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diff --git a/2982-h/2982-h.htm b/2982-h/2982-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..da72bfa --- /dev/null +++ b/2982-h/2982-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,12066 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 1, Part 1, 1835-1866, by Albert Bigelow Paine</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.footnote {font-size: 90%; + text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +sup { vertical-align: top; font-size: 0.6em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 1, Part 1, 1835-1866, by Albert Bigelow Paine</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Mark Twain, A Biography,<br/> + Vol. 1, Part 1, 1835-1866 The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Albert Bigelow Paine</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December, 2001 [eBook #2982]<br /> +[Most recently updated: April 26, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY ***</div> + +<h1>Mark Twain<br/> +A Biography</h1> + +<h3>The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens</h3> + +<h2 class="no-break">by Albert Bigelow Paine</h2> + +<h3>VOLUME I, Part 1: 1835-1866</h3> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="letter"> +TO CLARA CLEMENS GABRILOWITSCH WHO STEADILY UPHELD THE AUTHOR’S PURPOSE +TO WRITE HISTORY RATHER THAN EULOGY AS THE STORY OF HER FATHER’S LIFE +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT</h2> + +<p> +Dear William Dean Howells, Joseph Hopkins Twichell, Joseph T. Goodman, and +other old friends of Mark Twain: +</p> + +<p> +I cannot let these volumes go to press without some grateful word to you who +have helped me during the six years and more that have gone to their making. +</p> + +<p> +First, I want to confess how I have envied you your association with Mark Twain +in those days when you and he “went gipsying, a long time ago.” +Next, I want to express my wonder at your willingness to give me so unstintedly +from your precious letters and memories, when it is in the nature of man to +hoard such treasures, for himself and for those who follow him. And, lastly, I +want to tell you that I do not envy you so much, any more, for in these +chapters, one after another, through your grace, I have gone gipsying with you +all. Neither do I wonder now, for I have come to know that out of your love for +him grew that greater unselfishness (or divine selfishness, as he himself might +have termed it), and that nothing short of the fullest you could do for his +memory would have contented your hearts. +</p> + +<p> +My gratitude is measureless; and it is world-wide, for there is no land so +distant that it does not contain some one who has eagerly contributed to the +story. Only, I seem so poorly able to put my thanks into words. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Albert Bigelow Paine. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>PREFATORY NOTE</h2> + +<p> +Certain happenings as recorded in this work will be found to differ materially +from the same incidents and episodes as set down in the writings of Mr. Clemens +himself. Mark Twain’s spirit was built of the very fabric of truth, so +far as moral intent was concerned, but in his earlier autobiographical +writings—and most of his earlier writings were autobiographical—he +made no real pretense to accuracy of time, place, or +circumstance—seeking, as he said, “only to tell a good +story”—while in later years an ever-vivid imagination and a +capricious memory made history difficult, even when, as in his so-called +“Autobiography,” his effort was in the direction of fact. +</p> + +<p> +“When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or +not,” he once said, quaintly, “but I am getting old, and soon I +shall remember only the latter.” +</p> + +<p> +The reader may be assured, where discrepancies occur, that the writer of this +memoir has obtained his data from direct and positive sources: letters, +diaries, account-books, or other immediate memoranda; also from the concurring +testimony of eye-witnesses, supported by a unity of circumstance and +conditions, and not from hearsay or vagrant printed items. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>MARK TWAIN<br/> +A BIOGRAPHY</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>I<br/> +ANCESTORS</h2> + +<p> +On page 492 of the old volume of Suetonius, which Mark Twain read until his +very last day, there is a reference to one Flavius Clemens, a man of wide +repute “for his want of energy,” and in a marginal note he has +written: +</p> + +<p> +“I guess this is where our line starts.” +</p> + +<p> +It was like him to write that. It spoke in his whimsical fashion the attitude +of humility, the ready acknowledgment of shortcoming, which was his chief +characteristic and made him lovable—in his personality and in his work. +</p> + +<p> +Historically, we need not accept this identity of the Clemens ancestry. The +name itself has a kindly meaning, and was not an uncommon one in Rome. There +was an early pope by that name, and it appears now and again in the annals of +the Middle Ages. More lately there was a Gregory Clemens, an English landowner +who became a member of Parliament under Cromwell and signed the death-warrant +of Charles I. Afterward he was tried as a regicide, his estates were +confiscated, and his head was exposed on a pole on the top of Westminster Hall. +</p> + +<p> +Tradition says that the family of Gregory Clemens did not remain in England, +but emigrated to Virginia (or New Jersey), and from them, in direct line, +descended the Virginia Clemenses, including John Marshall Clemens, the father +of Mark Twain. Perhaps the line could be traced, and its various steps +identified, but, after all, an ancestor more or less need not matter when it is +the story of a descendant that is to be written. +</p> + +<p> +Of Mark Twain’s immediate forebears, however, there is something to be +said. His paternal grandfather, whose name also was Samuel, was a man of +culture and literary taste. In 1797 he married a Virginia girl, Pamela Goggin; +and of their five children John Marshall Clemens, born August 11, 1798, was the +eldest—becoming male head of the family at the age of seven, when his +father was accidentally killed at a house-raising. The family was not a poor +one, but the boy grew up with a taste for work. As a youth he became a clerk in +an iron manufactory, at Lynchburg, and doubtless studied at night. At all +events, he acquired an education, but injured his health in the mean time, and +somewhat later, with his mother and the younger children, removed to Adair +County, Kentucky, where the widow presently married a sweetheart of her +girlhood, one Simon Hancock, a good man. In due course, John Clemens was sent +to Columbia, the countyseat, to study law. When the living heirs became of age +he administered his father’s estate, receiving as his own share three +negro slaves; also a mahogany sideboard, which remains among the Clemens +effects to this day. +</p> + +<p> +This was in 1821. John Clemens was now a young man of twenty-three, never very +robust, but with a good profession, plenty of resolution, and a heart full of +hope and dreams. Sober, industrious, and unswervingly upright, it seemed +certain that he must make his mark. That he was likely to be somewhat too +optimistic, even visionary, was not then regarded as a misfortune. +</p> + +<p> +It was two years later that he met Jane Lampton; whose mother was a Casey +—a Montgomery-Casey whose father was of the Lamptons (Lambtons) of +Durham, England, and who on her own account was reputed to be the handsomest +girl and the wittiest, as well as the best dancer, in all Kentucky. The +Montgomeries and the Caseys of Kentucky had been Indian fighters in the Daniel +Boone period, and grandmother Casey, who had been Jane Montgomery, had worn +moccasins in her girlhood, and once saved her life by jumping a fence and +out-running a redskin pursuer. The Montgomery and Casey annals were full of +blood-curdling adventures, and there is to-day a Casey County next to Adair, +with a Montgomery County somewhat farther east. As for the Lamptons, there is +an earldom in the English family, and there were claimants even then in the +American branch. All these things were worth while in Kentucky, but it was rare +Jane Lampton herself—gay, buoyant, celebrated for her beauty and her +grace; able to dance all night, and all day too, for that matter—that won +the heart of John Marshall Clemens, swept him off his feet almost at the moment +of their meeting. Many of the characteristics that made Mark Twain famous were +inherited from his mother. His sense of humor, his prompt, quaintly spoken +philosophy, these were distinctly her contribution to his fame. Speaking of her +in a later day, he once said: +</p> + +<p> +“She had a sort of ability which is rare in man and hardly existent in +woman—the ability to say a humorous thing with the perfect air of not +knowing it to be humorous.” +</p> + +<p> +She bequeathed him this, without doubt; also her delicate complexion; her +wonderful wealth of hair; her small, shapely hands and feet, and the pleasant +drawling speech which gave her wit, and his, a serene and perfect setting. +</p> + +<p> +It was a one-sided love affair, the brief courtship of Jane Lampton and John +Marshall Clemens. All her life, Jane Clemens honored her husband, and while he +lived served him loyally; but the choice of her heart had been a young +physician of Lexington with whom she had quarreled, and her prompt engagement +with John Clemens was a matter of temper rather than tenderness. She stipulated +that the wedding take place at once, and on May 6, 1823, they were married. She +was then twenty; her husband twenty-five. More than sixty years later, when +John Clemens had long been dead, she took a railway journey to a city where +there was an Old Settlers’ Convention, because among the names of those +attending she had noticed the name of the lover of her youth. She meant to +humble herself to him and ask forgiveness after all the years. She arrived too +late; the convention was over, and he was gone. Mark Twain once spoke of this, +and added: +</p> + +<p> +“It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed the field of my +personal experience in a long lifetime.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>II<br/> +THE FORTUNES OF JOHN AND JANE CLEMENS</h2> + +<p> +With all his ability and industry, and with the-best of intentions, John +Clemens would seem to have had an unerring faculty for making business +mistakes. It was his optimistic outlook, no doubt—his absolute confidence +in the prosperity that lay just ahead—which led him from one unfortunate +locality or enterprise to another, as long as he lived. About a year after his +marriage he settled with his young wife in Gainsborough, Tennessee, a mountain +town on the Cumberland River, and here, in 1825, their first child, a boy, was +born. They named him Orion—after the constellation, perhaps—though +they changed the accent to the first syllable, calling it Orion. Gainsborough +was a small place with few enough law cases; but it could hardly have been as +small, or furnished as few cases; as the next one selected, which was +Jamestown, Fentress County, still farther toward the Eastward Mountains. Yet +Jamestown had the advantage of being brand new, and in the eye of his fancy +John Clemens doubtless saw it the future metropolis of east Tennessee, with +himself its foremost jurist and citizen. He took an immediate and active +interest in the development of the place, established the county-seat there, +built the first Court House, and was promptly elected as circuit clerk of the +court. +</p> + +<p> +It was then that he decided to lay the foundation of a fortune for himself and +his children by acquiring Fentress County land. Grants could be obtained in +those days at the expense of less than a cent an acre, and John Clemens +believed that the years lay not far distant when the land would increase in +value ten thousand, twenty, perhaps even a hundred thousandfold. There was no +wrong estimate in that. Land covered with the finest primeval timber, and +filled with precious minerals, could hardly fail to become worth millions, even +though his entire purchase of 75,000 acres probably did not cost him more than +$500. The great tract lay about twenty nines to the southward of Jamestown. +Standing in the door of the Court House he had built, looking out over the +“Knob” of the Cumberland Mountains toward his vast possessions, he +said: +</p> + +<p> +“Whatever befalls me now, my heirs are secure. I may not live to see +these acres turn into silver and gold, but my children will.” +</p> + +<p> +Such was the creation of that mirage of wealth, the “Tennessee +land,” which all his days and for long afterward would lie just +ahead—a golden vision, its name the single watchword of the family +fortunes—the dream fading with years, only materializing at last as a +theme in a story of phantom riches, The Gilded Age. +</p> + +<p> +Yet for once John Clemens saw clearly, and if his dream did not come true he +was in no wise to blame. The land is priceless now, and a corporation of the +Clemens heirs is to-day contesting the title of a thin fragment of +it—about one thousand acres—overlooked in some survey. +</p> + +<p> +Believing the future provided for, Clemens turned his attention to present +needs. He built himself a house, unusual in its style and elegance. It had two +windows in each room, and its walls were covered with plastering, something +which no one in Jamestown had ever seen before. He was regarded as an +aristocrat. He wore a swallow-tail coat of fine blue jeans, instead of the +coarse brown native-made cloth. The blue-jeans coat was ornamented with brass +buttons and cost one dollar and twenty-five cents a yard, a high price for that +locality and time. His wife wore a calico dress for company, while the neighbor +wives wore homespun linsey-woolsey. The new house was referred to as the +Crystal Palace. When John and Jane Clemens attended balls—there were +continuous balls during the holidays—they were considered the most +graceful dancers. +</p> + +<p> +Jamestown did not become the metropolis he had dreamed. It attained almost +immediately to a growth of twenty-five houses—mainly log houses +—and stopped there. The country, too, was sparsely settled; law practice +was slender and unprofitable, the circuit-riding from court to court was very +bad for one of his physique. John Clemens saw his reserve of health and funds +dwindling, and decided to embark in merchandise. He built himself a store and +put in a small country stock of goods. These he exchanged for ginseng, +chestnuts, lampblack, turpentine, rosin, and other produce of the country, +which he took to Louisville every spring and fall in six-horse wagons. In the +mean time he would seem to have sold one or more of his slaves, doubtless to +provide capital. There was a second baby now—a little girl, +Pamela,—born in September, 1827. Three years later, May 1830, another +little girl, Margaret, came. By this time the store and home were in one +building, the store occupying one room, the household requiring +two—clearly the family fortunes were declining. +</p> + +<p> +About a year after little Margaret was born, John Clemens gave up Jamestown and +moved his family and stock of goods to a point nine miles distant, known as the +Three Forks of Wolf. The Tennessee land was safe, of course, and would be worth +millions some day, but in the mean time the struggle for daily substance was +becoming hard. +</p> + +<p> +He could not have remained at the Three Forks long, for in 1832 we find him at +still another place, on the right bank of Wolf River, where a post-office +called Pall Mall was established, with John Clemens as postmaster, usually +addressed as “Squire” or “Judge.” A store was run in +connection with the postoffice. At Pall Mall, in June, 1832, another boy, +Benjamin, was born. +</p> + +<p> +The family at this time occupied a log house built by John Clemens himself, the +store being kept in another log house on the opposite bank of the river. He no +longer practised law. In The Gilded Age we have Mark Twain’s picture of +Squire Hawkins and Obedstown, written from descriptions supplied in later years +by his mother and his brother Orion; and, while not exact in detail, it is not +regarded as an exaggerated presentation of east Tennessee conditions at that +time. The chapter is too long and too depressing to be set down here. The +reader may look it up for himself, if he chooses. If he does he will not wonder +that Jane Clemens’s handsome features had become somewhat sharper, and +her manner a shade graver, with the years and burdens of marriage, or that John +Clemens at thirty-six-out of health, out of tune with his environment +—was rapidly getting out of heart. After all the bright promise of the +beginning, things had somehow gone wrong, and hope seemed dwindling away. +</p> + +<p> +A tall man, he had become thin and unusually pale; he looked older than his +years. Every spring he was prostrated with what was called +“sunpain,” an acute form of headache, nerve-racking and destroying +to all persistent effort. Yet he did not retreat from his moral and +intellectual standards, or lose the respect of that shiftless community. He was +never intimidated by the rougher element, and his eyes were of a kind that +would disconcert nine men out of ten. Gray and deep-set under bushy brows, they +literally looked you through. Absolutely fearless, he permitted none to trample +on his rights. It is told of John Clemens, at Jamestown, that once when he had +lost a cow he handed the minister on Sunday morning a notice of the loss to be +read from the pulpit, according to the custom of that community. For some +reason, the minister put the document aside and neglected it. At the close of +the service Clemens rose and, going to the pulpit, read his announcement +himself to the congregation. Those who knew Mark Twain best will not fail to +recall in him certain of his father’s legacies. +</p> + +<p> +The arrival of a letter from “Colonel Sellers” inviting the Hawkins +family to come to Missouri is told in The Gilded Age. In reality the letter was +from John Quarles, who had married Jane Clemens’s sister, Patsey Lampton, +and settled in Florida, Monroe County, Missouri. It was a momentous letter in +The Gilded Age, and no less so in reality, for it shifted the entire scene of +the Clemens family fortunes, and it had to do with the birthplace and the +shaping of the career of one whose memory is likely to last as long as American +history. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>III<br/> +A HUMBLE BIRTHPLACE</h2> + +<p> +Florida, Missouri, was a small village in the early thirties—smaller than +it is now, perhaps, though in that day it had more promise, even if less +celebrity. The West was unassembled then, undigested, comparatively unknown. +Two States, Louisiana and Missouri, with less than half a million white +persons, were all that lay beyond the great river. St. Louis, with its boasted +ten thousand inhabitants and its river trade with the South, was the single +metropolis in all that vast uncharted region. There was no telegraph; there +were no railroads, no stage lines of any consequence—scarcely any maps. +For all that one could see or guess, one place was as promising as another, +especially a settlement like Florida, located at the forks of a pretty stream, +Salt River, which those early settlers believed might one day become navigable +and carry the merchandise of that region down to the mighty Mississippi, thence +to the world outside. +</p> + +<p> +In those days came John A. Quarles, of Kentucky, with his wife, who had been +Patsey Ann Lampton; also, later, Benjamin Lampton, her father, and others of +the Lampton race. It was natural that they should want Jane Clemens and her +husband to give up that disheartening east Tennessee venture and join them in +this new and promising land. It was natural, too, for John +Quarles—happy-hearted, generous, and optimistic—to write the +letter. There were only twenty-one houses in Florida, but Quarles counted +stables, out-buildings—everything with a roof on it—and set down +the number at fifty-four. +</p> + +<p> +Florida, with its iridescent promise and negligible future, was just the kind +of a place that John Clemens with unerring instinct would be certain to select, +and the Quarles letter could have but one answer. Yet there would be the +longing for companionship, too, and Jane Clemens must have hungered for her +people. In The Gilded Age, the Sellers letter ends: +</p> + +<p> +“Come!