat is launched, help
the women and children into it. Don't get in yourself. The river is only
a mile wide. You can swim ashore easily enough."

It was good, manly advice, but a long grief lay behind it.

[4] In the Mississippi book the author says that Brown was about to
strike Henry with a lump of coal, but in the letter above mentioned the
details are as here given.




XV.


THE WRECK OF THE "PENNSYLVANIA"

The "A. T. Lacy," that brought Samuel Clemens up the river, was two days
behind the "Pennsylvania." At Greenville, Mississippi, a voice from
the landing shouted "The 'Pennsylvania' is blown up just below Memphis,
at Ship Island. One hundred and fifty lives lost!"

It proved a true report. At six o'clock that warm mid-June morning,
while loading wood, sixty miles below Memphis, four out of eight of the
Pennsylvania's boilers had suddenly exploded, with fearful results.
Henry Clemens had been one of the victims. He had started to swim for
the shore, only a few hundred yards away, but had turned back to assist
in the rescue of others. What followed could not be clearly learned. He
was terribly injured, and died on the fourth night after the catastrophe.
His brother was with him by that time, and believed he recognized the
exact fulfilment of his dream.

The young pilot's grief was very great. In a letter home he spoke of the
dying boy as "My darling, my pride, my glory, my all." His heavy sorrow,
and the fact that with unsparing self-blame he held himself in a measure
responsible for his brother's tragic death, saddened his early life. His
early gaiety came back, but his face had taken on the serious, pathetic
look which from that time it always wore in repose. Less than
twenty-three, he had suddenly the look of thirty, and while Samuel
Clemens in spirit, temperament, and features never would become really
old, neither would he ever look really young again.

He returned to the river as steersman for George Ealer, whom he loved,
and in September of that year obtained a full license as Mississippi
River pilot from St. Louis to New Orleans. In eighteen months he had
packed away in his head all those wearisome details and acquired that
confidence that made him one of the elect. He knew every snag and bank
and dead tree and depth in all those endless miles of shifting current,
every cut-off and crossing. He could read the surface of the water by
day, he could smell danger in the dark. To the writer of these chapters,
Horace Bixby said:

"In a year and a half from the time he came to the river, Sam was not
only a pilot, but a good one. Sam was a fine pilot, and in a day when
piloting on the Mississippi required a great deal more brains and skill
and application than it does now. There were no signal-lights along the
shore in those days, and no search-lights on the vessels; everything was
blind; and on a dark, misty night, in a river full of snags and shifting
sandbars and changing shores, a pilot's judgment had to be founded on
absolute certainty."

Bixby had returned from the Missouri by the time his pupil's license was
issued, and promptly took him as full partner on the "Crescent City," and
later on a fine new boat, the "New Falls City." Still later, they appear
to have been together on a very large boat, the "City of Memphis," and
again on the "Alonzo Child."




XVI.

THE PILOT

For Samuel Clemens these were happy days--the happiest, in some respects,
he would ever know. He had plenty of money now. He could help his
mother with a liberal hand, and could put away fully a hundred dollars a
month for himself. He had few cares, and he loved the ease and romance
and independence of his work as he would never quite love anything again.

His popularity on the river was very great. His humorous stories and
quaint speech made a crowd collect wherever he appeared. There were
pilot-association rooms in St. Louis and New Orleans, and his appearance
at one of these places was a signal for the members to gather.

A friend of those days writes: "He was much given to spinning yarns so
funny that his hearers were convulsed, and yet all the time his own face
was perfectly sober. Occasionally some of his droll yarns got into the
papers. He may have written them himself."

Another old river-man remembers how, one day, at the association, they
were talking of presence of mind in an accident, when Pilot Clemens said:

"Boys, I had great presence of mind once. It was at a fire. An old man
leaned out of a four-story building, calling for help. Everybody in the
crowd below looked up, but nobody did anything. The ladders weren't long
enough. Nobody had any presence of mind--nobody but me. I came to the
rescue. I yelled for a rope. When it came I threw the old man the end
of it. He caught it, and I told him to tie it around his waist. He did
so, and I pulled him down."

This was a story that found its way into print, probably his own
contribution.

"Sam was always scribbling when not at the wheel," said Bixby, "but the
best thing he ever did was the burlesque of old Isaiah Sellers. He
didn't write it for print, but only for his own amusement and to show to
a few of the boys. Bart Bowen, who was with him on the "Edward J. Gay"
at the time, got hold of it, and gave it to one of the New Orleans
papers."

The burlesque on Captain Sellers would be of little importance if it were
not for its association with the origin, or, at least, with the
originator, of what is probably the best known of literary names--the
name Mark Twain.

This strong, happy title--a river term indicating a depth of two fathoms
on the sounding-line--was first used by the old pilot, Isaiah Sellers,
who was a sort of "oldest inhabitant" of the river, with a passion for
airing his ancient knowledge before the younger men. Sellers used to
send paragraphs to the papers, quaint and rather egotistical in tone,
usually beginning, "My opinion for the citizens of New Orleans," etc.,
prophesying river conditions and recalling memories as far back as 1811.
These he generally signed "Mark Twain."

Naturally, the younger pilots amused themselves by imitating Sellers, and
when Sam Clemens wrote abroad burlesque of the old man's contributions,
relating a perfectly impossible trip, supposed to have been made in 1763
with a Chinese captain and a Choctaw crew, it was regarded as a
masterpiece of wit.

It appeared in the "True Delta" in May, 1859, and broke Captain Sellers's
literary heart. He never wrote another paragraph. Clemens always
regretted the whole matter deeply, and his own revival of the name
afterward was a sort of tribute to the old man he had thoughtlessly and
unintentionally wounded.

Old pilots of that day remembered Samuel Clemens as a slender,
fine-looking man, well dressed, even dandified, generally wearing blue
serge, with fancy shirts, white duck trousers, and patent-leather shoes.
A pilot could do that, for his surroundings were speckless.

The pilots regarded him as a great reader--a student of history, travels,
and the sciences. In the association rooms they often saw him poring
over serious books. He began the study of French one day in New Orleans,
when he had passed a school of languages where French, German, and
Italian were taught, one in each of three rooms. The price was
twenty-five dollars for one language, or three for fifty. The student was
provided with a set of conversation cards for each, and was supposed to
walk from one apartment to another, changing his nationality at each
threshold. The young pilot, with his usual enthusiasm, invested in all
three languages, but after a few round trips decided that French would
do. He did not return to the school, but kept the cards and added
text-books. He studied faithfully when off watch and in port, and his
old river note-book, still preserved, contains a number of advanced
exercises, neatly written out.

Still more interesting are the river notes themselves. They are not the
timid, hesitating memoranda of the "little book" which, by Bixby's
advice, he bought for his first trip. They are quick, vigorous records
that show confidence and knowledge. Under the head of "Second high-water
trip--Jan., 1861 'Alonzo Child,'" the notes tell the story of a rising
river, with overflowing banks, blind passages, and cut-offs--a new river,
in fact, that must be judged by a perfect knowledge of the old--guessed,
but guessed right.

Good deal of water all over Cole's Creek Chute, 12 or 15 ft. bank--could
have gone up above General Taylor's--too much drift . . . .

Night--didn't run either 77 or 76 towheads--8-ft. bank on main shore
Ozark chute.

To the reader to-day it means little enough, but one may imagine,
perhaps, a mile-wide sweep of boiling water, full of drift, shifting
currents with newly forming bars, and a lone figure in the dark
pilot-house, peering into the night for blind and disappearing landmarks.

But such nights were not all there was of piloting. There were glorious
nights when the stars were blazing out, and the moon was on the water,
and the young pilot could follow a clear channel and dream long dreams.
He was very serious at such times--he reviewed the world's history he had
read, he speculated on the future, he considered philosophies, he lost
himself in a study of the stars. Mark Twain's love of astronomy, which
never waned until his last day, began with those lonely river watches.
Once a great comet blazed in the sky, a "wonderful sheaf of light," and
glorified his long hours at the wheel.