—rush!—hurry!—don’t wait for +anything!” +</p> + +<p> +The Clemens family began immediately its preparation for getting away. The +store was sold, and the farm; the last two wagon-loads of produce were sent to +Louisville; and with the aid of the money realized, a few hundred dollars, John +Clemens and his family “flitted out into the great mysterious blank that +lay beyond the Knobs of Tennessee.” They had a two-horse barouche, which +would seem to have been preserved out of their earlier fortunes. The barouche +held the parents and the three younger children, Pamela, Margaret, anal the +little boy, Benjamin. There were also two extra horses, which Orion, now ten, +and Jennie, the house-girl, a slave, rode. This was early in the spring of +1835. +</p> + +<p> +They traveled by the way of their old home at Columbia, and paid a visit to +relatives. At Louisville they embarked on a steamer bound for St. Louis; thence +overland once more through wilderness and solitude into what was then the Far +West, the promised land. +</p> + +<p> +They arrived one evening, and if Florida was not quite all in appearance that +John Clemens had dreamed, it was at least a haven—with John Quarles, +jovial, hospitable, and full of plans. The great Mississippi was less than +fifty miles away. Salt River, with a system of locks and dams, would certainly +become navigable to the Forks, with Florida as its head of navigation. It was a +Sellers fancy, though perhaps it should be said here that John Quarles was not +the chief original of that lovely character in The Gilded Age. That was another +relative—James Lampton, a cousin—quite as lovable, and a builder of +even more insubstantial dreams. +</p> + +<p> +John Quarles was already established in merchandise in Florida, and was +prospering in a small way. He had also acquired a good farm, which he worked +with thirty slaves, and was probably the rich man and leading citizen of the +community. He offered John Clemens a partnership in his store, and agreed to +aid him in the selection of some land. Furthermore, he encouraged him to renew +his practice of the law. Thus far, at least, the Florida venture was not a +mistake, for, whatever came, matters could not be worse than they had been in +Tennessee. +</p> + +<p> +In a small frame building near the center of the village, John and Jane Clemens +established their household. It was a humble one-story affair, with two main +rooms and a lean-to kitchen, though comfortable enough for its size, and +comparatively new. It is still standing and occupied when these lines are +written, and it should be preserved and guarded as a shrine for the American +people; for it was here that the foremost American-born author—the man +most characteristically American in every thought and word and action of his +life—drew his first fluttering breath, caught blinkingly the light of a +world that in the years to come would rise up and in its wide realm of letters +hail him as a king. +</p> + +<p> +It was on a bleak day, November 30, 1835, that he entered feebly the domain he +was to conquer. Long, afterward, one of those who knew him best said: +</p> + +<p> +“He always seemed to me like some great being from another +planet—never quite of this race or kind.” +</p> + +<p> +He may have been, for a great comet was in the sky that year, and it would +return no more until the day when he should be borne back into the far spaces +of silence and undiscovered suns. But nobody thought of this, then. +</p> + +<p> +He was a seven-months child, and there was no fanfare of welcome at his coming. +Perhaps it was even suggested that, in a house so small and so sufficiently +filled, there was no real need of his coming at all. One Polly Ann Buchanan, +who is said to have put the first garment of any sort on him, lived to boast of +the fact,* but she had no particular pride in that matter then. It was only a +puny baby with a wavering promise of life. Still, John Clemens must have +regarded with favor this first gift of fortune in a new land, for he named the +little boy Samuel, after his father, and added the name of an old and dear +Virginia friend, Langhorne. The family fortunes would seem to have been +improving at this time, and he may have regarded the arrival of another son as +a good omen. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* This honor has been claimed also for Mrs. Millie Upton and a Mrs. Damrell. +Probably all were present and assisted. +</p> + +<p> +With a family of eight, now, including Jennie, the slavegirl, more room was +badly needed, and he began building without delay. The result was not a +mansion, by any means, being still of the one-story pattern, but it was more +commodious than the tiny two-room affair. The rooms were larger, and there was +at least one ell, or extension, for kitchen and dining-room uses. This house, +completed in 1836, occupied by the Clemens family during the remainder of the +years spent in Florida, was often in later days pointed out as Mark +Twain’s birthplace. It missed that distinction by a few months, though +its honor was sufficient in having sheltered his early childhood.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* This house is no longer standing. When it was torn down several years ago, +portions of it were carried off and manufactured into souvenirs. Mark Twain +himself disclaimed it as his birthplace, and once wrote on a photograph of it: +“No, it is too stylish, it is not my birthplace.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>IV<br/> +BEGINNING A LONG JOURNEY</h2> + +<p> +It was not a robust childhood. The new baby managed to go through the +winter—a matter of comment among the family and neighbors. Added strength +came, but slowly; “Little Sam,” as they called him, was always +delicate during those early years. +</p> + +<p> +It was a curious childhood, full of weird, fantastic impressions and +contradictory influences, stimulating alike to the imagination and that embryo +philosophy of life which begins almost with infancy. John Clemens seldom +devoted any time to the company of his children. He looked after their comfort +and mental development as well as he could, and gave advice on occasion. He +bought a book now and then—sometimes a picture-book —and subscribed +for Peter Parley’s Magazine, a marvel of delight to the older children, +but he did not join in their amusements, and he rarely, or never, laughed. Mark +Twain did not remember ever having seen or heard his father laugh. The problem +of supplying food was a somber one to John Clemens; also, he was working on a +perpetual-motion machine at this period, which absorbed his spare time, and, to +the inventor at least, was not a mirthful occupation. Jane Clemens was busy, +too. Her sense of humor did not die, but with added cares and years her temper +as well as her features became sharper, and it was just as well to be fairly +out of range when she was busy with her employments. +</p> + +<p> +Little Sam’s companions were his brothers and sisters, all older than +himself: Orion, ten years his senior, followed by Pamela and Margaret at +intervals of two and three years, then by Benjamin, a kindly little lad whose +gentle life was chiefly devoted to looking after the baby brother, three years +his junior. But in addition to these associations, there were the still more +potent influences Of that day and section, the intimate, enveloping institution +of slavery, the daily companionship of the slaves. All the children of that +time were fond of the negroes and confided in them. They would, in fact, have +been lost without such protection and company. +</p> + +<p> +It was Jennie, the house-girl, and Uncle Ned, a man of all work +—apparently acquired with the improved prospects—who were in real +charge of the children and supplied them with entertainment. Wonderful +entertainment it was. That was a time of visions and dreams, small. gossip and +superstitions. Old tales were repeated over and over, with adornments and +improvements suggested by immediate events. At evening the Clemens children, +big and little, gathered about the great open fireplace while Jennie and Uncle +Ned told tales and hair-lifting legends. Even a baby of two or three years +could follow the drift of this primitive telling and would shiver and cling +close with the horror and delight of its curdling thrill. The tales always +began with “Once ’pon a time,” and one of them was the story +of the “Golden Arm” which the smallest listener would one day +repeat more elaborately to wider audiences in many lands. Briefly it ran as +follows: +</p> + +<p> +“Once ’Pon a time there was a man, and he had a wife, and she had +a’ arm of pure gold; and she died, and they buried her in the graveyard; +and one night her husband went and dug her up and cut off her golden arm and +tuck it home; and one night a ghost all in white come to him; and she was his +wife; and she says: +</p> + +<p> +“W-h-a-r-r’s my golden arm? W-h-a-r-r’s my golden arm? +W-h-a-r-r’s my g-o-l-den arm?” +</p> + +<p> +As Uncle Ned repeated these blood-curdling questions he would look first one +and then another of his listeners in the eyes, with his bands drawn up in front +of his breast, his fingers turned out and crooked like claws, while he bent +with each question closer to the shrinking forms before him. The tone was +sepulchral, with awful pause as if waiting each time for a reply. The +culmination came with a pounce on one of the group, a shake of the shoulders, +and a shout of: +</p> + +<p> +“YOU’VE got it!’ and she tore him all to pieces!” +</p> + +<p> +And the children would shout “Lordy!” and look furtively over their +shoulders, fearing to see a woman in white against the black wall; but, +instead, only gloomy, shapeless shadows darted across it as the flickering +flames in the fireplace went out on one brand and flared up on another. Then +there was a story of a great ball of fire that used to follow lonely travelers +along dark roads through the woods. +</p> + +<p> +“Once ’pon a time there was a man, and he was riding along de road +and he come to a ha’nted house, and he heard de +chains’a-rattlin’ and a-rattlin’ and a-rattlin’, and a +ball of fire come rollin’ up and got under his stirrup, and it +didn’t make no difference if his horse galloped or went slow or stood +still, de ball of fire staid under his stirrup till he got plum to de front +do’, and his wife come out and say: ‘My Gord, dat’s devil +fire!’ and she had to work a witch spell to drive it away.” +</p> + +<p> +“How big was it, Uncle Ned?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, ’bout as big as your head, and I ’spect it’s +likely to come down dis yere chimney ’most any time.” +</p> + +<p> +Certainly an atmosphere like this meant a tropic development for the +imagination of a delicate child. All the games and daily talk concerned +fanciful semi-African conditions and strange primal possibilities. The children +of that day believed in spells and charms and bad-luck signs, all learned of +their negro guardians. +</p> + +<p> +But if the negroes were the chief companions and protectors of the children, +they were likewise one of their discomforts. The greatest real dread children +knew was the fear of meeting runaway slaves. A runaway slave was regarded as +worse than a wild beast, and treated worse when caught. Once the children saw +one brought into Florida by six men who took him to an empty cabin, where they +threw him on the floor and bound him with ropes. His groans were loud and +frequent. Such things made an impression that would last a lifetime. +</p> + +<p> +Slave punishment, too, was not unknown, even in the household. Jennie +especially was often saucy and obstreperous. Jane Clemens, with more strength +of character than of body, once undertook to punish her for insolence, +whereupon Jennie snatched the whip from her hand. John Clemens was sent for in +haste. He came at once, tied Jennie’s wrists together with a bridle rein, +and administered chastisement across the shoulders with a cowhide. These were +things all calculated to impress a sensitive child. +</p> + +<p> +In pleasant weather the children roamed over the country, hunting berries and +nuts, drinking sugar-water, tying knots in love-vine, picking the petals from +daisies to the formula “Love me-love me not,” always accompanied by +one or more, sometimes by half a dozen, of their small darky followers. Shoes +were taken off the first of April. For a time a pair of old woolen stockings +were worn, but these soon disappeared, leaving the feet bare for the summer. +One of their dreads was the possibility of sticking a rusty nail into the foot, +as this was liable to cause lockjaw, a malady regarded with awe and terror. +They knew what lockjaw was—Uncle John Quarles’s black man, Dan, was +subject to it. Sometimes when he opened his mouth to its utmost capacity he +felt the joints slip and was compelled to put down the cornbread, or jole and +greens, or the piece of ’possum he was eating, while his mouth remained a +fixed abyss until the doctor came and restored it to a natural position by an +exertion of muscular power that would have well-nigh lifted an ox. +</p> + +<p> +Uncle John Quarles, his home, his farm, his slaves, all were sources of +never-ending delight. Perhaps the farm was just an ordinary Missouri farm and +the slaves just average negroes, but to those children these things were never +apparent. There was a halo about anything that belonged to Uncle John Quarles, +and that halo was the jovial, hilarious kindness of that gentle-hearted, humane +man. To visit at his house was for a child to be in a heaven of mirth and +pranks continually. When the children came for eggs he would say: +</p> + +<p> +“Your hens won’t lay, eh? Tell your maw to feed ’em parched +corn and drive ’em uphill,” and this was always a splendid stroke +of humor to his small hearers. +</p> + +<p> +Also, he knew how to mimic with his empty hands the peculiar patting and +tossing of a pone of corn-bread before placing it in the oven. He would make +the most fearful threats to his own children, for disobedience, but never +executed any of them. When they were out fishing and returned late he would +say: +</p> + +<p> +“You—if I have to hunt you again after dark, I will make you smell +like a burnt horn!” +</p> + +<p> +Nothing could exceed the ferocity of this threat, and all the children, with +delightful terror and curiosity, wondered what would happen—if it ever +did happen—that would result in giving a child that peculiar savor. +Altogether it was a curious early childhood that Little Sam had—at least +it seems so to us now. Doubtless it was commonplace enough for that time and +locality. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>V<br/> +THE WAY OF FORTUNE</h2> + +<p> +Perhaps John Quarles’s jocular, happy-go-lucky nature and general conduct +did not altogether harmonize with John Clemens’s more taciturn business +methods. Notwithstanding the fact that he was a builder of dreams, Clemens was +neat and methodical, with his papers always in order. He had a hearty dislike +for anything resembling frivolity and confusion, which very likely were the +chief features of John Quarles’s storekeeping. At all events, they +dissolved partnership at the end of two or three years, and Clemens opened +business for himself across the street. He also practised law whenever there +were cases, and was elected justice of the peace, acquiring the permanent title +of “Judge.” He needed some one to assist in the store, and took in +Orion, who was by this time twelve or thirteen years old; but, besides his +youth, Orion—all his days a visionary—was a studious, pensive lad +with no taste for commerce. Then a partnership was formed with a man who +developed neither capital nor business ability, and proved a disaster in the +end. The modest tide of success which had come with John Clemens’s +establishment at Florida had begun to wane. Another boy, Henry, born in July, +1838, added one more responsibility to his burdens. +</p> + +<p> +There still remained a promise of better things. There seemed at least a good +prospect that the scheme for making Salt River navigable was likely to become +operative. With even small boats (bateaux) running as high as the lower branch +of the South Fork, Florida would become an emporium of trade, and merchants and +property-owners of that village would reap a harvest. An act of the Legislature +was passed incorporating the navigation company, with Judge Clemens as its +president. Congress was petitioned to aid this work of internal improvement. So +confident was the company of success that the hamlet was thrown into a fever of +excitement by the establishment of a boatyard and, the actual construction of a +bateau; but a Democratic Congress turned its back on the proposed improvement. +No boat bigger than a skiff ever ascended Salt River, though there was a wild +report, evidently a hoax, that a party of picnickers had seen one night a +ghostly steamer, loaded and manned, puffing up the stream. An old Scotchman, +Hugh Robinson, when he heard of it, said: +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t doubt a word they say. In Scotland, it often happens that +when people have been killed, or are troubled, they send their spirits abroad +and they are seen as much like themselves as a reflection in a looking-glass. +That was a ghost of some wrecked steamboat.” +</p> + +<p> +But John Quarles, who was present, laughed: +</p> + +<p> +“If ever anybody was in trouble, the men on that steamboat were,” +he said. “They were the Democratic candidates at the last election. They +killed Salt River improvements, and Salt River has killed them. Their ghosts +went up the river on a ghostly steamboat.” +</p> + +<p> +It is possible that this comment, which was widely repeated and traveled far, +was the origin of the term “Going up Salt River,” as applied to +defeated political candidates.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* The dictionaries give this phrase as probably traceable to a small, difficult +stream in Kentucky; but it seems more reasonable to believe that it originated +in Quarles’s witty comment. +</p> + +<p> +No other attempt was ever made to establish navigation on Salt River. Rumors of +railroads already running in the East put an end to any such thought. Railroads +could run anywhere and were probably cheaper and easier to maintain than the +difficult navigation requiring locks and dams. Salt River lost its prestige as +a possible water highway and became mere scenery. Railroads have ruined greater +rivers than the Little Salt, and greater villages than Florida, though neither +Florida nor Salt River has been touched by a railroad to this day. Perhaps such +close detail of early history may be thought unnecessary in a work of this +kind, but all these things were definite influences in the career of the little +lad whom the world would one day know as Mark Twain. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>VI<br/> +A NEW HOME</h2> + +<p> +The death of little Margaret was the final misfortune that came to the Clemens +family in Florida. Doubtless it hastened their departure. There was a +superstition in those days that to refer to health as good luck, rather than to +ascribe it to the kindness of Providence, was to bring about a judgment. Jane +Clemens one day spoke to a neighbor of their good luck in thus far having lost +no member of their family. That same day, when the sisters, Pamela and +Margaret, returned from school, Margaret laid her books on the table, looked in +the glass at her flushed cheeks, pulled out the trundle-bed, and lay down. +</p> + +<p> +She was never in her right mind again. The doctor was sent for and diagnosed +the case “bilious fever.” One evening, about nine o’clock, +Orion was sitting on the edge of the trundle-bed by the patient, when the door +opened and Little Sam, then about four years old, walked in from his bedroom, +fast asleep. He came to the side of the trundle-bed and pulled at the bedding +near Margaret’s shoulder for some time before he woke. Next day the +little girl was “picking at the coverlet,” and it was known that +she could not live. About a week later she died. She was nine years old, a +beautiful child, plump in form, with rosy cheeks, black hair, and bright eyes. +This was in August, 1839. It was Little Sam’s first sight of +death—the first break in the Clemens family: it left a sad household. The +shoemaker who lived next door claimed to have seen several weeks previous, in a +vision, the coffin and the funeral-procession pass the gate by the winding +road, to the cemetery, exactly as it happened. +</p> + +<p> +Matters were now going badly enough with John Clemens. Yet he never was without +one great comforting thought—the future of the Tennessee land. It +underlaid every plan; it was an anodyne for every ill. +</p> + +<p> +“When we sell the Tennessee land everything will be all right,” was +the refrain that brought solace in the darkest hours. A blessing for him that +this was so, for he had little else to brighten his days. Negotiations looking +to the sale of the land were usually in progress. When the pressure became very +hard and finances were at their lowest ebb, it was offered at any +price—at five cents an acre, sometimes. When conditions improved, however +little, the price suddenly advanced even to its maximum of one thousand dollars +an acre. Now and then a genuine offer came along, but, though eagerly welcomed +at the moment, it was always refused after a little consideration. +</p> + +<p> +“We will struggle along somehow, Jane,” he would say. “We +will not throw away the children’s fortune.” +</p> + +<p> +There was one other who believed in the Tennessee land—Jane +Clemens’s favorite cousin, James Lampton, the courtliest, gentlest, most +prodigal optimist of all that guileless race. To James Lampton the land always +had “millions in it”—everything had. He made stupendous +fortunes daily, in new ways. The bare mention of the Tennessee land sent him +off into figures that ended with the purchase of estates in England adjoining +those of the Durham Lamptons, whom he always referred to as “our +kindred,” casually mentioning the whereabouts and health of the +“present earl.” Mark Twain merely put James Lampton on paper when +he created Colonel Sellers, and the story of the Hawkins family as told in The +Gilded Age reflects clearly the struggle of those days. The words +“Tennessee land,” with their golden promise, became his earliest +remembered syllables. He grew to detest them in time, for they came to mean +mockery. +</p> + +<p> +One of the offers received was the trifling sum of two hundred and fifty +dollars, and such was the moment’s need that even this was considered. +Then, of course, it was scornfully refused. In some autobiographical chapters +which Orion Clemens left behind he said: +</p> + +<p> +“If we had received that two hundred and fifty dollars, it would have +been more than we ever made, clear of expenses, out of the whole of the +Tennessee land, after forty years of worry to three generations.” +</p> + +<p> +What a less speculative and more logical reasoner would have done in the +beginning, John Clemens did now; he selected a place which, though little more +than a village, was on a river already navigable—a steamboat town with at +least the beginnings of manufacturing and trade already established—that +is to say, Hannibal, Missouri—a point well chosen, as shown by its +prosperity to-day. +</p> + +<p> +He did not delay matters. When he came to a decision, he acted quickly. He +disposed of a portion of his goods and shipped the remainder overland; then, +with his family and chattels loaded in a wagon, he was ready to set out for the +new home. Orion records that, for some reason, his father did not invite him to +get into the wagon, and how, being always sensitive to slight, he had regarded +this in the light of deliberate desertion. +</p> + +<p> +“The sense of abandonment caused my heart to ache. The wagon had gone a +few feet when I was discovered and invited to enter. How I wished they had not +missed me until they had arrived at Hannibal. Then the world would have seen +how I was treated and would have cried ‘Shame!’” +</p> + +<p> +This incident, noted and remembered, long after became curiously confused with +another, in Mark Twain’s mind. In an autobiographical chapter published +in The North American Review he tells of the move to Hannibal and relates that +he himself was left behind by his absentminded family. The incident of his own +abandonment did not happen then, but later, and somewhat differently. It would +indeed be an absent-minded family if the parents, and the sister and brothers +ranging up to fourteen years of age, should drive off leaving Little Sam, age +four, behind.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* As mentioned in the Prefatory Note, Mark Twain’s memory played +him many tricks in later life. Incidents were filtered through his vivid +imagination until many of them bore little relation to the actual occurrence. +Some of these lapses were only amusing, but occasionally they worked an +unintentional injustice. It is the author’s purpose in every instance, so +far as is possible, to keep the record straight. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>VII<br/> +THE LITTLE TOWN OF HANNIBAL</h2> + +<p> +Hannibal in 1839 was already a corporate community and had an atmosphere of its +own. It was a town with a distinct Southern flavor, though rather more astir +than the true Southern community of that period; more Western in that it +planned, though without excitement, certain new enterprises and made a show, at +least, of manufacturing. It was somnolent (a slave town could not be less than +that), but it was not wholly asleep—that is to say, dead—and it was +tranquilly content. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +The little city was proud of its scenery, and justly so: circled with bluffs, +with Holliday’s Hill on the north, Lover’s Leap on the south, the +shining river in the foreground, there was little to be desired in the way of +setting. +</p> + +<p> +The river, of course, was the great highway. Rafts drifted by; steamboats +passed up and down and gave communication to the outside world; St. Louis, the +metropolis, was only one hundred miles away. Hannibal was inclined to rank +itself as of next importance, and took on airs accordingly. It had society, +too—all kinds—from the negroes and the town drunkards +(“General” Gaines and Jimmy Finn; later, Old Ben Blankenship) up +through several nondescript grades of mechanics and tradesmen to the +professional men of the community, who wore tall hats, ruffled shirt-fronts, +and swallow-tail coats, usually of some positive color-blue, snuff-brown, and +green. These and their families constituted the true aristocracy of the +Southern town. Most of them had pleasant homes—brick or large frame +mansions, with colonnaded entrances, after the manner of all Southern +architecture of that period, which had an undoubted Greek root, because of +certain drawing-books, it is said, accessible to the builders of those days. +Most of them, also, had means —slaves and land which yielded an income in +addition to their professional earnings. They lived in such style as was +considered fitting to their rank, and had such comforts as were then +obtainable. +</p> + +<p> +It was to this grade of society that judge Clemens and his family belonged, but +his means no longer enabled him to provide either the comforts or the +ostentation of his class. He settled his family and belongings in a portion of +a house on Hill Street—the Pavey Hotel; his merchandise he established +modestly on Main Street, with Orion, in a new suit of clothes, as clerk. +Possibly the clothes gave Orion a renewed ambition for mercantile life, but +this waned. Business did not begin actively, and he was presently dreaming and +reading away the time. A little later he became a printer’s apprentice, +in the office of the Hannibal Journal, at his father’s suggestion. +</p> + +<p> +Orion Clemens perhaps deserves a special word here. He was to be much +associated with his more famous brother for many years, and his personality as +boy and man is worth at least a casual consideration. He was fifteen now, and +had developed characteristics which in a greater or less degree were to go with +him through life. Of a kindly, loving disposition, like all of the Clemens +children, quick of temper, but always contrite, or forgiving, he was never +without the fond regard of those who knew him best. His weaknesses were +manifold, but, on the whole, of a negative kind. Honorable and truthful, he had +no tendency to bad habits or unworthy pursuits; indeed, he had no positive +traits of any sort. That was his chief misfortune. Full of whims and fancies, +unstable, indeterminate, he was swayed by every passing emotion and influence. +Daily he laid out a new course of study and achievement, only to fling it aside +because of some chance remark or printed paragraph or bit of advice that ran +contrary to his purpose. Such a life is bound to be a succession of +extremes—alternate periods of supreme exaltation and despair. In his +autobiographical chapters, already mentioned, Orion sets down every impulse and +emotion and failure with that faithful humility which won him always the +respect, if not always the approval, of men. +</p> + +<p> +Printing was a step downward, for it was a trade, and Orion felt it keenly. A +gentleman’s son and a prospective heir of the Tennessee land, he was +entitled to a profession. To him it was punishment, and the disgrace weighed +upon him. Then he remembered that Benjamin Franklin had been a printer and had +eaten only an apple and a bunch of grapes for his dinner. Orion decided to +emulate Franklin, and for a time he took only a biscuit and a glass of water at +a meal, foreseeing the day when he should electrify the world with his +eloquence. He was surprised to find how clear his mind was on this low diet and +how rapidly he learned his trade. +</p> + +<p> +Of the other children Pamela, now twelve, and Benjamin, seven, were put to +school. They were pretty, attractive children, and Henry, the baby, was a +sturdy toddler, the pride of the household. Little Sam was the least promising +of the flock. He remained delicate, and developed little beyond a tendency to +pranks. He was a queer, fanciful, uncommunicative child that detested indoors +and would run away if not watched—always in the direction of the river. +He walked in his sleep, too, and often the rest of the household got up in the +middle of the night to find him fretting with cold in some dark corner. The +doctor was summoned for him oftener than was good for the family purse—or +for him, perhaps, if we may credit the story of heavy dosings of those stern +allopathic days. +</p> + +<p> +Yet he would appear not to have been satisfied with his heritage of ailments, +and was ambitious for more. An epidemic of measles—the black, deadly +kind—was ravaging Hannibal, and he yearned for the complaint. He yearned +so much that when he heard of a playmate, one of the Bowen boys, who had it, he +ran away and, slipping into the house, crept into bed with the infection. The +success of this venture was complete. Some days later, the Clemens family +gathered tearfully around Little Sam’s bed to see him die. According to +his own after-confession, this gratified him, and he was willing to die for the +glory of that touching scene. However, he disappointed them, and was presently +up and about in search of fresh laurels.* He must have been a wearing child, +and we may believe that Jane Clemens, with her varied cares and labors, did not +always find him a comfort. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* In later life Mr. Clemens did not recollect the precise period of this +illness. With habitual indifference he assigned it to various years, as his +mood or the exigencies of his theme required. Without doubt the +“measles” incident occurred when he was very young. +</p> + +<p> +“You gave me more uneasiness than any child I had,” she said to him +once, in her old age. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you were afraid I wouldn’t live,” he suggested, in +his tranquil fashion. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with that keen humor that had not dulled in eighty years. +“No; afraid you would,” she said. But that was only her joke, for +she was the most tenderhearted creature in the world, and, like mothers in +general, had a weakness for the child that demanded most of her mother’s +care. +</p> + +<p> +It was mainly on his account that she spent her summers on John Quarles’s +farm near Florida, and it was during the first summer that an incident already +mentioned occurred. It was decided that the whole family should go for a brief +visit, and one Saturday morning in June Mrs. Clemens, with the three elder +children and the baby, accompanied by Jennie, the slave-girl, set out in a +light wagon for the day’s drive, leaving Judge Clemens to bring Little +Sam on horseback Sunday morning. The hour was early when Judge Clemens got up +to saddle his horse, and Little Sam was still asleep. The horse being ready, +Clemens, his mind far away, mounted and rode off without once remembering the +little boy, and in the course of the afternoon arrived at his +brother-in-law’s farm. Then he was confronted by Jane Clemens, who +demanded Little Sam. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” said the judge, aghast, “I never once thought of him +after I left him asleep.” +</p> + +<p> +Wharton Lampton, a brother of Jane Clemens and Patsey Quarles, hastily saddled +a horse and set out, helter-skelter, for Hannibal. He arrived in the early +dusk. The child was safe enough, but he was crying with loneliness and hunger. +He had spent most of the day in the locked, deserted house playing with a hole +in the meal-sack where the meal ran out, when properly encouraged, in a tiny +stream. He was fed and comforted, and next day was safe on the farm, which +during that summer and those that followed it, became so large a part of his +boyhood and lent a coloring to his later years. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>VIII<br/> +THE FARM</h2> + +<p> +We have already mentioned the delight of the Clemens children in Uncle John +Quarles’s farm. To Little Sam it was probably a life-saver. With his +small cousin, Tabitha,* just his own age (they called her Puss), he wandered +over that magic domain, fording new marvels at every step, new delights +everywhere. A slave-girl, Mary, usually attended them, but she was only six +years older, and not older at all in reality, so she was just a playmate, and +not a guardian to be feared or evaded. Sometimes, indeed, it was necessary for +her to threaten to tell “Miss Patsey” or “Miss Jane,” +when her little charges insisted on going farther or staying later than she +thought wise from the viewpoint of her own personal safety; but this was +seldom, and on the whole a stay at the farm was just one long idyllic dream of +summer-time and freedom. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Tabitha Quarles, now Mrs. Greening, of Palmyra, Missouri, has supplied most +of the material for this chapter. +</p> + +<p> +The farm-house stood in the middle of a large yard entered by a stile made of +sawed-off logs of graduated heights. In the corner of the yard were hickory +trees, and black walnut, and beyond the fence the hill fell away past the +barns, the corn-cribs, and the tobacco-house to a brook—a divine place to +wade, with deep, dark, forbidden pools. Down in the pasture there were swings +under the big trees, and Mary swung the children and ran under them until their +feet touched the branches, and then took her turn and “balanced” +herself so high that their one wish was to be as old as Mary and swing in that +splendid way. All the woods were full of squirrels—gray squirrels and the +red-fox species—and many birds and flowers; all the meadows were gay with +clover and butterflies, and musical with singing grasshoppers and calling +larks; there were blackberries in the fence rows, apples and peaches in the +orchard, and watermelons in the corn. They were not always ripe, those +watermelons, and once, when Little Sam had eaten several pieces of a green one, +he was seized with cramps so severe that most of the household expected him to +die forthwith. +</p> + +<p> +Jane Clemens was not heavily concerned. +</p> + +<p> +“Sammy will pull through,” she said; “he wasn’t born to +die that way.” +</p> + +<p> +It is the slender constitution that bears the strain. “Sammy” did +pull through, and in a brief time was ready for fresh adventure. +</p> + +<p> +There were plenty of these: there were the horses to ride to and from the +fields; the ox-wagons to ride in when they had dumped their heavy loads; the +circular horsepower to ride on when they threshed the wheat. This last was a +dangerous and forbidden pleasure, but the children would dart between the teams +and climb on, and the slave who was driving would pretend not to see. Then in +the evening when the black woman came along, going after the cows, the children +would race ahead and set the cows running and jingling their +bells—especially Little Sam, for he was a wild-headed, impetuous child of +sudden ecstasies that sent him capering and swinging his arms, venting his +emotions in a series of leaps and shrieks and somersaults, and spasms of +laughter as he lay rolling in the grass. +</p> + +<p> +His tendency to mischief grew with this wide liberty, improved health, and the +encouragement of John Quarles’s good-natured, fun-loving slaves. +</p> + +<p> +The negro quarters beyond the orchard were especially attractive. In one cabin +lived a bed-ridden, white-headed old woman whom the children visited daily and +looked upon with awe; for she was said to be a thousand years old and to have +talked with Moses. The negroes believed this; the children, too, of course, and +that she had lost her health in the desert, coming out of Egypt. The bald spot +on her head was caused by fright at seeing Pharaoh drowned. She also knew how +to avert spells and ward off witches, which added greatly to her prestige. +Uncle Dan’l was a favorite, too-kind-hearted and dependable, while his +occasional lockjaw gave him an unusual distinction. Long afterward he would +become Nigger Jim in the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn tales, and so in his +gentle guilelessness win immortality and the love of many men. +</p> + +<p> +Certainly this was a heavenly place for a little boy, the farm of Uncle John +Quarles, and the house was as wonderful as its surroundings. It was a two-story +double log building, with a spacious floor (roofed in) connecting the two +divisions. In the summer the table was set in the middle of that shady, breezy +pavilion, and sumptuous meals were served in the lavish Southern style, brought +to the table in vast dishes that left only room for rows of plates around the +edge. Fried chicken, roast pig, turkeys, ducks, geese, venison just killed, +squirrels, rabbits, partridges, pheasants, prairie-chickens—the list is +too long to be served here. If a little boy could not improve on that bill of +fare and in that atmosphere, his case was hopeless indeed. His mother kept him +there until the late fall, when the chilly evenings made them gather around the +wide, blazing fireplace. Sixty years later he wrote of that scene: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I can see the room yet with perfect clearness. I can see all its buildings, 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; the slick and carpetless oak floor +faintly mirroring the flame tongues, and freckled with black indentations where +fire-coals had popped out and died a leisurely death; half a dozen children +romping in the background twilight; splint-bottom chairs here and +there—some with rockers; a cradle —out of service, but waiting with +confidence. +</p> + +<p> +One is tempted to dwell on this period, to quote prodigally from these vivid +memories—the thousand minute impressions which the child’s +sensitive mind acquired in that long-ago time and would reveal everywhere in +his work in the years to come. For him it was education of a more valuable and +lasting sort than any he would ever acquire from books. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>IX<br/> +SCHOOL-DAYS</h2> + +<p> +Nevertheless, on his return to Hannibal, it was decided that Little Sam was now +ready to go to school. He was about five years old, and the months on the farm +had left him wiry and lively, even if not very robust. His mother declared that +he gave her more trouble than all the other children put together. +</p> + +<p> +“He drives me crazy with his didoes, when he is in the house,” she +used to say; “and when he is out of it I am expecting every minute that +some one will bring him home half dead.” +</p> + +<p> +He did, in fact, achieve the first of his “nine narrow escapes from +drowning” about this time, and was pulled out of the river one afternoon +and brought home in a limp and unpromising condition. When with mullein tea and +castor-oil she had restored him to activity, she said: “I guess there +wasn’t much danger. People born to be hanged are safe in water.” +</p> + +<p> +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. Perhaps this is a good place to +say that Jane Clemens was the original of Tom Sawyer’s “Aunt +Polly,” and her portrait as presented in that book is considered perfect. +Kind-hearted, fearless, looking and acting ten years older than her age, as +women did in that time, always outspoken and sometimes severe, she was regarded +as a “character” by her friends, and beloved by them as, a +charitable, sympathetic woman whom it was good to know. Her sense of pity was +abnormal. She refused to kill even flies, and punished the cat for catching +mice. She, would drown the young kittens, when necessary, but warmed the water +for the purpose. On coming to Hannibal, she joined the Presbyterian Church, and +her religion was of that clean-cut, strenuous kind which regards as necessary +institutions hell and Satan, though she had been known to express pity for the +latter for being obliged to surround himself with such poor society. Her +children she directed with considerable firmness, and all were tractable and +growing in grace except Little Sam. Even baby Henry at two was lisping the +prayers that Sam would let go by default unless carefully guarded. His sister +Pamela, who was eight years older and always loved him dearly, usually +supervised these spiritual exercises, and in her gentle care earned immortality +as the Cousin Mary of Tom Sawyer. He would say his prayers willingly enough +when encouraged by sister Pamela, but he much preferred to sit up in bed and +tell astonishing tales of the day’s adventure—tales which made +prayer seem a futile corrective and caused his listeners to wonder why the +lightning was restrained so long. They did not know they were glimpsing the +first outcroppings of a genius that would one day amaze and entertain the +nations. Neighbors hearing of these things (also certain of his narrations) +remonstrated with Mrs. Clemens. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t believe anything that child says, I hope.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, I know his average. I discount him ninety per cent. The rest is +pure gold.” At another time she said: “Sammy is a well of truth, +but you can’t bring it all up in one bucket.” +</p> + +<p> +This, however, is digression; the incidents may have happened somewhat later. +</p> + +<p> +A certain Miss E. Horr was selected to receive the payment for taking charge of +Little Sam during several hours each day, directing him mentally and morally in +the mean time. Her school was then in a log house on Main Street (later it was +removed to Third Street), and was of the primitive old-fashioned kind, with +pupils of all ages, ranging in advancement from the primer to the third reader, +from the tables to long division, with a little geography and grammar and a +good deal of spelling. Long division and the third reader completed the +curriculum in that school. Pupils who decided to take a post-graduate course +went to a Mr. Cross, who taught in a frame house on the hill facing what is now +the Public Square. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Horr received twenty-five cents a week for each pupil, and opened her +school with prayer; after which came a chapter of the Bible, with explanations, +and the rules of conduct. Then the A B C class was called, because their +recital was a hand-to-hand struggle, requiring no preparation. +</p> + +<p> +The rules of conduct that first day interested Little Sam. He calculated how +much he would need to trim in, to sail close to the danger-line and still avoid +disaster. He made a miscalculation during the forenoon and received warning; a +second offense would mean punishment. He did not mean to be caught the second +time, but he had not learned Miss Horr yet, and was presently startled by being +commanded to go out and bring a stick for his own correction. +</p> + +<p> +This was certainly disturbing. It was sudden, and then he did not know much +about the selection of sticks. Jane Clemens had usually used her hand. It +required a second command to get him headed in the right direction, and he was +a trifle dazed when he got outside. He had the forests of Missouri to select +from, but choice was difficult. Everything looked too big and competent. Even +the smallest switch had a wiry, discouraging look. Across the way was a +cooper-shop with a good many shavings outside. +</p> + +<p> +One had blown across and lay just in front of him. It was an inspiration. He +picked it up and, solemnly entering the school-room, meekly handed it to Miss +Herr. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps Miss Horr’s sense of humor prompted forgiveness, but discipline +must be maintained. +</p> + +<p> +“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 Jimmy Dunlap went, and the switch +was of a sort to give the little boy an immediate and permanent distaste for +school. He informed his mother when he went home at noon that he did not care +for school; that he had no desire to be a great man; that he preferred to be a +pirate or an Indian and scalp or drown such people as Miss Horr. Down in her +heart his mother was sorry for him, but what she said was that she was glad +there was somebody at last who could take him in hand. +</p> + +<p> +He returned to school, but he never learned to like it. Each morning he went +with reluctance and remained with loathing—the loathing which he always +had for anything resembling bondage and tyranny or even the smallest +curtailment of liberty. A School was ruled with a rod in those days, a busy and +efficient rod, as the Scripture recommended. Of the smaller boys Little +Sam’s back was sore as often as the next, and he dreamed mainly of a day +when, grown big and fierce, he would descend with his band and capture Miss +Horr and probably drag her by the hair, as he had seen Indians and pirates do +in the pictures. 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 purple distance beyond, and the glint of the river, it seemed to him +that to be shut up with a Webster’s spelling-book and a cross old maid +was more than human nature could bear. Among the records preserved from that +far-off day there remains a yellow slip, whereon in neat old-fashioned +penmanship is inscribed: +</p> + +<p class="center"> +MISS PAMELA CLEMENS +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Has won the love of her teacher and schoolmates by her amiable deportment and +faithful application to her various studies.<br/> + E. Horr, <i>Teacher</i>. +</p> + +<p> +If any such testimonial was ever awarded to Little Sam, diligent search has +failed to reveal it. If he won the love of his teacher and playmates it was +probably for other reasons. +</p> + +<p> +Yet he must have learned, somehow, for he could read presently and was soon +regarded as a good speller for his years. His spelling came as a natural gift, +as did most of his attainments, then and later. +</p> + +<p> +It has already been mentioned that Miss Horr opened her school with prayer and +Scriptural readings. Little Sam did not especially delight in these things, but +he respected them. Not to do so was dangerous. Flames were being kept brisk for +little boys who were heedless of sacred matters; his home teaching convinced +him of that. He also respected Miss Horr as an example of orthodox faith, and +when she read the text “Ask and ye shall receive” and assured them +that whoever prayed for a thing earnestly, his prayer would be answered, he +believed it. A small schoolmate, the baker’s daughter, brought +gingerbread to school every morning, and Little Sam was just +“honing” for some of it. He wanted a piece of that baker’s +gingerbread more than anything else in the world, and he decided to pray for +it. +</p> + +<p> +The little girl sat in front of him, but always until that morning had kept the +gingerbread out of sight. Now, however, when he finished his prayer and looked +up, a small morsel of the precious food lay in front of him. Perhaps the little +girl could no longer stand that hungry look in his eyes. Possibly she had heard +his petition; at all events his prayer bore fruit and his faith at that moment +would have moved Holliday’s Hill. He decided to pray for everything he +wanted, but when he tried the gingerbread supplication next morning it had no +result. Grieved, but still unshaken, he tried next morning again; still no +gingerbread; and when a third and fourth effort left him hungry he grew +despairing and silent, and wore the haggard face of doubt. His mother said: +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter, Sammy; are you sick?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “but I don’t believe in saying prayers +any more, and I’m never going to do it again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Sammy, what in the world has happened?” she asked, anxiously. +Then he broke down and cried on her lap and told her, for it was a serious +thing in that day openly to repudiate faith. Jane Clemens gathered him to her +heart and comforted him. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll make you a whole pan of gingerbread, better than that,” +she said, “and school will soon be out, too, and you can go back to Uncle +John’s farm.” +</p> + +<p> +And so passed and ended Little Sam’s first school-days. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>X<br/> +EARLY VICISSITUDE AND SORROW</h2> + +<p> +Prosperity came laggingly enough to the Clemens household. The year 1840 +brought hard times: the business venture paid little or no return; law practice +was not much more remunerative. Judge Clemens ran for the office of justice of +the peace and was elected, but fees were neither large nor frequent. By the end +of the year it became necessary to part with Jennie, the slave-girl—a +grief to all of them, for they were fond of her in spite of her wilfulness, and +she regarded them as “her family.” She was tall, well formed, +nearly black, and brought a good price. A Methodist minister in Hannibal sold a +negro child at the same time to another minister who took it to his home +farther South. As the steamboat moved away from the landing the child’s +mother stood at the water’s edge, shrieking her anguish. We are prone to +consider these things harshly now, when slavery has been dead for nearly half a +century, but it was a sacred institution then, and to sell a child from its +mother was little more than to sell to-day a calf from its lowing dam. One +could be sorry, of course, in both instances, but necessity or convenience are +matters usually considered before sentiment. Mark Twain once said of his +mother: +</p> + +<p> +“Kind-hearted and compassionate as she was, I think she was not conscious +that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarranted usurpation. She had never +heard it assailed in any pulpit, but had heard it defended and sanctified in a +thousand. As far as her experience went, the wise, the good, and the holy were +unanimous in the belief that slavery was right, righteous, sacred, the peculiar +pet of the Deity, and a condition which the slave himself ought to be daily and +nightly thankful for.” +</p> + +<p> +Yet Jane Clemens must have had qualms at times—vague, unassembled doubts +that troubled her spirit. After Jennie was gone a little black chore-boy was +hired from his owner, who had bought him on the east shore of Maryland and +brought him to that remote Western village, far from family and friends. +</p> + +<p> +He was a cheery spirit in spite of that, and gentle, but very noisy. All day he +went about singing, whistling, and whooping until his noise became monotonous, +maddening. One day Little Sam said: +</p> + +<p> +“Ma—[that was the Southern term]—make Sandy stop singing all +the time. It’s awful.” +</p> + +<p> +Tears suddenly came into his mother’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor thing! He is sold away from his home. When he sings it shows maybe +he is not remembering. When he’s still I am afraid he is thinking, and I +can’t bear it.” +</p> + +<p> +Yet any one in that day who advanced the idea of freeing the slaves was held in +abhorrence. An abolitionist was something to despise, to stone out of the +community. The children held the name in horror, as belonging to something less +than human; something with claws, perhaps, and a tail. +</p> + +<p> +The money received for the sale of Jennie made judge Clemens easier for a time. +Business appears to have improved, too, and he was tided through another year +during which he seems to have made payments on an expensive piece of real +estate on Hill and Main streets. This property, acquired in November, 1839, +meant the payment of some seven thousand dollars, and was a credit purchase, +beyond doubt. It was well rented, but the tenants did not always pay; and +presently a crisis came—a descent of creditors —and John: Clemens +at forty-four found himself without business and without means. He offered +everything—his cow, his household furniture, even his forks and +spoons—to his creditors, who protested that he must not strip himself. +They assured him that they admired his integrity so much they would aid him to +resume business; but when he went to St. Louis to lay in a stock of goods he +was coldly met, and the venture came to nothing. +</p> + +<p> +He now made a trip to Tennessee in the hope of collecting some old debts and to +raise money on the Tennessee land. He took along a negro man named Charlie, +whom he probably picked up for a small sum, hoping to make something through +his disposal in a better market. The trip was another failure. The man who owed +him a considerable sum of money was solvent, but pleaded hard times: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +It seems so very hard upon him—[John Clemens wrote home]—to pay +such a sum that I could not have the conscience to hold him to it. . . I still +have Charlie. The highest price I had offered for him in New Orleans was $50, +in Vicksburg $40. After performing the journey to Tennessee, I expect to sell +him for whatever he will bring. +</p> + +<p> +I do not know what I can commence for a business in the spring. My brain is +constantly on the rack with the study, and I can’t relieve myself of it. +The future, taking its completion from the state of my health or mind, is +alternately beaming in sunshine or over-shadowed with clouds; but mostly +cloudy, as you may suppose. I want bodily exercise—some constant and +active employment, in the first place; and, in the next place, I want to be +paid for it, if possible. +</p> + +<p> +This letter is dated January 7, 1842. He returned without any financial +success, and obtained employment for a time in a commission-house on the levee. +The proprietor found some fault one day, and Judge Clemens walked out of the +premises. On his way home he stopped in a general store, kept by a man named +Selms, to make some purchases. When he asked that these be placed on account, +Selms hesitated. Judge Clemens laid down a five-dollar gold piece, the last +money he possessed in the world, took the goods, and never entered the place +again. +</p> + +<p> +When Jane Clemens reproached him for having made the trip to Tennessee, at a +cost of two hundred dollars, so badly needed at this time, he only replied +gently that he had gone for what he believed to be the best. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not able to dig in the streets,” he added, and Orion, who +records this, adds: +</p> + +<p> +“I can see yet the hopeless expression of his face.” +</p> + +<p> +During a former period of depression, such as this, death had come into the +Clemens home. It came again now. Little Benjamin, a sensitive, amiable boy of +ten, one day sickened, and died within a week, May 12, 1842. He was a favorite +child and his death was a terrible blow. Little Sam long remembered the picture +of his parents’ grief; and Orion recalls that they kissed each other, +something hitherto unknown. +</p> + +<p> +Judge Clemens went back to his law and judicial practice. Mrs. Clemens decided +to take a few boarders. Orion, by this time seventeen and a very good +journeyman printer, obtained a place in St. Louis to aid in the family support. +</p> + +<p> +The tide of fortune having touched low-water mark, the usual gentle stage of +improvement set in. Times grew better in Hannibal after those first two or +three years; legal fees became larger and more frequent. Within another two +years judge Clemens appears to have been in fairly hopeful circumstances +again—able at least to invest some money in silkworm culture and lose it, +also to buy a piano for Pamela, and to build a modest house on the Hill Street +property, which a rich St. Louis cousin, James Clemens, had preserved for him. +It was the house which is known today as the “Mark Twain Home.”* +Near it, toward the corner of Main Street, was his office, and here he +dispensed law and justice in a manner which, if it did not bring him affluence, +at least won for him the respect of the entire community. One example will +serve: +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* This house, in 1911, was bought by Mr. and Mrs. George A. Mahan, and +presented to Hannibal for a memorial museum. +</p> + +<p> +Next to his office was a stone-cutter’s shop. One day the proprietor, +Dave Atkinson, got into a muss with one “Fighting” MacDonald, and +there was a tremendous racket. Judge Clemens ran out and found the men down, +punishing each other on the pavement. +</p> + +<p> +“I command the peace!” he shouted, as he came up to them. +</p> + +<p> +No one paid the least attention. +</p> + +<p> +“I command the peace!” he shouted again, still louder, but with no +result. +</p> + +<p> +A stone-cutter’s mallet lay there, handy. Judge Clemens seized it and, +leaning over the combatants, gave the upper one, MacDonald, a smart blow on the +head. +</p> + +<p> +“I command the peace!” he said, for the third time, and struck a +considerably smarter blow. +</p> + +<p> +That settled it. The second blow was of the sort that made MacDonald roll over, +and peace ensued. Judge Clemens haled both men into his court, fined them, and +collected his fee. Such enterprise in the cause of justice deserved prompt +reward. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XI<br/> +DAYS OF EDUCATION</h2> + +<p> +The Clemens family had made one or two moves since its arrival in Hannibal, but +the identity of these temporary residences and the period of occupation of each +can no longer be established. Mark Twain once said: +</p> + +<p> +“In 1843 my father caught me in a lie. It is not this fact that gives me +the date, but the house we lived in. We were there only a year.” +</p> + +<p> +We may believe it was the active result of that lie that fixed his memory of +the place, for his father seldom punished him. When he did, it was a thorough +and satisfactory performance. +</p> + +<p> +It was about the period of moving into the new house (1844) that the Tom Sawyer +days—that is to say, the boyhood of Samuel Clemens—may be said to +have begun. Up to that time he was just Little Sam, 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 will, +in a community like that, especially where the family is rather larger than the +income and there is still a younger child to claim a mother’s protecting +care. So “Sam,” as they now called him, “grew up” at +nine, and was full of knowledge 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, mostly of a kind not acquired at school. +</p> + +<p> +They were not always of a pleasant kind; they were likely to be of a kind +startling to a boy, even terrifying. Once Little Sam—he was still Little +Sam, then—saw an old man shot down on the main street, at noonday. 