Samuel Clemens was now twenty-five, full of health and strong in his
courage. In the old notebook there remains a well-worn clipping, the
words of some unknown writer, which he may have kept as a sort of creed:

HOW TO TAKE LIFE.--Take it just as though it was--as it is--an earnest,
vital, and important affair. Take it as though you were born to the task
of performing a merry part in it--as though the world had awaited for
your coming. Take it as though it was a grand opportunity to do and
achieve, to carry forward great and good schemes to help and cheer a
suffering, weary, it may be heartbroken, brother. Now and then a man
stands aside from the crowd, labors earnestly, steadfastly, confidently,
and straightway becomes famous for wisdom, intellect, skill, greatness of
some sort. The world wonders, admires, idolizes, and it only illustrates
what others may do if they take hold of life with a purpose. The
miracle, or the power that elevates the few, is to be found in their
industry, application, and perseverance under the promptings of a brave,
determined spirit.

Bixby and Clemens were together that winter on the "Child," and were the
closest friends. Once the young pilot invited his mother to make the
trip to New Orleans, and the river journey and a long drive about the
beautiful Southern city filled Jane Clemens with wonder and delight. She
no longer shad any doubts of Sam. He had long since become the head of
the family. She felt called upon to lecture him, now and then, but down
in her heart she believed that he could really do no wrong. They joked
each other unmercifully, and her wit, never at a loss, was quite as keen
as his.




XVII.

THE END OF PILOTING

When one remembers how much Samuel Clemens loved the river, and how
perfectly he seemed suited to the ease and romance of the pilot-life, one
is almost tempted to regret that it should so soon have come to an end.

Those trips of early '61, which the old note-book records, were the last
he would ever make. The golden days of Mississippi steam-boating were
growing few.

Nobody, however, seemed to suspect it. Even a celebrated fortune-teller
in New Orleans, whom the young pilot one day consulted as to his future,
did not mention the great upheaval then close at hand. She told him
quite remarkable things, and gave him some excellent advice, but though
this was February, 1861, she failed to make any mention of the Civil War!
Yet, a month later, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated and trouble was in
the air. Then in April Fort Sumter was fired upon and the war had come.

It was a feverish time among the pilots. Some were for the Union--others
would go with the Confederacy. Horace Bixby stood for the North, and in
time was chief of the Union river-service. A pilot named Montgomery
(Clemens had once steered for him) went with the South and by and by
commanded the Confederate Mississippi fleet. In the beginning a good
many were not clear as to their opinions. Living both North and South,
as they did, they divided their sympathies. Samuel Clemens was
thoughtful, and far from bloodthirsty. A pilothouse, so fine and showy
in times of peace, seemed a poor place to be in when fighting was going
on. He would consider the matter.

"I am not anxious to get up into a glass perch and be shot at by either
side," he said. "I'll go home and reflect."

He went up the river as a passenger on a steamer named the "Uncle Sam."
Zeb Leavenworth, formerly of the "John J. Roe," was one of the pilots,
and Clemens usually stood the watch with him. At Memphis they barely
escaped the blockade. At Cairo they saw soldiers drilling--troops later
commanded by Grant.

The "Uncle Sam" came steaming up to St. Louis, glad to have slipped
through safely. They were not quite through, however. Abreast of
Jefferson Barracks they heard the boom of a cannon, and a great ring of
smoke drifted in their direction. They did not recognize it as a
thunderous "Halt!" and kept on. Less than a minute later, a shell
exploded directly in front of the pilot-house, breaking a lot of glass
and damaging the decoration. Zeb Leavenworth tumbled into a corner.

"Gee-mighty, Sam!" he said. "What do they mean by that?"

Clemens stepped from the visitors' bench to the wheel and brought the
boat around.

"I guess--they want us--to wait a minute--Zeb," he said.

They were examined and passed. It was the last steamboat to make the
trip through from New Orleans to St. Louis. Mark Twain's pilot days were
over. He would have grieved had he known this fact.

"I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since," he
long afterward declared, "and I took a measureless pride in it."

At the time, like many others, he expected the war to be brief, and his
life to be only temporarily interrupted. Within a year, certainly, he
would be back in the pilot-house. Meantime the war must be settled; he
would go up to Hannibal to see about it.




XVIII.

THE SOLDIER

When he reached Hannibal, Samuel Clemens found a very mixed condition of
affairs. The country was in an uproar of war preparation; in a border
State there was a confusion of sympathies, with much ignorance as to what
it was all about. Any number of young men were eager to enlist for a
brief camping-out expedition, and small private companies were formed,
composed about half-and-half of Union and Confederate men, as it turned
out later.

Missouri, meantime, had allied herself with the South, and Samuel
Clemens, on his arrival in Hannibal, decided that, like Lee, he would go
with his State. Old friends, who were getting up a company "to help
Governor `Claib' Jackson repel the invader," offered him a lieutenancy if
he would join. It was not a big company; it had only about a dozen
members, most of whom had been schoolmates, some of them fellow-pilots,
and Sam Clemens was needed to make it complete. It was just another Tom
Sawyer band, and they met in a secret place above Bear Creek Hill and
planned how they would sell their lives on the field of glory, just as
years before fierce raids had been arranged on peach-orchards and
melon-patches. Secrecy was necessary, for the Union militia had a habit
of coming over from Illinois and arresting suspicious armies on sight. It
would humiliate the finest army in the world to spend a night or two in
the calaboose.

So they met secretly at night, and one mysterious evening they called on
girls who either were their sweethearts or were pretending to be for the
occasion, and when the time came for good-by the girls were invited to
"walk through the pickets" with them, though the girls didn't notice any
pickets, because the pickets were calling on their girls, too, and were a
little late getting to their posts.

That night they marched, through brush and vines, because the highroad
was thought to be dangerous, and next morning arrived at the home of
Colonel Ralls, of Ralls County, who had the army form in dress parade and
made it a speech and gave it a hot breakfast in good Southern style.
Then he sent out to Col. Bill Splawn and Farmer Nuck Matson a requisition
for supplies that would convert this body of infantry into cavalry
--rough-riders of that early day. The community did not wish to keep an
army on its hands, and were willing to send it along by such means as
they could spare handily. When the outfitting was complete, Lieutenant
Samuel Clemens, mounted on a small yellow mule whose tail had been
trimmed in the paint-brush pattern then much worn by mules, and
surrounded by variously attached articles--such as an extra pair of
cowhide boots, a pair of gray blankets, a home-made quilt, a frying-pan,
a carpet-sack, a small valise, an overcoat, an old-fashioned Kentucky
rifle, twenty yards of rope, and an umbrella--was a fair sample of the
brigade.

An army like that, to enjoy itself, ought to go into camp; so it went
over to Salt River, near the town of Florida, and took up headquarters in
a big log stable. Somebody suggested that an army ought to have its hair
cut, so that in a hand-to-hand conflict the enemy could not get hold of
it. There was a pair of sheep-shears in the stable, and Private Tom
Lyons acted as barber. They were not sharp shears, and a group of little
darkies gathered from the farm to enjoy the torture.

Regular elections were now held--all officers, down to sergeants and
orderlies, being officially chosen. There were only three privates, and
you couldn't tell them from officers. The discipline in that army was
very bad.

It became worse soon. Pouring rain set in. Salt River rose and
overflowed the bottoms. Men ordered on picket duty climbed up into the
stable-loft and went to bed. Twice, on black, drenching nights, word
came from the farmhouse that the enemy, commanded by a certain Col.
Ulysses Grant, was in the neighborhood, and the Hannibal division went
hastily slopping through mud and brush in the other direction, dragging
wearily back when the alarm was over. Military ardor was bound to cool
under such treatment. Then Lieutenant Clemens developed a very severe
boil, and was obliged to lie most of the day on some hay in a
horse-trough, where he spent his time denouncing the war and the mistaken
souls who had invented it. When word that "General" Tom Harris, commander
of the district--formerly telegraph-operator in Hannibal--was at a
near-by farm-house, living on the fat of the land, the army broke camp
without further ceremony. Halfway there they met General Harris, who
ordered them back to quarters. They called him familiarly "Tom," and told
him they were through with that camp forever. He begged them, but it was
no use. A little farther on they stopped at a farm-house for supplies. A
tall, bony woman came to the door.

"You're Secesh, ain't you?"

Lieutenant Clemens said: "We are, madam, defenders of the noble cause,
and we should like to buy a few provisions."

The request seemed to inflame her.

"Provisions!" she screamed. "Provisions for Secesh, and my husband a
colonel in the Union Army. You get out of here!"

She reached for a hickory hoop-pole [5] that stood by the door, and the
army moved on. When they reached the home of Col. Bill Splawn it was
night and the family had gone to bed. So the hungry army camped in the
barn-yard and crept into the hay-loft to sleep. Presently somebody
yelled "Fire!" One of the boys had been smoking and had ignited the hay.

Lieutenant Clemens, suddenly wakened, made a quick rotary movement away
from the blaze, and rolled out of a big hay-window into the barn-yard
below. The rest of the brigade seized the burning hay and pitched it out
of the same window. The lieutenant had sprained his ankle when he
struck, and his boil was still painful, but the burning hay cured him
--for the moment. He made a spring from under it; then, noticing that the
rest of the army, now that the fire was out, seemed to think his
performance amusing, he rose up and expressed himself concerning the war,
and military life, and the human race in general. They helped him in,
then, for his ankle was swelling badly.

In the morning, Colonel Splawn gave the army a good breakfast, and it
moved on. Lieutenant Clemens, however, did not get farther than Farmer
Nuck Matson's. He was in a high fever by that time from his injured
ankle, and Mrs. Matson put him to bed. So the army left him, and
presently disbanded. Some enlisted in the regular service, North or
South, according to preference. Properly officered and disciplined, that
"Tom Sawyer" band would have made as good soldiers as any.

Lieutenant Clemens did not enlist again. When he was able to walk, he
went to visit Orion in Keokuk. Orion was a Union Abolitionist, but there
would be no unpleasantness on that account. Samuel Clemens was beginning
to have leanings in that direction himself.

[5] In an earlier day, barrel hoops were made of small hickory trees,
split and shaved. The hoop-pole was a very familiar article of commerce,
and of household defense.




XIX.

THE PIONEER

He arrived in Keokuk at what seemed a lucky moment. Through Edward
Bates, a member of Lincoln's Cabinet, Orion Clemens had received an
appointment as territorial secretary of Nevada, and only needed the money
to carry him to the seat of his office at Carson City. Out of his
pilot's salary his brother had saved more than enough for the journey,
and was willing to pay both their fares and go along as private secretary
to Orion, whose position promised something in the way of adventure and a
possible opportunity for making a fortune.

The brothers went at once to St. Louis for final leave-taking, and there
took boat for "St. Jo," Missouri, terminus of the great Overland Stage
Route. They paid one hundred and fifty dollars each for their passage,
and about the end of July, 1861, set out on that long, delightful trip,
behind sixteen galloping horses, never stopping except for meals or to
change teams, heading steadily into the sunset over the billowy plains
and snow-clad Rockies, covering the seventeen hundred miles between St.
Jo and Carson City in nineteen glorious days.

But one must read Mark Twain's "Roughing It" for the story of that
long-ago trip--the joy and wonder of it, and the inspiration. "Even at
this day," he writes, "it thrills me through and through to think of the
life, the gladness, and the wild sense of freedom that used to make the
blood dance in my face on those fine overland mornings."

It was a hot dusty, August day when they arrived, dusty, unshaven, and
weather-beaten, and Samuel Clemens's life as a frontiersman began.
Carson City, the capital of Nevada, was a wooden town with an assorted
population of two thousand souls. The mining excitement was at its
height and had brought together the drift of every race.

The Clemens brothers took up lodgings with a genial Irishwoman, the Mrs.
O'Flannigan of "Roughing It," and Orion established himself in a modest
office, for there was no capitol building as yet, no government
headquarters. Orion could do all the work, and Samuel Clemens, finding
neither duties nor salary attached to his position, gave himself up to
the study of the life about him, and to the enjoyment of the freedom of
the frontier. Presently he had a following of friends who loved his
quaint manner of speech and his yarns. On cool nights they would collect
about Orion's office-stove, and he would tell stories in the wonderful
way that one day would delight the world. Within a brief time Sam
Clemens (he was always "Sam" to the pioneers) was the most notable figure
on the Carson streets. His great, bushy head of auburn hair, has
piercing, twinkling eyes, his loose, lounging walk, his careless disorder
of dress invited a second look, even from strangers. From a river dandy
he had become the roughest-clad of pioneers--rusty slouch hat, flannel
shirt, coarse trousers slopping half in and half out of heavy cowhide
boots, this was his make-up. Energetic citizens did not prophesy success
for him. Often they saw him leaning against an awning support, staring
drowsily at the motley human procession, for as much as an hour at a
time. Certainly that could not be profitable.

But they did like to hear him talk.

He did not catch the mining fever at once. He was interested first in
the riches that he could see. Among these was the timber-land around
Lake Bigler (now Tahoe)--splendid acres, to be had for the asking. The
lake itself was beautifully situated.

With an Ohio boy, John Kinney, he made an excursion afoot to Tahoe, a
trip described in one of the best chapters of "Roughing It." They staked
out a timber claim and pretended to fence it and to build a house, but
their chief employment was loafing in the quiet luxury of the great woods
or drifting in a boat on the transparent water. They did not sleep in
the house. In "Roughing It" he says:

   "It never occurred to us, for one thing; and, besides, it was built
   to hold the ground, and that was enough. We did not wish to strain
   it."

They made their camp-fires on the borders of the lake, and one evening it
got away from them, fired the forest, and destroyed their fences and
habitation. In a letter home he describes this fire in a fine, vivid
way. At one place he says:

   "The level ranks of flame were relieved at intervals by the standard-
   bearers, as we called the tall dead trees, wrapped in fire, and
   waving their blazing banners a hundred feet in the air. Then we
   could turn from the scene to the lake, and see every branch and leaf
   and cataract of flame upon its banks perfectly reflected, as in a
   gleaming, fiery mirror."

He was acquiring the literary vision and touch. The description of this
same fire in "Roughing It," written ten years later, is scarcely more
vivid.

Most of his letters home at this time tell of glowing prospects--the
certainty of fortune ahead. The fever of the frontier is in them. Once,
to Pamela Moffett, he wrote:

   "Orion and I have enough confidence in this country to think that, if
   the war lets us alone, we can make Mr. Moffett rich without its ever
   costing him a cent or a particle of trouble."

From the same letter we gather that the brothers are now somewhat
interested in mining claims:

   "We have about 1,650 feet of mining-ground, and, if it proves good,
   Mr. Moffett's name will go in; and if not, I can get 'feet' for him
   in the spring."

This was written about the end of October. Two months later, in
midwinter, the mining fever came upon him with full force.




XX.

THE MINER

The wonder is that Samuel Clemens, always speculative and visionary, had
not fallen an earlier victim. Everywhere one heard stories of sudden
fortune--of men who had gone to bed paupers and awakened millionaires.
New and fabulous finds were reported daily. Cart-loads of bricks--silver
and gold bricks--drove through the Carson streets.

Then suddenly from the newly opened Humboldt region came the wildest
reports. The mountains there were said to be stuffed with gold. A
correspondent of the "Territorial Enterprise" was unable to find words to
picture the riches of the Humboldt mines.

The air for Samuel Clemens began to shimmer. Fortune was waiting to be
gathered in a basket. He joined the first expedition for Humboldt--in
fact, helped to organize it. In "Roughing It" he says:

   "Hurry was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four
   persons--a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and
   myself. We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put
   eighteen hundred pounds of provisions and mining-tools in the wagon
   and drove out of Carson on a chilly December afternoon.."

The two young lawyers were W. H. Clagget, whom Clemens had known in
Keokuk, and A. W. Oliver, called Oliphant in "Roughing It."  The
blacksmith was named Tillou (Ballou in "Roughing It"), a sturdy, honest
man with a knowledge of mining and the repair of tools. There were also
two dogs in the party--a curly-tailed mongrel and a young hound.

The horses were the weak feature of the expedition. It was two hundred
miles to Humboldt, mostly across sand. The miners rode only a little
way, then got out to lighten the load. Later they pushed. Then it began
to snow, also to blow, and the air became filled with whirling clouds of
snow and sand. On and on they pushed and groaned, sustained by the
knowledge that they must arrive some time, when right away they would be
millionaires and all their troubles would be over.

The nights were better. The wind went down and they made a camp-fire in
the shelter of the wagon, cooked their bacon, crept under blankets with
the dogs to warm them, and Sam Clemens spun yarns till they fell asleep.

There had been an Indian war, and occasionally they passed the charred
ruin of a cabin and new graves. By and by they came to that deadly waste
known as the Alkali Desert, strewn with the carcasses of dead beasts and
with the heavy articles discarded by emigrants in their eagerness to
reach water. All day and night they pushed through that choking,
waterless plain to reach camp on the other side. When they arrived at
three in the morning, they dropped down exhausted. Judge Oliver, the
last survivor of the party, in a letter to the writer of these chapters,
said:

   "The sun was high in the heavens when we were aroused from our sleep
   by a yelling band of Piute warriors. We were upon our feet in an
   instant. The picture of burning cabins and the lonely graves we had
   passed was in our minds. Our scalps were still our own, and not
   dangling from the belts of our visitors. Sam pulled himself
   together, put his hand on his head, as if to make sure he had not
   been scalped, and, with his inimitable drawl, said 'Boys, they have
   left us our scalps. Let us give them all the flour and sugar they
   ask for.' And we did give them a good supply, for we were grateful."

The Indians left them unharmed, and the prospective millionaires moved
on. Across that two hundred miles to the Humboldt country they pushed,
arriving at the little camp of Unionville at the end of eleven weary
days.

In "Roughing It" Mark Twain has told us of Unionville and the mining
experience there. Their cabin was a three-sided affair with a cotton
roof. Stones rolled down the mountainside on them; also, the author
says, a mule and a cow.

The author could not gather fortune in a basket, as he had dreamed.
Masses of gold and silver were not lying about. He gathered a back-load
of yellow, glittering specimens, but they proved worthless. Gold in the
rough did not glitter, and was not yellow. Tillou instructed the others
in prospecting, and they went to work with pick and shovel--then with
drill and blasting-powder. The prospect of immediately becoming
millionaires vanished.

"One week of this satisfied me. I resigned," is Mark Twain's brief
comment.

The Humboldt reports had been exaggerated. The Clemens-Clagget-Oliver-
Tillou millionaire combination soon surrendered its claims. Clemens and
Tillou set out for Carson City with a Prussian named Pfersdorff, who
nearly got them drowned and got them completely lost in the snow before
they arrived there. Oliver and Clagget remained in Unionville, began law
practice, and were elected to office. It is not known what became of the
wagon and horses and the two dogs.

It was the end of January when our miner returned to Carson. He was not
discouraged--far from it. He believed he had learned something that
would be useful to him in a camp where mines were a reality. Within a
few weeks from his return we find him at Aurora, in the Esmeralda region,
on the edge of California. It was here that the Clemens brothers owned
the 1,650 feet formerly mentioned. He had came down to work it.

It was the dead of winter, but he was full of enthusiasm, confident of a
fortune by early summer. To Pamela he wrote:

   "I expect to return to St. Louis in July--per steamer. I don't say
   that I will return then, or that I shall be able to do it--but I
   expect to--you bet . . . . If nothing goes wrong, we'll strike
   the ledge in June."

He was trying to be conservative, and further along he cautions his
sister not to get excited.

   "Don't you know I have only talked as yet, but proved nothing? Don't
   you know I have never held in my hands a gold or silver bar that
   belonged to me? Don't you know that people who always feel jolly,
   no matter where they are or what happens to them--who have the organ
   of hope preposterously developed--who are endowed with an
   uncongealable, sanguine temperament--who never feel concerned about
   the price of corn--and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any
   but the bright side of a picture--are very apt to go to extremes and
   exaggerate with a 40-horse microscopic power?

  "But--but--

   In the bright lexicon of youth,
   There is no such word as fail,
   and I'll prove it."

Whereupon he soars again, adding page after page full of glowing
expectations and plans such as belong only with speculation in treasures
buried in the ground--a very difficult place, indeed, to find them.

His money was about exhausted by this time, and funds to work the mining
claims must come out of Orion's rather modest salary. The brothers owned
all claims in partnership, and it was now the part of "Brother Sam" to do
the active work. He hated the hard picking and prying and blasting into
the flinty ledges, but the fever drove him on. He camped with a young
man named Phillips at first, and, later on, with an experienced miner,
Calvin H. Higbie, to whom "Roughing It" would one day be dedicated. They
lived in a tiny cabin with a cotton roof, and around their rusty stove
they would paw over their specimens and figure the fortune that their
mines would be worth in the spring.

Food ran low, money gave out almost entirely, but they did not give up.
When it was stormy and they could not dig, and the ex-pilot was in a
talkative vein, he would sit astride the bunk and distribute to his
hearers riches more valuable than any they would dig from the Esmeralda
hills. At other times he did not talk at all, but sat in a corner and
wrote. They thought he was writing home; they did not know that he was
"literary." Some of his home letters had found their way into a Keokuk
paper and had come back to Orion, who had shown them to an assistant on
the "Territorial Enterprise," of Virginia City. The "Enterprise" man had
caused one of them to be reprinted, and this had encouraged its author to
send something to the paper direct. He signed these contributions
"Josh," and one told of:

     "An old, old horse whose name was Methusalem,
     Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem,
     A long time ago."

He received no pay for these offerings and expected none. He considered
them of no value. If any one had told him that he was knocking at the
door of the house of fame, however feebly, he would have doubted that
person's judgment or sincerity.

His letters to Orion, in Carson City, were hasty compositions, reporting
progress and progress, or calling for remittances to keep the work going.
On April 13, he wrote:

   "Work not begun on the Horatio and Derby--haven't seen it yet. It is
   still in the snow. Shall begin on it within three or four weeks
   --strike the ledge in July."

Again, later in the month:

   "I have been at work all day, blasting and digging in one of our new
   claims, 'Dashaway,' which I don't think a great deal of, but which I
   am willing to try. We are down now ten or twelve feet."

It must have been disheartening work, picking away at the flinty ledges.
There is no further mention of the "Dashaway," but we hear of the
"Flyaway," the "Annipolitan," the "Live Yankee," and of many another,
each of which holds out a beacon of hope for a brief moment, then passes
from notice forever. Still, he was not discouraged. Once he wrote:

   "I am a citizen here and I am satisfied, though 'Ratio and I are
   'strapped' and we haven't three days' rations in the house. I shall
   work the "Monitor" and the other claims with my own hands.

   "The pick and shovel are the only claims I have confidence in now,"
   he wrote, later; "my back is sore and my hands are blistered with
   handling them to-day."

His letters began to take on a weary tone. Once in midsummer he wrote
that it was still snowing up there in the hills, and added, "It always
snows here I expect. If we strike it rich, I've lost my guess, that's
all." And the final heartsick line, "Don't you suppose they have pretty
much quit writing at home?"

In time he went to work in a quartz-mill at ten dollars a week, though it
was not entirely for the money, as in "Roughing It" he would have us
believe. Samuel Clemens learned thoroughly what he undertook, and he
proposed to master the science of mining. From Phillips and Higbie he
had learned what there was to know about prospecting. He went to the
mill to learn refining, so that, when his claims developed, he could
establish a mill and personally superintend the work. His stay was
brief. He contracted a severe cold and came near getting poisoned by the
chemicals. Recovering, he went with Higbie for an outing to Mono Lake, a
ghastly, lifeless alkali sea among the hills, vividly described in
"Roughing It."

At another time he went with Higbie on a walking trip to the Yosemite,
where they camped and fished undisturbed, for in those days few human
beings came to that far isolation. Discouragement did not reach them
there--amid that vast grandeur and quiet the quest for gold hardly seemed
worth while. Now and again that summer he went alone into the wilderness
to find his balance and to get entirely away from humankind.

In "Roughing It" Mark Twain tells the story of how he and Higbie finally
located a "blind lead," which made them really millionaires, until they
forfeited their claim through the sharp practice of some rival miners and
their own neglect. It is true that the "Wide West" claim was forfeited
in some such manner, but the size of the loss was magnified in "Roughing
It," to make a good story. There was never a fortune in "Wide West,"
except the one sunk in it by its final owners. The story as told in
"Roughing It" is a tale of what might have happened, and ends the
author's days in the mines with a good story-book touch.

The mining career of Samuel Clemens really came to a close gradually, and
with no showy climax. He fought hard and surrendered little by little,
without owning, even to the end, that he was surrendering at all. It was
the gift of resolution that all his life would make his defeats long and
costly--his victories supreme.

By the end of July the money situation in the Aurora camp was getting
desperate. Orion's depleted salary would no longer pay for food, tools,
and blasting-powder, and the miner began to cast about far means to earn
an additional sum, however small. The "Josh" letters to the "Enterprise"
had awakened interest as to their author, and Orion had not failed to let
"Josh's" identity be known. The result had been that here and there a
coast paper had invited contributions and even suggested payment. A
letter written by the Aurora miner at the end of July tells this part of
the story:

   "My debts are greater than I thought for . . . . The fact is, I
   must have something to do, and that shortly, too . . . . Now
   write to the "Sacramento Union" folks, or to Marsh, and tell them
   that I will write as many letters a week as they want, for $10 a
   week. My board must be paid.

   "Tell them I have corresponded with the "New Orleans Crescent" and
   other papers--and the "Enterprise."

   "If they want letters from here--who'll run from morning till night
   collecting material cheaper? I'll write a short letter twice a week,
   for the present, for the "Age," for $5 per week. Now it has been a
   long time since I couldn't make my own living, and it shall be a long
   time before I loaf another year."

This all led to nothing, but about the same time the "Enterprise"
assistant already mentioned spoke to Joseph T. Goodman, owner and editor
of the paper, about adding "Josh" to their regular staff. "Joe" Goodman,
a man of keen humor and literary perception, agreed that the author of
the "Josh" letters might be useful to them. One of the sketches
particularly appealed to him--a burlesque report of a Fourth of July
oration.

"That is the kind of thing we want," he said. "Write to him, Barstow,
and ask him if he wants to come up here."

Barstow wrote, offering twenty-five dollars a week--a tempting sum. This
was at the end of July, 1862.

Yet the hard-pressed miner made no haste to accept the offer. To leave
Aurora meant the surrender of all hope in the mines, the confession of
another failure. He wrote Barstow, asking when he thought he might be
needed. And at the same time, in a letter to Orion, he said:

   "I shall leave at midnight to-night, alone and on foot, for a walk of
   sixty or seventy miles through a totally uninhabited country. But
   do you write Barstow that I have left here for a week or so, and, in
   case he should want me, he must write me here, or let me know
   through you."

He had gone into the wilderness to fight out his battle alone, postponing
the final moment of surrender--surrender that, had he known, only meant
the beginning of victory. He was still undecided when he returned eight
days later and wrote to his sister Pamela a letter in which there is no
mention of newspaper prospects.

Just how and when the end came at last cannot be known; but one hot,
dusty August afternoon, in Virginia City, a worn, travel-stained pilgrim
dragged himself into the office of the "Territorial Enterprise," then in
its new building on C Street, and, loosening a heavy roll of blankets
from his shoulder, dropped wearily into a chair. He wore a rusty slouch
hat, no coat, a faded blue-flannel shirt, a navy revolver; his trousers
were tucked into his boot-tops; a tangle of reddish-brown hair fell on
his shoulders; a mass of tawny beard, dingy with alkali dust, dropped
half-way to his waist.

Aurora lay one hundred and thirty miles from Virginia City. He had
walked that distance, carrying his heavy load. Editor Goodman was absent
at the moment, but the other proprietor, Dennis E. McCarthy, asked the
caller to state his errand. The wanderer regarded him with a far-away
look and said, absently, and with deliberation:

   "My starboard leg seems to be unshipped. I'd like about one hundred
   yards of line; I think I'm falling to pieces." Then he added: "I
   want to see Mr. Barstow or Mr. Goodman. My name is Clemens, and
   I've come to write for the paper."

It was the master of the world's widest estate come to claim his kingdom!




XXI.

THE TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

In 1852 Virginia City, Nevada, was the most flourishing of mining towns.
A half-crazy miner, named Comstock, had discovered there a vein of such
richness that the "Comstock Lode" was presently glutting the mineral
markets of the world. Comstock himself got very little out of it, but
those who followed him made millions. Miners, speculators, adventurers
swarmed in. Every one seemed to have money. The streets seethed with an
eager, affluent, boisterous throng whose chief business seemed to be to
spend the wealth that the earth was yielding in such a mighty stream.

Business of every kind boomed. Less than two years earlier, J. T.
Goodman, a miner who was also a printer and a man of literary taste, had
joined with another printer, Dennis McCarthy, and the two had managed to
buy a struggling Virginia City paper, the "Territorial Enterprise."  But
then came the hightide of fortune. A year later the "Enterprise," from a
starving sheet in a leaky shanty, had become a large, handsome paper in a
new building, and of such brilliant editorial management that it was the
most widely considered journal on the Pacific coast.

Goodman was a fine, forceful writer, and he surrounded himself with able
men. He was a young man, full of health and vigor, overflowing with the
fresh spirit and humor of the West. Comstockers would always laugh at a
joke, and Goodman was always willing to give it to them. The
"Enterprise" was a newspaper, but it was willing to furnish entertainment
even at the cost of news. William Wright, editorially next to Goodman,
was a humorist of ability. His articles, signed Dan de Quille, were
widely copied. R. M. Daggett (afterward United States Minister to
Hawaii) was also an "Enterprise" man, and there were others of their
sort.

Samuel Clemens fitted precisely into this group. He brought with him a
new turn of thought and expression; he saw things with open eyes, and
wrote of them in a fresh, wild way that Comstockers loved. He was
allowed full freedom. Goodman suppressed nothing; his men could write as
they chose. They were all young together--if they pleased themselves,
they were pretty sure to please their readers. Often they wrote of one
another--squibs and burlesques, which gratified the Comstock far more
than mere news. It was just the school to produce Mark Twain.

The new arrival found acquaintance easy. The whole "Enterprise" force
was like one family; proprietors, editor, and printers were social
equals. Samuel Clemens immediately became "Sam" to his associates, just
as De Quille was "Dan," and Goodman "Joe." Clemens was supposed to
report city items, and did, in fact, do such work, which he found easy,
for his pilot-memory made notes unnecessary.

He could gather items all day, and at night put down the day's budget
well enough, at least, to delight his readers. When he was tired of
facts, he would write amusing paragraphs, as often as not something about
Dan, or a reporter on a rival paper. Dan and the others would reply, and
the Comstock would laugh. Those were good old days.

Sometimes he wrote hoaxes. Once he told with great circumstance and
detail of a petrified prehistoric man that had been found embedded in a
rock in the desert, and how the coroner from Humboldt had traveled more
than a hundred miles to hold an inquest over a man dead for centuries,
and had refused to allow miners to blast the discovery from its position.

The sketch was really intended as a joke on the Humboldt coroner, but it
was so convincingly written that most of the Coast papers took it
seriously and reprinted it as the story of a genuine discovery. In time
they awoke, and began to inquire as to who was the smart writer on the
"Enterprise."

Mark Twain did a number of such things, some of which are famous on the
Coast to this day.

Clemens himself did not escape. Lamps were used in the "Enterprise"
office, but he hated the care of a lamp, and worked evenings by the light
of a candle. It was considered a great joke in the office to "hide Sam's
candle" and hear him fume and rage, walking in a circle meantime--a habit
acquired in the pilothouse--and scathingly denouncing the culprits.
Eventually the office-boy, supposedly innocent, would bring another
candle, and quiet would follow. Once the office force, including De
Quille, McCarthy, and a printer named Stephen Gillis, of whom Clemens was
very fond, bought a large imitation meerschaum pipe, had a German-silver
plate set on it, properly engraved, and presented it to Samuel Clemens as
genuine, in testimony of their great esteem. His reply to the
presentation speech was so fine and full of feeling that the jokers felt
ashamed of their trick. A few days later, when he discovered the
deception, he was ready to destroy the lot of them. Then, in atonement,
they gave him a real meerschaum. Such things kept the Comstock
entertained.

There was a side to Samuel Clemens that, in those days, few of his
associates saw. This was the poetic, the reflective side. Joseph
Goodman, like Macfarlane in Cincinnati several years earlier, recognized
this phase of his character and developed it. Often these two, dining or
walking together, discussed the books and history they had read, quoted
from poems that gave them pleasure. Clemens sometimes recited with great
power the "Burial of Moses," whose noble phrasing and majestic imagery
seemed to move him deeply. With eyes half closed and chin lifted, a
lighted cigar between his fingers, he would lose himself in the music of
the stately lines:

        By Nebo's lonely mountain,
         On this side Jordan's wave,
        In a vale in the land of Moab
         There lies a lonely grave.
        And no man knows that sepulcher,
         And no man saw it e'er,
        For the angels of God upturned the sod,
         And laid the dead man there.

That his own writing would be influenced by the simple grandeur of this
poem we can hardly doubt. Indeed, it may have been to him a sort of
literary touchstone, that in time would lead him to produce, as has been
said, some of the purest English written by any modern author.




XXII.

"MARK TWAIN"

It was once when Goodman and Clemens were dining together that the latter
asked to be allowed to report the proceedings of the coming legislature
at Carson City. He knew nothing of such work, and Goodman hesitated.
Then, remembering that Clemens would, at least, make his reports
readable, whether they were parliamentary or not, he consented.

So, at the beginning of the year (1863), Samuel Clemens undertook a new
and interesting course in the study of human nature--the political human
nature of the frontier. There could have been no better school for him.
His wit, his satire, his phrasing had full swing--his letters, almost
from the beginning, were copied as choice reading up and down the Coast.
He made curious blunders, at first, as to the proceedings, but his open
confession of ignorance in the early letters made these blunders their
chief charm. A young man named Gillespie, clerk of the House, coached
him, and in return was christened "Young Jefferson's Manual," a title
which he bore for many years.

A reporter named Rice, on a rival Virginia City paper, the "Union," also
earned for himself a title through those early letters.

Rice concluded to poke fun at the "Enterprise" reports, pointing out
their mistakes. But this was not wise. Clemens, in his next
contribution, admitted that Rice's reports might be parliamentary enough,
but declared his glittering technicalities were only to cover
misstatements of fact. He vowed they were wholly untrustworthy, dubbed
the author of them "The Unreliable," and never thereafter referred to him
by any other term. Carson and the Comstock papers delighted in this
foolery, and Rice became "The Unreliable" for life. There was no real
feeling between Rice and Clemens. They were always the best of friends.

But now we arrive at the story of still another name, one of vastly
greater importance than either of those mentioned, for it is the name
chosen by Samuel Clemens for himself. In those days it was the fashion
for a writer to have a pen-name, especially for his journalistic and
humorous work. Clemens felt that his "Enterprise" letters, copied up and
down the Coast, needed a mark of identity.

He gave the matter a good deal of thought. He wanted something brief and
strong--something that would stick in the mind. It was just at this time
that news came of the death of Capt. Isaiah Sellers, the old pilot who
had signed himself "Mark Twain."  Mark Twain! That was the name he
wanted. It was not trivial. It had all the desired qualities. Captain
Sellers would never need it again. It would do no harm to keep it alive
--to give it a new meaning in a new land. Clemens took a trip from Carson
up to Virginia City.

"Joe," he said to Goodman, "I want to sign my articles. I want to be
identified to a wider audience."

"All right, Sam. What name do you want to use Josh?"

"No, I want to sign them Mark Twain. It is an old river term, a
leadsman's call, signifying two fathoms--twelve feet. It has a richness
about it; it was always a pleasant sound for a pilot to hear on a dark
night; it meant safe waters."

He did not mention that Captain Sellers had used and dropped the name.
He was not proud of his part in that episode, and it was too recent for
confession.

Goodman considered a moment. "Very well, Sam," he said, "that sounds
like a good name."

A good name, indeed! Probably, if he had considered every combination of
words in the language, he could not have found a better one. To-day we
recognize it as the greatest nom de plume ever chosen, and, somehow, we
cannot believe that the writer of "Tom Sawyer" and "Huck Finn" and
"Roughing It" could have selected any other had he tried.

The name Mark Twain was first signed to a Carson letter, February 2,
1863, and after that to all of Samuel Clemens's work. The letters that
had amused so many readers had taken on a new interest--the interest that
goes with a name. It became immediately more than a pen-name. Clemens
found he had attached a name to himself as well as to his letters.
Everybody began to address him as Mark. Within a few weeks he was no
longer "Sam" or "Clemens," but Mark--Mark Twain. The Coast papers liked
the sound of it. It began to mean something to their readers. By the
end of that legislative session Samuel Clemens, as Mark Twain, had
acquired out there on that breezy Western slope something resembling
fame.

Curiously, he fails to mention any of this success in his letters home of
that period. Indeed, he seldom refers to his work, but more often speaks
of mining shares which he has accumulated, and their possible values.
His letters are airy, full of the joy of life and of the wild doings of
the frontier. Closing one of them, he says: "I have just heard five
pistolshots down the street. As such things are in my line, I will go
and see about it."

And in a postscript, later, he adds:

   "5 A.M.--The pistol-shots did their work well. One man, a Jackson
   County Missourian, shot two of my friends (police officers) through
   the heart--both died within three minutes. The murderer's name is
   John Campbell."

The Comstock was a great school for Mark Twain, and in "Roughing It" he
has left us a faithful picture of its long-vanished glory.

More than one national character came out of the Comstock school.
Senator James G. Fair was one of them, and John Mackay, both miners with
pick and shovel at first, though Mackay presently became a
superintendent. Mark Twain one day laughingly offered to trade jobs with
Mackay.

"No," Mackay said, "I can't trade. My business is not worth as much as
yours. I have never swindled anybody, and I don't intend to begin now."

For both these men the future held splendid gifts: for Mackay vast
wealth, for Mark Twain the world's applause, and neither would have long
to wait.




XXIII.

ARTEMUS WARD AND LITERARY SAN FRANCISCO

It was about the end of 1863 that a new literary impulse came into Mark
Twain's life. The gentle and lovable humorist Artemus Ward (Charles F.
Browne) was that year lecturing in the West, and came to Virginia City.
Ward had intended to stay only a few days, but the whirl of the Comstock
fascinated him. He made the "Enterprise" office his headquarters and
remained three weeks. He and Mark Twain became boon companions. Their
humor was not unlike; they were kindred spirits, together almost
constantly. Ward was then at the summit of his fame, and gave the
younger man the highest encouragement, prophesying great things for ha
work. Clemens, on his side, was stirred, perhaps for the first time,
with a real literary ambition, and the thought that he, too, might win a
place of honor. He promised Ward that he would send work to the Eastern
papers.

On Christmas Eve, Ward gave a dinner to the "Enterprise" staff, at
Chaumond's, a fine French restaurant of that day. When refreshments
came, Artemus lifted his glass, and said:

"I give you Upper Canada."

The company rose and drank the toast in serious silence. Then Mr.
Goodman said:

"Of course, Artemus, it's all right, but why did you give us Upper
Canada?"

"Because I don't want it myself," said Ward, gravely.

What would one not give to have listened to the talk of that evening!
Mark Twain's power had awakened; Artemus Ward was in his prime. They
were giants of a race that became extinct when Mark Twain died.

Goodman remained rather quiet during the evening. Ward had appointed him
to order the dinner, and he had attended to this duty without mingling
much in the conversation. When Ward asked him why he did not join the
banter, he said:

"I am preparing a joke, Artemus, but I am keeping it for the present."

At a late hour Ward finally called for the bill. It was two hundred and
thirty-seven dollars.

"What!" exclaimed Artemus.

"That's my joke," said Goodman.

"But I was only exclaiming because it was not twice as much," laughed
Ward, laying the money on the table.

Ward remained through the holidays, and later wrote back an affectionate
letter to Mark Twain.

"I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence," he
said, "as all others must, or rather, cannot be, as it were."

With Artemus Ward's encouragement, Mark Twain now began sending work
eastward. The "New York Sunday Mercury" published one, possibly more, of
his sketches, but they were not in his best vein, and made little
impression. He may have been too busy for outside work, for the
legislative session of 1864 was just beginning. Furthermore, he had been
chosen governor of the "Third House," a mock legislature, organized for
one session, to be held as a church benefit. The "governor" was to
deliver a message, which meant that he was to burlesque from the platform
all public officials and personages, from the real governor down.

With the exception of a short talk he had once given at a printer's
dinner in Keokuk, it was Mark Twain's first appearance as a speaker, and
the beginning of a lifelong series of triumphs on the platform. The
building was packed--the aisles full. The audience was ready for fun,
and he gave it to them. Nobody escaped ridicule; from beginning to end
the house was a storm of laughter and applause.

Not a word of this first address of Mark Twain's has been preserved, but
those who heard it always spoke of it as the greatest effort of his life,
as to them it seemed, no doubt.

For his Third House address, Clemens was presented with a gold watch,
inscribed "To Governor Mark Twain." Everywhere, now, he was pointed out
as a distinguished figure, and his quaint remarks were quoted. Few of
these sayings are remembered to-day, though occasionally one is still
unforgotten. At a party one night, being urged to make a conundrum, he
said:

"Well, why am I like the Pacific Ocean?"

Several guesses were made, but he shook his head. Some one said:

"We give it up. Tell us, Mark, why are you like the Pacific Ocean?"

"I--don't--know," he drawled. "I was just--asking for information."

The governor of Nevada was generally absent, and Orion Clemens was
executive head of the territory. His wife, who had joined him in Carson
City, was social head of the little capital, and Brother Sam, with his
new distinction and now once more something of a dandy in dress, was
society's chief ornament--a great change, certainly, from the early
months of his arrival less than three years before.

It was near the end of May, 1864, when Mark Twain left Nevada for San
Francisco. The immediate cause of his going was a duel--a duel
elaborately arranged between Mark Twain and the editor of a rival paper,
but never fought. In fact, it was mainly a burlesque affair throughout,
chiefly concocted by that inveterate joker, Steve Gillis, already
mentioned in connection with the pipe incident. The new dueling law,
however, did not distinguish between real and mock affrays, and the
prospect of being served with a summons made a good excuse for Clemens
and Gillis to go to San Francisco, which had long attracted them. They
were great friends, these two, and presently were living together and
working on the same paper, the "Morning Call," Clemens as a reporter and
Gillis as a compositor.

Gillis, with his tendency to mischief, was a constant exasperation to his
room-mate, who, goaded by some new torture, would sometimes denounce him
in feverish terms. Yet they were never anything but the closest friends.

Mark Twain did not find happiness in his new position on the "Call."
There was less freedom and more drudgery than he had known on the
"Enterprise." His day was spent around the police court, attending
fires, weddings, and funerals, with brief glimpses of the theaters at
night.

Once he wrote: "It was fearful drudgery--soulless drudgery--and almost
destitute of interest. It was an awful slavery for a lazy man."

It must have been so. There was little chance for original work. He had
become just a part of a news machine. He saw many public abuses that he
wished to expose, but the policy of the paper opposed him. Once,
however, he found a policeman asleep on his beat. Going to a near-by
vegetable stall, he borrowed a large cabbage-leaf, came back, and stood
over the sleeper, gently fanning him. He knew the paper would not
publish the policeman's negligence, but he could advertise it in his own
way. A large crowd soon collected, much amused. When he thought the
audience large enough, he went away. Next day the joke was all over the
city.

He grew indifferent to the "Call" work, and, when an assistant was
allowed him to do part of the running for items, it was clear to
everybody that presently the assistant would be able to do it all.

But there was a pleasant and profitable side to the San Francisco life.
There were real literary people there--among them a young man, with rooms
upstairs in the "Call" office, Francis Bret Harte, editor of the
"Californian," a new literary weekly which Charles Henry Webb had
recently founded. Bret Harte was not yet famous, but his gifts were
recognized on the Pacific slope, especially by the "Era" group of
writers, the "Golden Era" being a literary monthly of considerable
distinction. Joaquin Miller recalls, from his diary of that period,
having seen Prentice Mulford, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Mark
Twain, Artemus Ward, and others, all assembled there at one time--a
remarkable group, certainly, to be dropped down behind the Sierras so
long ago. They were a hopeful, happy lot, and sometimes received five
dollars for an article, which, of course, seemed a good deal more
precious than a much larger sum earned in another way.

Mark Twain had contributed to the "Era" while still in Virginia City, and
now, with Bret Harte, was ranked as a leader of the group. The two were
much together, and when Harte became editor of the "Californian" he
engaged Clemens as a regular contributor at the very fancy rate of twelve
dollars an article. Some of the brief chapters included to-day in
"Sketches New and Old" were done at this time. They have humor, but are
not equal to his later work, and beyond the Pacific slope they seem to
have attracted little attention.

In "Roughing It" the author tells us how he finally was dismissed from
the "Call" for general incompetency, and presently found himself in the
depths of hard luck, debt, and poverty. But this is only his old habit
of making a story on himself sound as uncomplimentary as possible. The
true version is that the "Call" publisher and Mark Twain had a friendly
talk and decided that it was better for both to break off the connection.
Almost immediately he arranged to write a daily San Francisco letter for
the "Enterprise," for which he received thirty dollars a week. This,
with his earnings from the "Californian," made his total return larger
than before. Very likely he was hard up from time to time--literary men
are often that--but that he was ever in abject poverty, as he would have
us believe, is just a good story and not history.




XXIV.

THE DISCOVERY OF "THE JUMPING FROG"

Mark Twain's daily letters to the "Enterprise" stirred up trouble for him
in San Francisco. He was free, now, to write what he chose, and he
attacked the corrupt police management with such fierceness that, when
copies of the "Enterprise" got back to San Francisco, they started a
commotion at the city hall. Then Mark Twain let himself go more
vigorously than ever. He sent letters to the "Enterprise" that made even
the printers afraid. Goodman, however, was fearless, and let them go in,
word for word. The libel suit which the San Francisco chief of police
brought against the Enterprise advertised the paper amazingly.

But now came what at the time seemed an unfortunate circumstance. Steve
Gillis, always a fearless defender of the weak, one night rushed to the
assistance of two young fellows who had been set upon by three roughs.
Gillis, though small of stature, was a terrific combatant, and he
presently put two of the assailants to flight and had the other ready for
the hospital. Next day it turned out that the roughs were henchmen of
the police, and Gillis was arrested.

Clemens went his bail, and advised Steve to go down to Virginia City
until the storm blew over.

But it did not blow over for Mark Twain. The police department was only
too glad to have a chance at the author of the fierce "Enterprise"
letters, and promptly issued a summons for him, with an execution against
his personal effects. If James N. Gillis, brother of Steve, had not
happened along just then and spirited Mark Twain away to his mining-camp
in the Tuolumne Hills, the beautiful gold watch given to the governor of
the Third House might have been sacrificed in the cause of friendship.

As it was, he found himself presently in the far and peaceful seclusion
of that land which Bret Harte would one day make famous with his tales of
"Roaring Camp" and "Sandy Bar." Jim Gillis was, in fact, the Truthful
James of Bret Harte, and his cabin on jackass Hill had been the retreat
of Harte and many another literary wayfarer who had wandered there for
rest and refreshment and peace. It was said the sick were made well, and
the well made better, in Jim Gillis's cabin. There were plenty of books
and a variety of out-of-door recreation. One could mine there if he
chose. Jim would furnish the visiting author with a promising claim, and
teach him to follow the little fan-like drift of gold specks to the
pocket of treasure somewhere up the hillside.

Gillis himself had literary ability, though he never wrote. He told his
stories, and with his back to the open fire would weave the most amazing
tales, invented as he went along. His stories were generally wonderful
adventures that had happened to his faithful companion, Stoker; and
Stoker never denied them, but would smoke and look into the fire, smiling
a little sometimes, but never saying a word. A number of the tales later
used by Mark Twain were first told by Jim Gillis in the cabin on Jackass
Hill. "Dick Baker's Cat" was one of these, the jay-bird and acorn story
in "A Tramp Abroad" was another. Mark Twain had little to add to these
stories.

"They are not mine, they are Jim's," he said, once; "but I never could
get them to sound like Jim--they were never as good as his."

It was early in December, 1864, when Mark Twain arrived at the humble
retreat, built of logs under a great live-oak tree, and surrounded by a
stretch of blue-grass. A younger Gillis boy was there at the time, and
also, of course, Dick Stoker and his cat, Tom Quartz, which every reader
of "Roughing It" knows.

It was the rainy season, but on pleasant days they all went
pocket-mining, and, in January, Mark Twain, Gillis, and Stoker crossed
over into Calaveras County and began work near Angel's Camp, a place well
known to readers of Bret Harte. They put up at a poor hotel in Angel's,
and on good days worked pretty faithfully. But it was generally raining,
and the food was poor.

In his note-book, still preserved, Mark Twain wrote: "January 27 (1865).
--Same old diet--same old weather--went out to the pocket-claim--had to
rush back."

So they spent a good deal of their time around the rusty stove in the
dilapidated tavern at Angel's Camp. It seemed a profitless thing to do,
but few experiences were profitless to Mark Twain, and certainly this one
was not.

At this barren mining hotel there happened to be a former Illinois River
pilot named Ben Coon, a solemn, sleepy person, who dozed by the stove or
told slow, pointless stories to any one who would listen. Not many would
stay to hear him, but Jim Gillis and Mark Twain found him a delight.
They would let him wander on in his dull way for hours, and saw a vast
humor in a man to whom all tales, however trivial or absurd, were serious
history.

At last, one dreary afternoon, he told them about a frog--a frog that had
belonged to a man named Coleman, who had trained it to jump, and how the
trained frog had failed to win a wager because the owner of the rival
frog had slyly loaded the trained jumper with shot. It was not a new
story in the camps, but Ben Coon made a long tale of it, and it happened
that neither Clemens nor Gillis had heard it before. They thought it
amusing, and his solemn way of telling it still more so.

"I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's better than any other
frog," became a catch phrase among the mining partners; and, "I 'ain't
got no frog, but if I had a frog, I'd bet you."

Out on the claim, Clemens, watching Gillis and Stoker anxiously washing,
would say, "I don't see no pints about that pan o' dirt that's any better
than any other pan o' dirt." And so they kept the tale going. In his
note-book Mark Twain made a brief memorandum of the story for possible
use.

The mining was rather hopeless work. The constant and heavy rains were
disheartening. Clemens hated it, and even when, one afternoon, traces of
a pocket began to appear, he rebelled as the usual chill downpour set in.

"Jim," he said, "let's go home; we'll freeze here."

Gillis, as usual, was washing, and Clemens carrying the water. Gillis,
seeing the gold "color" improving with every pan, wanted to go on washing
and climbing toward the precious pocket, regardless of wet and cold.
Clemens, shivering and disgusted, vowed that each pail of water would be
his last. His teeth were chattering, and he was wet through. Finally he
said:

"Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work too disagreeable."

Gillis had just taken out a panful of dirt.

"Bring one more pail, Sam," he begged.

"Jim I won't do it. I'm-freezing."

"Just one more pail, Sam!" Jim pleaded.

"No, sir; not a drop--not if I knew there was a million dollars in that
pan."

Gillis tore out a page of his note-book and hastily posted a
thirty-day-claim notice by the pan of dirt. Then they set out for Angel's
Camp, never to return. It kept on raining, and a letter came from Steve
Gillis, saying he had settled all the trouble in San Francisco. Clemens
decided to return, and the miners left Angel's without visiting their
claim again.

Meantime the rain had washed away the top of the pan of dirt they had
left standing on the hillside, exposing a handful of nuggets, pure gold.
Two strangers, Austrians, happening along, gathered it up and, seeing the
claim notice posted by Jim Gillis, sat down to wait until it expired.
They did not mind the rain--not under the circumstances--and the moment
the thirty days were up they followed the lead a few pans farther and
took out, some say ten, some say twenty, thousand dollars. In either
case it was a good pocket that Mark Twain missed by one pail of water.
Still, without knowing it, he had carried away in his note-book a single
nugget of far greater value the story of "The Jumping Frog."

He did not write it, however, immediately upon his return to San
Francisco. He went back to his "Enterprise" letters and contributed some
sketches to the Californian. Perhaps he thought the frog story too mild
in humor for the slope. By and by he wrote it, and by request sent it to
Artemus Ward to be used in a book that Ward was about to issue. It
arrived too late, and the publisher handed it to the editor of the
"Saturday Press," Henry Clapp, saying:

"Here, Clapp, is something you can use in your paper."

The "Press" was struggling, and was glad to get a story so easily. "Jim
Smiley and his jumping Frog" appeared in the issue of November 18, 1865,
and was at once copied and quoted far and near. It carried the name of
Mark Twain across the mountains and the prairies of the Middle West; it
bore it up and down the Atlantic slope. Some one said, then or later,
that Mark Twain leaped into fame on the back of a jumping frog.

Curiously, this did not at first please the author. He thought the tale
poor. To his mother he wrote:

I do not know what to write; my life is so uneventful. I wish I was back
there piloting up and down the river again. Verily, all is vanity and
little worth--save piloting.

To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused for
thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out a
villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on!--"Jim Smiley and his
Jumping Frog"--a squib which would never have been written but to please
Artemus Ward.

However, somewhat later he changed his mind considerably, especially when
he heard that James Russell Lowell had pronounced the story the finest
piece of humorous writing yet produced in America.




XXV.

HAWAII AND ANSON BURLINGAME

Mark Twain remained about a year in San Francisco after his return from
the Gillis cabin and Angel's Camp, adding to his prestige along the Coast
rather than to his national reputation. Then, in the spring of 1866 he
was commissioned by the "Sacramento Union" to write a series of letters
that would report the life, trade, agriculture, and general aspects of
the Hawaiian group. He sailed in March, and his four months in those
delectable islands remained always to him a golden memory--an experience
which he hoped some day to repeat. He was young and eager for adventure
then, and he went everywhere--horseback and afoot--saw everything, did
everything, and wrote of it all for his paper. His letters to the
"Union" were widely read and quoted, and, though not especially literary,
added much to his journalistic standing. He was a great sight-seer in
those days, and a persevering one. No discomfort or risk discouraged
him. Once, with a single daring companion, he crossed the burning floor
of the mighty crater of Kilauea, racing across the burning lava, leaping
wide and bottomless crevices where a misstep would have meant death. His
open-air life on the river and in the mining-camps had nerved and
hardened him for adventure. He was thirty years old and in his physical
prime. His mental growth had been slower, but it was sure, and it would
seem always to have had the right guidance at the right time.

Clemens had been in the islands three months when one day Anson
Burlingame arrived there, en route to his post as minister to China.
With him was his son Edward, a boy of eighteen, and General Van
Valkenburg, minister to Japan. Young Burlingame had read about Jim
Smiley's jumping frog and, learning that the author was in Honolulu, but
ill

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