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 though, 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 noted the spurt of life-blood that followed; he saw 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 dark threatening +night—he saw that, too. A widow and her one daughter lived there, and the +ruffian woke the whole village with his coarse challenges and obscenities. Sam +Clemens and a boon companion, John Briggs, went up there to look and listen. +The man was at the gate, and the women were invisible in the shadow of the +dark porch. The boys heard the elder woman’s voice warning the man that +she had a loaded gun, and that she would kill him if he stayed where he was. He +replied with a ribald tirade, and she warned that she would count ten-that if +he remained a second longer she would fire. She began slowly and counted up to +five, with him 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 thunderstorm that had been gathering broke +loose. The boys fled wildly, believing that Satan himself had arrived to claim +the lost soul. +</p> + +<p> +Many such instances happened in a town like that in those days. And there were +events incident to slavery. He saw a slave struck down and killed with a piece +of slag for a trifling offense. He saw an abolitionist attacked by a mob, and +they 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: +</p> + +<p> +“I am suspicious that it is 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.” +</p> + +<p> +It is not surprising that a boy would gather a store of human knowledge amid +such happenings as these. They were wild, disturbing things. They got into his +dreams and made him fearful when he woke in the middle of the night. He did not +then regard them as an education. In some vague way he set them down as +warnings, or punishments, designed to give him a taste for a better life. He +felt that it was his own conscience that made these things torture him. That +was his mother’s idea, and he had a high respect for her moral opinions, +also for her courage. Among other things, he had seen her one day defy a +vicious devil of a Corsican—a common terror in the town-who was chasing +his grown daughter with a heavy rope in his hand, declaring he would wear it +out on her. Cautious citizens got out of her way, but Jane Clemens opened her +door wide to the refugee, and then, instead of rushing in and closing it, +spread her arms across it, barring the way. The man swore and threatened her +with the rope, but she did not flinch or show any sign of fear. She stood there +and shamed him and derided him and defied him until he gave up the rope and +slunk off, crestfallen and conquered. Any one who could do that must have a +perfect conscience, Sam thought. In the fearsome darkness he would say his +prayers, especially when a thunderstorm was coming, and vow to begin a better +life in the morning. He detested Sunday-school as much as day-school, and once +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. +</p> + +<p> +Fortunately there were pleasanter things than these. There were picnics +sometimes, and ferry-boat excursions. Once there was a great Fourth-of-July +celebration at which it was said a real Revolutionary soldier was to be +present. Some one had discovered him living alone seven or eight miles in the +country. But this feature proved a disappointment; for when the day came and he +was triumphantly brought in he turned out to be a Hessian, and was allowed to +walk home. +</p> + +<p> +The hills and woods around Hannibal where, with his playmates, he roamed almost +at will were never disappointing. There was the cave with its marvels; there +was Bear Creek, where, after repeated accidents, he had learned to swim. It had +cost him heavily to learn to swim. He had seen two playmates drown; also, time +and again he had, himself, been dragged ashore more dead than alive, once by a +slave-girl, another time by a slaveman—Neal Champ, of the Pavey Hotel. In +the end he had conquered; he could swim better than any boy in town of his age. +</p> + +<p> +It was the river that meant more to him than all the rest. Its charm was +permanent. It was the path of adventure, the gateway to the world. The river +with its islands, its great slow-moving rafts, its marvelous steamboats that +were like fairyland, its stately current swinging to the sea! He would sit by +it for hours and dream. He would venture out on it in a surreptitiously +borrowed boat when he was barely strong enough to lift an oar out of the water. +He learned to know all its moods and phases. He felt its kinship. In some +occult way he may have known it as his prototype—that resistless tide of +life with its ever-changing sweep, its shifting shores, its depths, its +shadows, its gorgeous sunset hues, its solemn and tranquil entrance to the sea. +</p> + +<p> +His hunger for the life aboard the steamers became a passion. To be even the +humblest employee of one of those floating enchantments would be enough; to be +an officer would be to enter heaven; to be a pilot was to be a god. +</p> + +<p> +“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 to take a trip on them.” +</p> + +<p> +He had reached the mature age of nine when 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. Presently the signal-bells +rang, the steamboat 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 terrific downpour. He crept +back under the boat, but his legs were outside, and one of the crew saw him. So +he was taken down into the cabin and at the next stop set ashore. It was the +town of Louisiana, and there were Lampton relatives there who took him home. +Jane Clemens declared that his father had got to take him in hand; which he +did, doubtless impressing the adventure on him in the usual way. These were all +educational things; then there was always the farm, where entertainment was no +longer a matter of girl-plays and swings, with a colored nurse following about, +but of manlier sports with his older boy cousins, who had a gun and went +hunting with the men for squirrels and partridges by day, for coons and possums +by night. Sometimes the little boy had 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. +</p> + +<p> +So it is no wonder that at nine he was no longer “Little Sam,” but +Sam Clemens, quite mature and self-dependent, with a wide knowledge of men and +things and a variety of accomplishments. He had even learned to smoke—a +little—out there on the farm, and had tried tobacco-chewing, though that +was a failure. He had been stung to this effort by a big girl at a school +which, with his cousin Puss, he sometimes briefly attended. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you use terbacker?” the big girl had asked, meaning did he chew +it. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, abashed at the confession. +</p> + +<p> +“Haw!” she cried to the other scholars; “here’s a boy +that can’t chaw terbacker.” +</p> + +<p> +Degraded and ashamed, he tried to correct his fault, but it only made him very +ill; and he did not try again. +</p> + +<p> +He had also acquired the use of certain strong, expressive words, and used +them, sometimes, when his mother was safely distant. He had an impression that +she would “skin him alive” if she heard him swear. His education +had doubtful spots in it, but it had provided wisdom. +</p> + +<p> +He was not a particularly attractive lad. He was not tall for his years, and +his head was somewhat too large for his body. He had a “great ruck” +of light, sandy hair which he plastered down to keep it from curling; keen +blue-gray eyes, and rather large features. Still, he had a fair, delicate +complexion, when it was not blackened by grime or tan; a gentle, winning +manner; a smile that, with his slow, measured way of speaking, made him a +favorite with his companions. He did not speak much, and his mental attainments +were not highly regarded; but, for some reason, whenever he did speak every +playmate in hearing stopped whatever he was doing and listened. Perhaps it +would be a plan for a new game or lark; perhaps it was something droll; perhaps +it was just a commonplace remark that his peculiar drawl made amusing. Whatever +it was, they considered it worth while. His mother always referred to his slow +fashion of speaking as “Sammy’s long talk.” Her own speech +was still more deliberate, but she seemed not to notice it. Henry—a much +handsomer lad and regarded as far more promising—did not have it. He was +a lovable, obedient little fellow whom the mischievous Sam took delight in +teasing. For this and other reasons the latter’s punishments were +frequent enough, perhaps not always deserved. Sometimes he charged his mother +with partiality. He would say: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, no matter what it is, I am always the one to get punished”; +and his mother would answer: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Sam, if you didn’t deserve it for that, you did for +something else.” +</p> + +<p> +Henry Clemens became the Sid of Tom Sawyer, though Henry was in every way a +finer character than Sid. His brother Sam always loved him, and fought for him +oftener than with him. +</p> + +<p> +With the death of Benjamin Clemens, Henry and Sam were naturally drawn much +closer together, though Sam could seldom resist the temptation of tormenting +Henry. A schoolmate, George Butler (he was a nephew of General Butler and +afterward fought bravely in the Civil War), had a little blue suit with a +leather belt to match, and was the envy of all. Mrs. Clemens finally made Sam +and Henry suits of blue cotton velvet, and the next Sunday, after various +services were over, the two sauntered about, shedding glory for a time, finally +going for a stroll in the woods. They walked along properly enough, at first, +then just ahead Sam spied the stump of a newly cut tree, and with a wild +whooping impulse took a running leap over it. There were splinters on the stump +where the tree had broken away, but he cleared them neatly. Henry wanted to +match the performance, but was afraid to try, so Sam dared him. He kept daring +him until Henry was goaded to the attempt. He cleared the stump, but the +highest splinters caught the slack of his little blue trousers, and the cloth +gave way. He escaped injury, but the precious trousers were damaged almost +beyond repair. Sam, with a boy’s heartlessness, was fairly rolling on the +ground with laughter at Henry’s appearance. +</p> + +<p> +“Cotton-tail rabbit!” he shouted. “Cotton-tail rabbit!” +while Henry, weeping, set out for home by a circuitous and unfrequented road. +Let us hope, if there was punishment for this mishap, that it fell in the +proper locality. +</p> + +<p> +These two brothers were of widely different temperament. Henry, even as a +little boy, was sturdy, industrious, and dependable. Sam was volatile and +elusive; his industry of an erratic kind. Once his father set him to work with +a hatchet to remove some plaster. He hacked at it for a time well enough, then +lay down on the floor of the room and threw his hatchet at such areas of the +plaster as were not in easy reach. Henry would have worked steadily at a task +like that until the last bit was removed and the room swept clean. +</p> + +<p> +The home incidents in ‘Tom Sawyer’, most of them, really happened. +Sam Clemens 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 +Pain-killer to Peter, the cat. There was a cholera scare that year, and +Pain-killer was regarded as a preventive. Sam had been ordered to take it +liberally, and perhaps thought Peter too should be safeguarded. As for escaping +punishment for his misdeeds in the manner described in that book, this was a +daily matter, and the methods adapted themselves to the conditions. In the +introduction to Tom Sawyer Mark Twain confesses to the general truth of the +history, and to the reality of its characters. “Huck Finn was drawn from +life,” he tells us. “Tom Sawyer also, but not from an +individual—he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom +I knew.” +</p> + +<p> +The three boys were—himself, chiefly, and in a lesser degree John Briggs +and Will Bowen. John Briggs was also the original of Joe Harper in that book. +As for Huck Finn, his original was Tom Blankenship, neither elaborated nor +qualified. +</p> + +<p> +There were several of the Blankenships: there was old Ben, the father, who had +succeeded “General” Gains as the town drunkard; young Ben, the +eldest son—a hard case with certain good traits; and Tom—that is to +say, Huck—who was just as he is described in Tom Sawyer: a ruin of rags, +a river-rat, an irresponsible bit of human drift, kind of heart and possessing +that priceless boon, absolute unaccountability of conduct to any living soul. +He could came and go as he chose; he never had to work or go to school; he +could do all things, good or bad, that the other boys longed to do and were +forbidden. He represented to them the very embodiment of liberty, and his +general knowledge of important matters, such as fishing, hunting, trapping, and +all manner of signs and spells and hoodoos and incantations, made him immensely +valuable as a companion. The fact that his society was prohibited gave it a +vastly added charm. +</p> + +<p> +The Blankenships picked up a precarious living fishing and hunting, and lived +at first in a miserable house of bark, under a tree, but later moved into quite +a pretentious building back of the new Clemens home on Hill Street. It was +really an old barn of a place—poor and ramshackle even then; but now, +more than sixty years later, a part of it is still standing. The siding of the +part that stands is of black walnut, which must have been very plentiful in +that long-ago time. Old drunken Ben Blankenship never dreamed that pieces of +his house would be carried off as relics because of the literary fame of his +son Tom—a fame founded on irresponsibility and inconsequence. Orion +Clemens, who was concerned with missionary work about this time, undertook to +improve the Blankenships spiritually. Sam adopted them, outright, and took them +to his heart. He was likely to be there at any hour of the day, and he and Tom +had cat-call signals at night which would bring him out on the back +single-story roof, and down a little arbor and flight of steps, to the group of +boon companions which, besides Tom, included John Briggs, the Bowen boys, Will +Pitts, and one or two other congenial spirits. They were not vicious boys; they +were not really bad boys; they were only mischievous, fun-loving +boys-thoughtless, and rather disregardful of the comforts and the rights of +others. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XII<br/> +TOM SAWYER’S BAND</h2> + +<p> +They ranged from Holliday’s Hill on the north to the Cave on the south, +and over the fields and through all the woods about. They navigated the river +from Turtle Island to Glasscock’s Island (now Pearl, or Tom +Sawyer’s Island), and far below; they penetrated the wilderness of the +Illinois shore. They could run like wild 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 so vigilant that they did not sooner or +later elude it. They borrowed boats when their owners were not present. Once +when they found this too much trouble, they decided to own a boat, and one +Sunday gave a certain borrowed craft a coat of red paint (formerly it had been +green), and secluded it for a season up Bear Creek. They borrowed the paint +also, and the brush, though they carefully returned these the same evening +about nightfall, so the painter could have them Monday morning. Tom Blankenship +rigged up a sail for the new craft, and Sam Clemens named it Cecilia, after +which they didn’t need to borrow boats any more, though the owner of it +did; and he sometimes used to observe as he saw it pass that, if it had been +any other color but red, he would have sworn it was his. +</p> + +<p> +Some of their expeditions were innocent enough. They often cruised up to Turtle +Island, about two miles above Hannibal, and spent the day feasting. You could +have loaded a car with turtles and their eggs up there, and there were +quantities of mussels and plenty of fish. Fishing and swimming were their chief +pastimes, with general marauding for adventure. Where the railroad-bridge now +ends on the Missouri side was their favorite swimming-hole—that and along +Bear Creek, a secluded limpid water with special interests of its own. +Sometimes at evening they swam across to Glasscock’s Island—the +rendezvous of Tom Sawyer’s “Black Avengers” and the +hiding-place of Huck and Nigger Jim; then, when they had frolicked on the +sand-bar at the head of the island for an hour or more, they would swim back in +the dusk, a distance of half a mile, breasting the strong, steady Mississippi +current without exhaustion or fear. They could swim all day, likely enough, +those graceless young scamps. Once—though this was considerably later, +when he was sixteen —Sam Clemens swam across to the Illinois side, and +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. It was a hardy life they led, and it is not recorded that they ever did +any serious damage, though they narrowly missed it sometimes. +</p> + +<p> +One of their Sunday pastimes was to climb Holliday’s Hill and roll down +big stones, to frighten the people who were driving to church. Holliday’s +Hill above the road was steep; a stone once started would go plunging and +leaping down and bound across the road with the deadly swiftness of a +twelve-inch shell. The boys would get a stone poised, then wait until they saw +a team approaching, and, calculating the distance, would give it a start. +Dropping down behind the bushes, they would watch the dramatic effect upon the +church-goers as the great missile shot across the road a few yards before them. +This was Homeric sport, but they carried it too far. Stones that had a habit of +getting loose so numerously on Sundays and so rarely on other days invited +suspicion, and the “Patterollers” (river patrol—a kind of +police of those days) were put on the watch. So the boys found other diversions +until the Patterollers did not watch any more; then they planned a grand coup +that would eclipse anything before attempted in the stone-rolling line. +</p> + +<p> +A rock about the size of an omnibus was lying up there, in a good position to +go down hill, once, started. They decided it would be a glorious thing to see +that great boulder go smashing down, a hundred yards or so in front of some +unsuspecting and peaceful-minded church-goer. Quarrymen were getting out rock +not far away, and left their picks and shovels over Sundays. The boys borrowed +these, and went to work to undermine the big stone. It was a heavier job than +they had counted on, but they worked faithfully, Sunday after Sunday. If their +parents had wanted them to work like that, they would have thought they were +being killed. +</p> + +<p> +Finally one Sunday, while they were digging, it suddenly got loose and started +down. They were not quite ready for it. Nobody was coming but an old colored +man in a cart, so it was going to be wasted. It was not quite wasted, however. +They had planned for a thrilling result; and there was thrill enough while it +lasted. In the first place, the stone nearly caught Will Bowen when it started. +John Briggs had just that moment quit digging and handed Will the pick. Will +was about to step into the excavation when Sam Clemens, who was already there, +leaped out with a yell: +</p> + +<p> +“Look out, boys, she’s coming!” +</p> + +<p> +She came. The huge stone kept to the ground at first, then, gathering a wild +momentum, it went bounding into the air. About half-way down the hill it struck +a tree several inches through and cut it clean off. This turned its course a +little, and the negro in the cart, who heard the noise, saw it come crashing in +his direction and made a wild effort to whip up his horse. It was also headed +toward a cooper-shop across the road. The boys watched it with growing +interest. It made longer leaps with every bound, and whenever it struck the +fragments the dust would fly. They were certain it would demolish the negro and +destroy the cooper-shop. The shop was empty, it being Sunday, but the rest of +the catastrophe would invite close investigation, with results. 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 directly in its path. +They stood holding their breath, their mouths open. Then suddenly they could +hardly believe their eyes; the boulder struck a projection a distance above the +road, and with a mighty bound sailed clear over the negro and his mule and +landed in the soft dirt beyond-only a fragment striking the shop, damaging but +not wrecking it. Half buried in the ground, that boulder lay there for nearly +forty years; then it was blasted up for milling purposes. It was the last rock +the boys ever rolled down. They began to suspect that the sport was not +altogether safe. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes the boys needed money, which was not easy to get in those days. On +one occasion of this sort, Tom Blankenship had the skin of a coon he had +captured, which represented the only capital in the crowd. At Selms’s +store on Wild Cat corner the coonskin would bring ten cents, but that was not +enough. They arranged a plan which would make it pay a good deal more than +that. Selms’s window was open, it being summer-time, and his pile of +pelts was pretty handy. Huck—that is to say, Tom—went in the front +door and sold the skin for ten cents to Selms, who tossed it back on the pile. +Tom came back with the money and after a reasonable period went around to the +open window, crawled in, got the coonskin, and sold it to Selms again. He did +this several times that afternoon; then John Pierce, Selms’s clerk, +said: +</p> + +<p> +“Look here, Selms, there is something wrong about this. That boy has been +selling us coonskins all the afternoon.” +</p> + +<p> +Selms went to his pile of pelts. There were several sheepskins and some +cowhides, but only one coonskin—the one he had that moment bought. Selms +himself used to tell this story as a great joke. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps it is not adding to Mark Twain’s reputation to say that the boy +Sam Clemens—a pretty small boy, a good deal less than twelve at this +time—was the leader of this unhallowed band; yet any other record would +be less than historic. If the band had a leader, it was he. They were always +ready to listen to him—they would even stop fishing to do that —and +to follow his projects. They looked to him for ideas and organization, whether +the undertaking was to be real or make-believe. When they played +“Bandit” or “Pirate” or “Indian,” Sam +Clemens was always chief; when they became real raiders it is recorded that he +was no less distinguished. Like Tom Sawyer, he loved the glare and trappings of +leadership. When the Christian Sons of Temperance came along with a regalia, +and a red sash that carried with it rank and the privilege of inventing +pass-words, the gaud of these things got into his eyes, and he gave up smoking +(which he did rather gingerly) and swearing (which he did only under heavy +excitement), also liquor (though he had never tasted it yet), and marched with +the newly washed and pure in heart for a full month—a month of splendid +leadership and servitude. Then even the red sash could not hold him in bondage. +He looked up Tom Blankenship and said: +</p> + +<p> +“Say, Tom, I’m blamed tired of this! Let’s go somewhere and +smoke!” Which must have been a good deal of a sacrifice, for the uniform +was a precious thing. +</p> + +<p> +Limelight and the center of the stage was a passion of Sam Clemens’s +boyhood, a love of the spectacular that never wholly died. It seems almost a +pity that in those far-off barefoot old days he could not have looked down the +years to a time when, with the world at his feet, venerable Oxford should +clothe him in a scarlet gown. +</p> + +<p> +He could not by any chance have dreamed of that stately honor. His ambitions +did not lie in the direction of mental achievement. It is true that now and +then, on Friday at school, he read a composition, one of which—a personal +burlesque on certain older boys—came near resulting in bodily damage. But +any literary ambition he may have had in those days was a fleeting thing. His +permanent dream was to be a pirate, or a pilot, or a bandit, or a +trapper-scout; something gorgeous and active, where his word—his nod, +even—constituted sufficient law. The river kept the pilot ambition always +fresh, and the cave supplied a background for those other things. +</p> + +<p> +The cave was an enduring and substantial joy. It was a real cave, not merely a +hole, but a subterranean marvel of deep passages and vaulted chambers that led +away into bluffs and far down into the earth’s black silences, even below +the river, some said. For Sam Clemens the cave had a fascination that never +faded. Other localities and diversions might pall, but any mention of the cave +found him always eager and ready 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, its possibilities as the home of a +gallant outlaw band, it contained everything that a romantic boy could love or +long for. In Tom Sawyer Indian Joe dies in the cave. He did not die there in +real life, but was lost there once, and was living on bats when they found him. +He was a dissolute reprobate, and when, one night, he did die there came up a +thunder-storm so terrific that Sam Clemens at home and in bed was certain that +Satan had come in person for the half-breed’s wicked soul. He covered his +head and said his prayers industriously, in the fear that the evil one might +conclude to save another trip by taking him along, too. +</p> + +<p> +The treasure-digging adventure in the book had a foundation in fact. There was +a tradition concerning some French trappers who long before had established a +trading-post two miles above Hannibal, on what is called the “bay.” +It is said that, while one of these trappers was out hunting, Indians made a +raid on the post and massacred the others. The hunter on returning found his +comrades killed and scalped, but the Indians had failed to find the treasure +which was buried in a chest. He left it there, swam across to Illinois, and +made his way to St. Louis, where he told of the massacre and the burial of the +chest of gold. Then he started to raise a party to go back for it, but was +taken sick and died. Later some men came up from St. Louis looking for the +chest. They did not find it, but they told the circumstances, and afterward a +good many people tried to find the gold. +</p> + +<p> +Tom Blankenship one morning came to Sam Clemens and John Briggs and said he was +going to dig up the treasure. He said he had dreamed just where it was, and +said if they would go with him and dig he would divide up. The boys had great +faith in dreams, especially Tom’s dreams. Tom’s unlimited freedom +gave him a large importance in their eyes. The dreams of a boy like that were +pretty sure to mean something. They followed Tom to the place with some shovels +and a pick, and he showed them where to dig. Then he sat down under the shade +of a papaw-tree and gave orders. +</p> + +<p> +They dug nearly all day. Now and then they stopped to rest, and maybe to wonder +a little why Tom didn’t dig some himself; but, of course, he had done the +dreaming, which entitled him to an equal share. +</p> + +<p> +They did not find it that day, and when they went back next morning they took +two long iron rods; these they would push and drive into the ground until they +struck something hard. Then they would dig down to see what it was, but it +never turned out to be money. That night the boys declared they would not dig +any more. But Tom had another dream. He dreamed the gold was exactly under the +little papaw-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 Tom gave it up, then. He said there was something about the way they +dug, but he never offered to do any digging himself. +</p> + +<p> +This differs considerably from the digging incident in the book, but it gives +us an idea of the respect the boys had for the ragamuffin original of +Huckleberry Finn.* Tom Blankenship’s brother, Ben, was also drawn upon +for that creation, at least so far as one important phase of Huck’s +character is concerned. He was considerably older, as well as more +disreputable, than Tom. He was inclined to torment the boys by tying knots in +their clothes when they went swimming, or by throwing mud at them when they +wanted to come out, and they had no deep love for him. But somewhere in Ben +Blankenship there was a fine generous strain of humanity that provided Mark +Twain with that immortal episode in the story of Huck Finn—in sheltering +the Nigger Jim. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Much of the detail in this chapter was furnished to the writer by John Briggs +shortly before his death in 1907. +</p> + +<p> +This is the real story: +</p> + +<p> +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 outcast 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 would fish and Ben would carry him scraps of other food. Then, by and by, +it 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. +</p> + +<p> +In the book, the author makes Huck’s struggle a psychological one between +conscience and the law, on one side, and sympathy on the other. With Ben +Blankenship the struggle—if there was a struggle—was probably +between sympathy and cupidity. He would care very little for conscience and +still less for law. His sympathy with the runaway, however, would be large and +elemental, and it must have been very large to offset the lure of that reward. +</p> + +<p> +There was a gruesome sequel to this incident. Some days following the drowning +of the runaway, Sam Clemens, John Briggs, and the Bowen boys went to the spot +and were pushing the drift about, when suddenly the negro rose before them, +straight and terrible, about half his length out of the water. He had gone down +feet foremost, and the loosened drift had released him. The boys did not stop +to investigate. They thought he was after them and flew in wild terror, never +stopping until they reached human habitation. +</p> + +<p> +How many gruesome experiences there appear to have been in those early days! In +‘The Innocents Abroad’ Mark Twain tells of the murdered man he saw +one night in his father’s office. The man’s name was McFarlane. He +had been stabbed that day in the old Hudson-McFarlane feud and carried in there +to die. Sam Clemens and John Briggs had run away from school and had been sky +larking all that day, and knew nothing of the affair. Sam decided that his +father’s office was safer for him than to face his mother, who was +probably sitting up, waiting. He tells us how he lay on the lounge, and how a +shape on the floor gradually resolved itself into the outlines of a man; how a +square of moonlight from the window approached it and gradually revealed the +dead face and the ghastly stabbed breast. +</p> + +<p> +“I went out of there,” he says. “I do not say that I went +away in any sort of a 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 considerably agitated.” +</p> + +<p> +He was not yet twelve, for his father was no longer alive when the boy reached +that age. Certainly these were disturbing, haunting things. Then there was the +case of the drunken tramp in the calaboose to whom the boys kind-heartedly +enough carried food and tobacco. Sam Clemens spent some of his precious money +to buy the tramp a box of Lucifer matches—a brand new invention then, +scarce and high. The tramp started a fire with the matches and burned down the +calaboose, himself in it. For weeks the boy was tortured, awake and in his +dreams, by the thought that if he had not carried the man the matches the +tragedy could not have happened. Remorse was always Samuel Clemens’s +surest punishment. To his last days on earth he never outgrew its pangs. +</p> + +<p> +What a number of things crowded themselves into a few brief years! It is not +easy to curtail these boyhood adventures of Sam Clemens and his scapegrace +friends, but one might go on indefinitely with their mad doings. They were an +unpromising lot. Ministers and other sober-minded citizens freely prophesied +sudden and violent ends for them, and considered them hardly worth praying for. +They must have proven a disappointing lot to those prophets. The Bowen boys +became fine river-pilots; Will Pitts was in due time a leading merchant and +bank director; John Briggs grew into a well-to-do and highly respected farmer; +even Huck Finn—that is to say, Tom Blankenship—is reputed to have +ranked as an honored citizen and justice of the peace in a Western town. But in +those days they were a riotous, fun-loving band with little respect for order +and even less for ordinance. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XIII<br/> +THE GENTLER SIDE</h2> + +<p> +His associations were not all of that lawless breed. At his school (he had +sampled several places of learning, and was now at Mr. Cross’s on the +Square) were a number of less adventurous, even if not intrinsically better +playmates. There was George Robards, the Latin scholar, and John, his brother, +a handsome boy, who rode away at last with his father into the sunset, to +California, his golden curls flying in the wind. And there was Jimmy McDaniel, +a kind-hearted boy whose company was worth while, because his father was a +confectioner, and he used to bring candy and cake to school. Also there was +Buck Brown, a rival speller, and John Meredith, the doctor’s son, and +John Garth, who was one day to marry little Helen Kercheval, and in the end +would be remembered and honored with a beautiful memorial building not far from +the site of the old school. +</p> + +<p> +Furthermore, there were a good many girls. Tom Sawyer had an impressionable +heart, and Sam Clemens no less so. There was Bettie Ormsley, and Artemisia +Briggs, and Jennie Brady; also Mary Miller, who was nearly twice his age and +gave him his first broken heart. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe I was as miserable as a grown man could be,” he said +once, remembering. +</p> + +<p> +Tom Sawyer had heart sorrows too, and we may imagine that his emotions at such +times were the emotions of Sam Clemens, say at the age of ten. +</p> + +<p> +But, as Tom Sawyer had one faithful sweetheart, so did he. They were one and +the same. Becky Thatcher in the book was Laura Hawkins in reality. The +acquaintance of these two had begun when the Hawkins family moved into the +Virginia house on the corner of Hill and Main streets.* The Clemens family was +then in the new home across the way, and the children were soon acquainted. The +boy could be tender and kind, and was always gentle in his treatment of the +other sex. They visited back and forth, especially around the new house, where +there were nice pieces of boards and bricks for play-houses. So they played +“keeping house,” and if they did not always agree well, since the +beginning of the world sweethearts have not always agreed, even in Arcady. Once +when they were building a house—and there may have been some difference +of opinion as to its architecture—the boy happened to let a brick fall on +the little girl’s finger. If there had been any disagreement it vanished +instantly with that misfortune. He tried to comfort her and soothe the pain; +then he wept with her and suffered most of the two, no doubt. So, you see, he +was just a little boy, after all, even though he was already chief of a +red-handed band, the “Black Avengers of the Spanish Main.” +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* The Hawkins family in real life bore no resemblance to the family of that +name in The Gilded Age. Judge Hawkins of The Gilded Age, as already noted, was +John Clemens. Mark Twain used the name Hawkins, also the name of his boyhood +sweetheart, Laura, merely for old times’ sake, and because in portraying +the childhood of Laura Hawkins he had a picture of the real Laura in his mind. +</p> + +<p> +He was always a tender-hearted lad. He would never abuse an animal, unless, as +in the Pain-killer incident, his tendency to pranking ran away with him. He had +indeed a genuine passion for cats; summers when he went to the farm he never +failed to take his cat in a basket. When he ate, it sat in a chair beside him +at the table. His sympathy included inanimate things as well. He loved +flowers—not as the embryo botanist or gardener, but as a personal friend. +He pitied the dead leaf and the murmuring dried weed of November because their +brief lives were ended, and they would never know the summer again, or grow +glad with another spring. His heart went out to them; to the river and the sky, +the sunlit meadow and the drifted hill. That his observation of all nature was +minute and accurate is shown everywhere in his writing; but it was never the +observation of a young naturalist it was the subconscious observation of +sympathetic love. +</p> + +<p> +We are wandering away from his school-days. They were brief enough and came +rapidly to an end. They will not hold us long. Undoubtedly Tom Sawyer’s +distaste for school and his excuses for staying at home—usually some +pretended illness—have ample foundation in the boyhood of Sam Clemens. +His mother punished him and pleaded with him, alternately. He detested school +as he detested nothing else on earth, even going to church. “Church +ain’t worth shucks,” said Tom Sawyer, but it was better than +school. +</p> + +<p> +As already noted, the school of Mr. Cross stood in or near what is now the +Square in Hannibal. The Square was only a grove then, grown up with plum, +hazel, and vine—a rare place for children. At recess and the noon hour +the children climbed trees, gathered flowers, and swung in grape-vine swings. +There was a spelling-bee every Friday afternoon, for Sam the only endurable +event of the school exercises. He could hold the floor at spelling longer than +Buck Brown. This was spectacular and showy; it invited compliments even from +Mr. Cross, whose name must have been handed down by angels, it fitted him so +well. One day Sam Clemens wrote on his slate: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Cross by name and cross by nature—<br/> +Cross jumped over an Irish potato. +</p> + +<p> +He showed this to John Briggs, who considered it a stroke of genius. He urged +the author to write it on the board at noon, but the poet’s ambition did +not go so far. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, pshaw!” said John. “I wouldn’t be afraid to do it. +</p> + +<p> +“I dare you to do it,” said Sam. +</p> + +<p> +John Briggs never took a dare, and at noon, when Mr. Cross was at home at +dinner, he wrote flamingly the descriptive couplet. When the teacher returned +and “books” were called he looked steadily at John Briggs. He had +recognized the penmanship. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you do that?” he asked, ominously. +</p> + +<p> +It was a time for truth. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir,” said John. +</p> + +<p> +“Come here!” And John came, and paid for his exploitation of genius +heavily. Sam Clemens expected that the next call would be for +“author,” but for some reason the investigation ended there. It was +unusual for him to escape. His back generally kept fairly warm from one +“frailing” to the next. +</p> + +<p> +His rewards were not all of a punitive nature. There were two medals in the +school, one for spelling, the other for amiability. They were awarded once a +week, and the holders wore them about the neck conspicuously, and were envied +accordingly. John Robards—he of the golden curls—wore almost +continuously the medal for amiability, while Sam Clemens had a mortgage on the +medal for spelling. Sometimes they traded, to see how it would seem, but the +master discouraged this practice by taking the medals away from them for the +remainder of the week. Once Sam Clemens lost the medal by leaving the first +“r” out of February. He could have spelled it backward, if +necessary; but Laura Hawkins was the only one on the floor against him, and he +was a gallant boy. +</p> + +<p> +The picture of that school as presented in the book written thirty years later +is faithful, we may believe, and the central figure is a tender-hearted, +romantic, devil-may-care lad, loathing application and longing only for +freedom. It was a boon which would come to him sooner even than he had dreamed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XIV<br/> +THE PASSING OF JOHN CLEMENS</h2> + +<p> +Judge Clemens, who time and again had wrecked or crippled his fortune by +devices more or less unusual, now adopted the one unfailing method of achieving +disaster. He endorsed a large note, for a man of good repute, and the payment +of it swept him clean: home, property, everything vanished again. The St. Louis +cousin took over the home and agreed to let the family occupy it on payment of +a small interest; but after an attempt at housekeeping with a few scanty +furnishings and Pamela’s piano —all that had been saved from the +wreck—they moved across the street into a portion of the Virginia house, +then occupied by a Dr. Grant. The Grants proposed that the Clemens family move +over and board them, a welcome arrangement enough at this time. +</p> + +<p> +Judge Clemens had still a hope left. The clerkship of the Surrogate Court was +soon to be filled by election. It was an important remunerative office, and he +was regarded as the favorite candidate for the position. His disaster had +aroused general sympathy, and his nomination and election were considered sure. +He took no chances; he made a canvass on horseback from house to house, often +riding through rain and the chill of fall, acquiring a cough which was hard to +overcome. He was elected by a heavy majority, and it was believed he could hold +the office as long as he chose. There seemed no further need of worry. As soon +as he was installed in office they would live in style becoming their social +position. About the end of February he rode to Palmyra to be sworn in. +Returning he was drenched by a storm of rain and sleet, arriving at last half +frozen. His system was in no condition to resist such a shock. Pneumonia +followed; physicians came with torments of plasters and allopathic dosings that +brought no relief. Orion returned from St. Louis to assist in caring for him, +and sat by his bed, encouraging him and reading to him, but it was evident that +he grew daily weaker. Now and then he became cheerful and spoke of the +Tennessee land as the seed of a vast fortune that must surely flower at last. +He uttered no regrets, no complaints. Once only he said: +</p> + +<p> +“I believe if I had stayed in Tennessee I might have been worth twenty +thousand dollars to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +On the morning of the 24th of March, 1847, it was evident that he could not +live many hours. He was very weak. When he spoke, now and then, it was of the +land. He said it would soon make them all rich and happy. +</p> + +<p> +“Cling to the land,” he whispered. “Cling to the land, and +wait. Let nothing beguile it away from you.” +</p> + +<p> +A little later he beckoned to Pamela, now a lovely girl of nineteen, and, +putting his arm about her neck, kissed her for the first time in years. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me die,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +He never spoke after that. A little more, and the sad, weary life that had +lasted less than forty-nine years was ended: A dreamer and a moralist, an +upright man honored by all, he had never been a financier. He ended life with +less than he had begun. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XV<br/> +A YOUNG BEN FRANKLIN</h2> + +<p> +For a third time death had entered the Clemens home: not only had it brought +grief now, but it had banished the light of new fortune from the very +threshold. The disaster seemed complete. +</p> + +<p> +The children were dazed. Judge Clemens had been a distant, reserved man, but +they had loved him, each in his own way, and they had honored his uprightness +and nobility of purpose. Mrs. Clemens confided to a neighbor that, in spite of +his manner, her husband had been always warm-hearted, with a deep affection for +his family. They remembered that he had never returned from a journey without +bringing each one some present, however trifling. Orion, looking out of his +window next morning, saw old Abram Kurtz, and heard him laugh. He wondered how +anybody could still laugh. +</p> + +<p> +The boy Sam was fairly broken down. Remorse, which always dealt with him +unsparingly, laid a heavy hand on him now. Wildness, disobedience, indifference +to his father’s wishes, all were remembered; a hundred things, in +themselves trifling, became ghastly and heart-wringing in the knowledge that +they could never be undone. Seeing his grief, his mother took him by the hand +and led him into the room where his father lay. +</p> + +<p> +“It is all right, Sammy,” she said. “What’s done is +done, and it does not matter to him any more; but here by the side of him now I +want you to promise me——” +</p> + +<p> +He turned, his eyes streaming with tears, and flung himself into her arms. +</p> + +<p> +“I will promise anything,” he sobbed, “if you won’t +make me go to school! Anything!” +</p> + +<p> +His mother held him for a moment, thinking, then she said: +</p> + +<p> +“No, Sammy; you need not go to school any more. Only promise me to be a +better boy. Promise not to break my heart.” +</p> + +<p> +So he promised her to be a faithful and industrious man, and upright, like his +father. His mother was satisfied with that. The sense of honor and justice was +already strong within him. To him a promise was a serious matter at any time; +made under conditions like these it would be held sacred. +</p> + +<p> +That night—it was after the funeral—his tendency to somnambulism +manifested itself. His mother and sister, who were sleeping together, saw the +door open and a form in white enter. Naturally nervous at such a time, and +living in a day of almost universal superstition, they were terrified and +covered their heads. Presently a hand was laid on the coverlet, first at the +foot, then at the head of the bed. A thought struck Mrs. Clemens: +</p> + +<p> +“Sam!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He answered, but he was sound asleep and fell to the floor. He had risen and +thrown a sheet around him in his dreams. He walked in his sleep several nights +in succession after that. Then he slept more soundly. +</p> + +<p> +Orion returned to St. Louis. He was a very good book and job printer by this +time and received a salary of ten dollars a week (high wages in those frugal +days), of which he sent three dollars weekly to the family. Pamela, who had +acquired a considerable knowledge of the piano and guitar, went to the town of +Paris, in Monroe County, about fifty miles away, and taught a class of music +pupils, contributing whatever remained after paying for her board and clothing +to the family fund. It was a hard task for the girl, for she was timid and not +over-strong; but she was resolute and patient, and won success. Pamela Clemens +was a noble character and deserves a fuller history than can be afforded in +this work. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Clemens and her son Samuel now had a sober talk, and, realizing that the +printing trade offered opportunity for acquiring further education as well as a +livelihood, they agreed that he should be apprenticed to Joseph P. Ament, who +had lately moved from Palmyra to Hannibal and bought a weekly Democrat paper, +the Missouri Courier. The apprentice terms were not over-liberal. They were the +usual thing for that time: board and clothes—“more board than +clothes, and not much of either,” Mark Twain used to say. +</p> + +<p> +“I was supposed to get two suits of clothes a year, like a nigger, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +There was another apprentice, a young fellow of about eighteen, named Wales +McCormick, a devilish fellow and a giant. Ament’s clothes were too small +for Wales, but he had to wear them, and Sam Clemens and Wales McCormick +together, fitted out with Ament’s clothes, must have been a picturesque +pair. There was also, for a time, a boy named Ralph; but he appears to have +presented no features of a striking sort, and the memory of him has become dim. +</p> + +<p> +The apprentices ate in the kitchen at first, served by the old slave-cook and +her handsome mulatto daughter; but those printer’s “devils” +made it so lively there that in due time they were promoted to the family +table, where they sat with Mr. and Mrs. Ament and the one journeyman, Pet +McMurry—a name that in itself was an inspiration. What those young scamps +did not already know Pet McMurry could teach them. Sam Clemens had promised to +be a good boy, and he was, 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 carried +into the office, where the boys slept on a pallet on the floor, and this forage +they cooked on the office stove. Wales especially had a way of cooking a potato +that his associate never forgot. +</p> + +<p> +It is unfortunate that no photographic portrait has been preserved of Sam +Clemens at this period. But we may imagine him from a letter which, long years +after, Pet McMurry wrote to Mark Twain. He said: +</p> + +<p> +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 drugstore, mounted upon a little box at the case, pulling away +at a huge cigar or a diminutive pipe, 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.” . . . Do you recollect any of the serious conflicts that +mirth-loving brain of yours used to get you into with that diminutive creature +Wales McCormick—how you used to call upon me to hold your cigar or pipe, +whilst you went entirely through him? +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* The color of Mark Twain’s hair in early life has been variously +referred to as red, black, and brown. It was, in fact, as stated by McMurry, +“sandy” in boyhood, deepening later to that rich, mahogany tone +known as auburn. +</p> + +<p> +This is good testimony, without doubt. When he had been with Ament little more +than a year Sam had become office favorite and chief standby. Whatever required +intelligence and care and imagination was given to Sam Clemens. He could set +type as accurately and almost as rapidly as Pet McMurry; he could wash up the +forms a good deal better than Pet; and he could run the job-press to the tune +of “Annie Laurie” or “Along the Beach at Rockaway,” +without missing a stroke or losing a finger. Sometimes, at odd moments, he +would “set up” one of the popular songs or some favorite poem like +“The Blackberry Girl,” and of these he sent copies printed on +cotton, even on scraps of silk, to favorite girl friends; also to Puss Quarles, +on his uncle’s farm, where he seldom went now, because he was really +grown up, associating with men and doing a man’s work. He had charge of +the circulation—which is to say, he carried the papers. During the last +year of the Mexican War, when a telegraph-wire found its way across the +Mississippi to Hannibal—a long sagging span, that for some reason did not +break of its own weight—he was given charge of the extras with news from +the front; and the burning importance of his mission, the bringing of news hot +from the field of battle, spurred him to endeavors that won plaudits and +success. +</p> + +<p> +He became a sort of subeditor. When the forms of the paper were ready to close +and Ament was needed to supply more matter, it was Sam who was delegated to +find that rather uncertain and elusive person and labor with him until the +required copy was produced. Thus it was he saw literature in the making. +</p> + +<p> +It is not believed that Sam had any writing ambitions of his own. His chief +desire was to be an all-round journeyman printer like Pet McMurry; to drift up +and down the world in Pet’s untrammeled fashion; to see all that Pet had +seen and a number of things which Pet appeared to have overlooked. He varied on +occasion from this ambition. When the first negro minstrel show visited +Hannibal and had gone, he yearned for a brief period to be a magnificent +“middle man” or even the “end-man” of that combination; +when the circus came and went, he dreamed of the day when, a capering frescoed +clown, he would set crowded tiers of spectators guffawing at his humor; when +the traveling hypnotist arrived, he volunteered as a subject, and amazed the +audience by the marvel of his performance. +</p> + +<p> +In later life he claimed that he had not been hypnotized in any degree, but had +been pretending throughout—a statement always denied by his mother and +his brother Orion. This dispute was never settled, and never could be. Sam +Clemens’s tendency to somnambulism would seem to suggest that he really +might have taken on a hypnotic condition, while his consummate skill as an +actor, then and always, and his early fondness of exhibition and a joke, would +make it not unlikely that he was merely “showing off” and having +his fun. He could follow the dictates of a vivid imagination and could be as +outrageous as he chose without incurring responsibility of any sort. But there +was a penalty: he must allow pins and needles to be thrust into his flesh and +suffer these tortures without showing discomfort to the spectators. It is +difficult to believe that any boy, however great his exhibitory passion, could +permit, in the full possession of his sensibilities, a needle to be thrust +deeply into his flesh without manifestations of a most unmesmeric sort. The +conclusion seems warranted that he began by pretending, but that at times he +was at least under semi-mesmeric control. At all events, he enjoyed a week of +dazzling triumph, though in the end he concluded to stick to printing as a +trade. +</p> + +<p> +We have said that he was a rapid learner and a neat workman. At Ament’s +he generally had a daily task, either of composition or press-work, after which +he was free. When he had got the hang of his work he was usually done by three +in the afternoon; then away to the river or the cave, as in the old days, +sometimes with his boy friends, sometimes with Laura Hawkins gathering wild +columbine on that high cliff overlooking the river, Lover’s Leap. +</p> + +<p> +He was becoming quite a beau, attending parties on occasion, where +old-fashioned games—Forfeits, Ring-around-a-Rosy, Dusty Miller, and the +like—were regarded as rare amusements. He was a favorite with girls of +his own age. He was always good-natured, though he played jokes on them, too, +and was often a severe trial. He was with Laura Hawkins more than the others, +usually her escort. On Saturday afternoons in winter he carried her skates to +Bear Creek and helped her to put them on. After which they skated +“partners,” holding hands tightly, and were a likely pair of +children, no doubt. 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.” The author had the real Laura of his childhood in his mind when +he wrote that, though the story itself bears no resemblance to her life. +</p> + +<p> +They were never really sweethearts, those two. They were good friends and +comrades. Sometimes he brought her magazines—exchanges from the +printing—office—Godey’s and others. These were a treat, for +such things were scarce enough. He cared little for reading, himself, beyond a +few exciting tales, though the putting into type of a good deal of +miscellaneous matter had beyond doubt developed in him a taste for general +knowledge. It needed only to be awakened. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XVI<br/> +THE TURNING-POINT</h2> + +<p> +There came into his life just at this period one of those seemingly trifling +incidents which, viewed in retrospect, assume pivotal proportions. He was on +his way from the office to his home one afternoon when he saw flying along the +pavement a square of paper, a leaf from a book. At an earlier time he would not +have bothered with it at all, but any printed page had acquired a professional +interest for him now. He caught the flying scrap and examined it. It was a leaf +from some history of Joan of Arc. The “maid” was described in the +cage at Rouen, in the fortress, and the two ruffian English soldiers had stolen +her clothes. There was a brief description and a good deal of +dialogue—her reproaches and their ribald replies. +</p> + +<p> +He had never heard of the subject before. He had never read any history. When +he wanted to know any fact he asked Henry, who read everything obtainable. Now, +however, there arose within him a deep compassion for the gentle Maid of +Orleans, a burning resentment toward her captors, a powerful and indestructible +interest in her sad history. It was an interest that would grow steadily for +more than half a lifetime and culminate at last in that crowning work, the +Recollections, the loveliest story ever told of the martyred girl. +</p> + +<p> +The incident meant even more than that: it meant the awakening of his interest +in all history—the world’s story in its many phases—a passion +which became the largest feature of his intellectual life and remained with him +until his very last day on earth. From the moment when that fluttering leaf was +blown into his hands his career as one of the world’s mentally elect was +assured. It gave him his cue—the first word of a part in the human drama. +It crystallized suddenly within him sympathy with the oppressed, rebellion +against tyranny and treachery, scorn for the divine rights of kings. A few +months before he died he wrote a paper on “The Turning-point of My +Life.” For some reason he did not mention this incident. Yet if there was +a turning-point in his life, he reached it that bleak afternoon on the streets +of Hannibal when a stray leaf from another life was blown into his hands. +</p> + +<p> +He read hungrily now everything he could find relating to the French wars, and +to Joan in particular. He acquired an appetite for history in general, the +record of any nation or period; he seemed likely to become a student. Presently +he began to feel the need of languages, French and German. There was no +opportunity to acquire French, that he could discover, but there was a German +shoemaker in Hannibal who agreed to teach his native tongue. Sam Clemens got a +friend—very likely it was John Briggs—to form a class with him, and +together they arranged for lessons. The shoemaker had little or no English. +They had no German. It would seem, however, that their teacher had some sort of +a “word-book,” and when they assembled in his little cubby-hole of +a retreat he began reading aloud from it this puzzling sentence: +</p> + +<p> +“De hain eet flee whoop in de hayer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dere!” he said, triumphantly; “you know dose vord?” +</p> + +<p> +The students looked at each other helplessly. +</p> + +<p> +The teacher repeated the sentence, and again they were helpless when he asked +if they recognized it. +</p> + +<p> +Then in despair he showed them the book. It was an English primer, and the +sentence was: +</p> + +<p> +“The hen, it flies up in the air.” +</p> + +<p> +They explained to him gently that it was German they wished to learn, not +English—not under the circumstances. Later, Sam made an attempt at Latin, +and got a book for that purpose, but gave it up, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“No, that language is not for me. I’ll do well enough to learn +English.” A boy who took it up with him became a Latin scholar. +</p> + +<p> +His prejudice against oppression he put into practice. Boys who were being +imposed upon found in him a ready protector. Sometimes, watching a game of +marbles or tops, he would remark in his slow, impressive way: +</p> + +<p> +“You mustn’t cheat that boy.” And the cheating stopped. When +it didn’t, there was a combat, with consequences. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XVII<br/> +THE HANNIBAL “JOURNAL”</h2> + +<p> +Orion returned from St. Louis. He felt that he was needed in Hannibal and, +while wages there were lower, his expenses at home were slight; there was more +real return for the family fund. His sister Pamela was teaching a class in +Hannibal at this time. Orion was surprised when his mother and sister greeted +him with kisses and tears. Any outward display of affection was new to him. +</p> + +<p> +The family had moved back across the street by this time. With Sam supporting +himself, the earnings of Orion and Pamela provided at least a semblance of +comfort. But Orion was not satisfied. Then, as always, he had a variety of +vague ambitions. Oratory appealed to him, and he delivered a temperance lecture +with an accompaniment of music, supplied chiefly by Pamela. He aspired to the +study of law, a recurring inclination throughout his career. He also thought of +the ministry, an ambition which Sam shared with him for a time. Every +mischievous boy has it, sooner or later, though not all for the same reasons. +</p> + +<p> +“It was the most earnest ambition I ever had,” Mark Twain once +remarked, thoughtfully. “Not that I ever really wanted to be a preacher, +but because it never occurred to me that a preacher could be damned. It looked +like a safe job.” +</p> + +<p> +A periodical ambition of Orion’s was to own and conduct a paper in +Hannibal. He felt that in such a position he might become a power in Western +journalism. Once his father had considered buying the Hannibal Journal to give +Orion a chance, and possibly to further his own political ambitions. Now Orion +considered it for himself. The paper was for sale under a mortgage, and he was +enabled to borrow the $500 which would secure ownership. Sam’s two years +at Ament’s were now complete, and Orion induced him to take employment on +the Journal. Henry at eleven was taken out of school to learn typesetting. +</p> + +<p> +Orion was a gentle, accommodating soul, but he lacked force and independence. +</p> + +<p> +“I followed all the advice I received,” he says in his record. +“If two or more persons conflicted with each other, I adopted the views +of the last.” +</p> + +<p> +He started full of enthusiasm. He worked like a slave to save help: wrote his +own editorials, and made his literary selections at night. The others worked +too. Orion gave them hard tasks and long hours. He had the feeling that the +paper meant fortune or failure to them all; that all must labor without stint. +In his usual self-accusing way he wrote afterward: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I was tyrannical and unjust to Sam. He was as swift and as clean as a good +journeyman. I gave him tasks, and if he got through well I begrudged him the +time and made him work more. He set a clean proof, and Henry a very dirty one. +The correcting was left to be done in the form the day before publication. Once +we were kept late, and Sam complained with tears of bitterness that he was held +till midnight on Henry’s dirty proofs. +</p> + +<p> +Orion did not realize any injustice at the time. The game was too desperate to +be played tenderly. His first editorials were so brilliant that it was not +believed he could have written them. The paper throughout was excellent, and +seemed on the high road to success. But the pace was too hard to maintain. +Overwork brought weariness, and Orion’s enthusiasm, never a very stable +quantity, grew feeble. He became still more exacting. +</p> + +<p> +It is not to be supposed that Sam Clemens had given up all amusements to become +merely a toiling drudge or had conquered in any large degree his natural taste +for amusement. He had become more studious; but after the long, hard days in +the office it was not to be expected that a boy of fifteen would employ the +evening—at least not every evening—in reading beneficial books. The +river was always near at hand—for swimming in the summer and skating in +the winter—and once even at this late period it came near claiming a +heavy tribute. That was one winter’s night when with another boy he had +skated until nearly midnight. They were about in the middle of the river when +they heard a terrific and grinding noise near the shore. They knew what it was. +The ice was breaking up, and they set out for home forthwith. It was moonlight, +and they could tell the ice from the water, which was a good thing, for there +were wide cracks toward the shore, and they had to wait for these to close. +They were an hour making the trip, and just before they reached the bank they +came to a broad space of water. The ice was lifting and falling and crunching +all around them. They waited as long as they dared and decided to leap from +cake to cake. Sam made the crossing without accident, but his companion slipped +in when a few feet from shore. He was a good swimmer and landed safely, but the +bath probably cost him his hearing. He was taken very ill. One disease followed +another, ending with scarlet fever and deafness. +</p> + +<p> +There was also entertainment in the office itself. A country boy named Jim +Wolfe had come to learn the trade—a green, good-natured, bashful boy. In +every trade tricks are played on the new apprentice, and Sam felt that it was +his turn to play them. With John Briggs to help him, tortures for Jim Wolfe +were invented and applied. +</p> + +<p> +They taught him to paddle a canoe, and upset him. They took him sniping at +night and left him “holding the bag” in the old traditional fashion +while they slipped off home and went to bed. +</p> + +<p> +But Jim Wolfe’s masterpiece of entertainment was one which he undertook +on his own account. Pamela was having a candy-pull down-stairs one +night—a grown-up candy-pull to which the boys were not expected. Jim +would not have gone, anyway, for he was bashful beyond belief, and always dumb, +and even pale with fear, in the presence of pretty Pamela Clemens. Up in their +room the boys could hear the merriment from below and could look out in the +moonlight on the snowy sloping roof that began just beneath their window. Down +at the eaves was the small arbor, green in summer, but covered now with dead +vines and snow. They could hear the candymakers come out, now and then, +doubtless setting out pans of candy to cool. By and by the whole party seemed +to come out into the little arbor, to try the candy, perhaps the joking and +laughter came plainly to the boys up-stairs. About this time there appeared on +the roof from somewhere two disreputable cats, who set up a most disturbing +duel of charge and recrimination. Jim detested the noise, and perhaps was +gallant enough to think it would disturb the party. He had nothing to throw at +them, but he said: +</p> + +<p> +“For two cents I’d get out there and knock their heads off.” +</p> + +<p> +“You wouldn’t dare to do it,” Sam said, purringly. +</p> + +<p> +This was wormwood to Jim. He was really a brave spirit. +</p> + +<p> +“I would too,” he said, “and I will if you say that +again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Jim, of course you wouldn’t dare to go out there. You might +catch cold.” +</p> + +<p> +“You wait and see,” said Jim Wolfe. +</p> + +<p> +He grabbed a pair of yarn stockings for his feet, raised the window, and crept +out on the snowy roof. There was a crust of ice on the snow, but Jim jabbed his +heels through it and stood up in the moonlight, his legs bare, his single +garment flapping gently in the light winter breeze. Then he started slowly +toward the cats, sinking his heels in the snow each time for a footing, a piece +of lath in his hand. The cats were on the corner of the roof above the arbor, +and Jim cautiously worked his way in that direction. The roof was not very +steep. He was doing well enough until he came to a place where the snow had +melted until it was nearly solid ice. He was so intent on the cats that he did +not notice this, and when he struck his heel down to break the crust nothing +yielded. A second later Jim’s feet had shot out from under him, and he +vaulted like an avalanche down the icy roof out on the little vine-clad arbor, +and went crashing through among those candypullers, gathered there with their +pans of cooling taffy. There were wild shrieks and a general flight. Neither +Jim nor Sam ever knew how he got back to their room, but Jim was overcome with +the enormity of his offense, while Sam was in an agony of laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“You did it splendidly, Jim,” he drawled, when he could speak. +“Nobody could have done it better; and did you see how those cats got out +of there? I never had any idea when you started that you meant to do it that +way. And it was such a surprise to the folks down-stairs. How did you ever +think of it?” +</p> + +<p> +It was a fearful ordeal for a boy like Jim Wolfe, but he stuck to his place in +spite of what he must have suffered. The boys made him one of them soon after +that. His initiation was thought to be complete. +</p> + +<p> +An account of Jim Wolfe and the cats was the first original story Mark Twain +ever told. He told it next day, which was Sunday, to Jimmy McDaniel, the +baker’s son, as they sat looking out over the river, eating gingerbread. +His hearer laughed immoderately, and the story-teller was proud and happy in +his success. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XVIII<br/> +THE BEGINNING OF A LITERARY LIFE</h2> + +<p> +Orion’s paper continued to go downhill. Following some random counsel, he +changed the name of it and advanced the price—two blunders. Then he was +compelled to reduce the subscription, also the advertising rates. He was +obliged to adopt a descending scale of charges and expenditures to keep pace +with his declining circulation—a fatal sign. A publisher must lead his +subscription list, not follow it. +</p> + +<p> +“I was walking backward,” he said, “not seeing where I +stepped.” +</p> + +<p> +In desperation he broke away and made a trip to Tennessee to see if something +could not be realized on the land, leaving his brother Sam in charge of the +office. It was a journey without financial results; yet it bore fruit, for it +marked the beginning of Mark Twain’s literary career. +</p> + +<p> +Sam, in his brother’s absence, concluded to edit the paper in a way that +would liven up the circulation. He had never done any writing—not for +print—but he had the courage of his inclinations. His local items were of +a kind known as “spicy”; his personals brought prompt demand for +satisfaction. The editor of a rival paper had been in love, and was said to +have gone to the river one night to drown himself. Sam gave a picturesque +account of this, with all the names connected with the affair. Then he took a +couple of big wooden block letters, turned them upside down, and engraved +illustrations for it, showing the victim wading out into the river with a stick +to test the depth of the water. When this issue of the paper came out the +demand for it was very large. The press had to be kept running steadily to +supply copies. The satirized editor at first swore that he would thrash the +whole journal office, then he left town and did not come back any more. The +embryo Mark Twain also wrote a poem. It was addressed “To Mary in +Hannibal,” but the title was too long to be set in one column, so he left +out all the letters in Hannibal, except the first and the last, and supplied +their place with a dash, with a startling result. Such were the early +flickerings of a smoldering genius. Orion returned, remonstrated, and +apologized. He reduced Sam to the ranks. In later years he saw his mistake. +</p> + +<p> +“I could have distanced all competitors even then,” he said, +“if I had recognized Sam’s ability and let him go ahead, merely +keeping him from offending worthy persons.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam was subdued, but not done for. He never would be, now. He had got his first +taste of print, and he liked it. He promptly wrote two anecdotes which he +thought humorous and sent them to the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post. They +were accepted—without payment, of course, in those days; and when the +papers containing them appeared he felt suddenly lifted to a lofty plane of +literature. This was in 1851. +</p> + +<p> +“Seeing them in print was a joy which rather exceeded anything in that +line I have ever experienced since,” he said, nearly sixty years later. +</p> + +<p> +Yet he did not feel inspired to write anything further for the Post. Twice +during the next two years he contributed to the Journal; once something about +Jim Wolfe, though it was not the story of the cats, and another burlesque on a +rival editor whom he pictured as hunting snipe with a cannon, the explosion of +which was said to have blown the snipe out of the country. No contributions of +this time have been preserved. High prices have been offered for copies of the +Hannibal journal containing them, but without success. The Post sketches were +unsigned and have not been identified. It is likely they were trivial enough. +His earliest work showed no special individuality or merit, being mainly crude +and imitative, as the work of a boy—even a precocious boy—is likely +to be. He was not especially precocious—not in literature. His literary +career would halt and hesitate and trifle along for many years yet, gathering +impetus and equipment for the fuller, statelier swing which would bring a +greater joy to the world at large, even if not to himself, than that first, +far-off triumph.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* In Mark Twain’s sketch “My First Literary Venture” he has +set down with characteristic embroideries some account of this early +authorship. +</p> + +<p> +Those were hard financial days. Orion could pay nothing on his mortgage +—barely the interest. He had promised Sam three dollars and a half a +week, but he could do no more than supply him with board and clothes +—“poor, shabby clothes,” he says in his record. +</p> + +<p> +“My mother and sister did the housekeeping. My mother was cook. She used +the provisions I supplied her. We therefore had a regular diet of bacon, +butter, bread, and coffee.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Clemens again took a few boarders; Pamela, who had given up teaching for a +time, organized another music class. Orion became despondent. One night a cow +got into the office, upset a typecase, and ate up two composition rollers. +Orion felt that fate was dealing with a heavy hand. Another disaster quickly +followed. Fire broke out in the office, and the loss was considerable. An +insurance company paid one hundred and fifty dollars. With it Orion replaced +such articles as were absolutely needed for work, and removed his plant into +the front room of the Clemens dwelling. He raised the one-story part of the +building to give them an added room up-stairs; and there for another two years, +by hard work and pinching economies, the dying paper managed to drag along. It +was the fire that furnished Sam Clemens with his Jim Wolfe sketch. In it he +stated that Jim in his excitement had carried the office broom half a mile and +had then come back after the wash-pan. +</p> + +<p> +In the meantime Pamela Clemens married. Her husband was a well-to-do merchant, +William A. Moffett, formerly of Hannibal, but then of St. Louis, where he had +provided her with the comforts of a substantial home. +</p> + +<p> +Orion tried the experiment of a serial story. He wrote to a number of +well-known authors in the East, but was unable to find one who would supply a +serial for the price he was willing to pay. Finally he obtained a translation +of a French novel for the sum offered, which was five dollars. It did not save +the sinking ship, however. He made the experiment of a tri-weekly, without +success. He noticed that even his mother no longer read his editorials, but +turned to the general news. This was a final blow. +</p> + +<p> +“I sat down in the dark,” he says, “the moon glinting in at +the open door. I sat with one leg over the chair and let my mind float.” +</p> + +<p> +He had received an offer of five hundred dollars for his office—the +amount of the mortgage—and in his moonlight reverie he decided to dispose +of it on those terms. This was in 1853. +</p> + +<p> +His brother Samuel was no longer with him. Several months before, in June, Sam +decided he would go out into the world. He was in his eighteenth year now, a +good workman, faithful and industrious, but he had grown restless in unrewarded +service. Beyond his mastery of the trade he had little to show for six years of +hard labor. Once when he had asked Orion for a few dollars to buy a second-hand +gun, Orion, exasperated by desperate circumstances, fell into a passion and +rated him for thinking of such extravagance. Soon afterward Sam confided to his +mother that he was going away; that he believed Orion hated him; that there was +no longer a place for him at home. He said he would go to St. Louis, where +Pamela was. There would be work for him in St. Louis, and he could send money +home. His intention was to go farther than St. Louis, but he dared not tell +her. His mother put together sadly enough the few belongings of what she +regarded as her one wayward boy; then she held up a little Testament: +</p> + +<p> +“I want you to take hold of the other end of this, Sam,” she said, +“and make me a promise.” +</p> + +<p> +If one might have a true picture of that scene: the slim, wiry woman of +forty-nine, her figure as straight as her deportment, gray-eyed, tender, and +resolute, facing the fair-cheeked, auburn-haired youth of seventeen, his eyes +as piercing and unwavering as her own. Mother and son, they were of the same +metal and the same mold. +</p> + +<p> +“I want you to repeat after me, Sam, these words,” Jane Clemens +said. “I do solemnly swear that I will not throw a card or drink a drop +of liquor while I am gone.” +</p> + +<p> +He repeated the oath after her, and she kissed him. +</p> + +<p> +“Remember that, Sam, and write to us,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“And so,” Orion records, “he went wandering in search of that +comfort and that 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 bounding activity and merriment.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XIX<br/> +IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FRANKLIN</h2> + +<p> +He went to St. Louis by the night boat, visited his sister Pamela, and found a +job in the composing-room of the Evening News. He remained on the paper only +long enough to earn money with which to see the world. The “world” +was New York City, where the Crystal Palace Fair was then going on. The railway +had been completed by this time, but he had not traveled on it. It had not many +comforts; several days and nights were required for the New York trip; yet it +was a wonderful and beautiful experience. He felt that even Pet McMurry could +hardly have done anything to surpass it. He arrived in New York with two or +three dollars in his pocket and a ten-dollar bill concealed in the lining of +his coat. +</p> + +<p> +New York was a great and amazing city. It almost frightened him. It covered the +entire lower end of Manhattan Island; visionary citizens boasted that one day +it would cover it all. The World’s Fair building, the Crystal Palace, +stood a good way out. It was where Bryant Park is now, on Forty-second Street +and Sixth Avenue. Young Clemens classed it as one of the wonders of the world +and wrote lavishly of its marvels. A portion of a letter to his sister Pamela +has been preserved and is given here not only for what it contains, but as the +earliest existing specimen of his composition. The fragment concludes what was +doubtless an exhaustive description. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The machinery department is on the main floor, but I cannot enumerate any of it +on account of the lateness of the hour (past 1 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 50 cents, they take in +about $3,000. +</p> + +<p> +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 +sewers are laid across the bed of the Hudson 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 the 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 +per day! +</p> + +<p> +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. Tell Jim (Wolfe) and all the rest of them to write, and give me all the +news …. +</p> + +<p> +(It has just struck 2 A.M., and I always get up at 6, and am at work at 7.) You +ask where I spend my evenings. Where would you suppose, with a free +printer’s library containing more than 4,000 volumes within a quarter of +a mile of me, and nobody at home to talk to? Write soon. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Truly your brother, S<small>AM</small> +</p> + +<p> +P.S.—I have written this by a light so dim that you nor Ma could not read +by it. Write, and let me know how Henry is. +</p> + +<p> +It is a good letter; it is direct and clear in its descriptive quality, and it +gives us a scale of things. Double the population of Hannibal visited the +Crystal Palace in one day! and the water to supply the city came a distance of +thirty-eight miles! Doubtless these were amazing statistics. +</p> + +<p> +Then there was the interest in family affairs—always strong—his +concern for Henry, whom he loved tenderly; his memory of the promise to his +mother; his understanding of her craving to visit her old home. He did not +write to her direct, for the reason that Orion’s plans were then +uncertain, and it was not unlikely that he had already found a new location. +From this letter, too, we learn that the boy who detested school was reveling +in a library of four thousand books—more than he had ever seen together +before. We have somehow the feeling that he had all at once stepped from +boyhood to manhood, and that the separation was marked by a very definite line. +</p> + +<p> +The work he had secured was in Cliff Street in the printing establishment of +John A. Gray & Green, who agreed to pay him four dollars a week, and did +pay that amount in wildcat money, which saved them about twenty-five per cent. +of the sum. He lodged at a mechanics’ boarding-house in Duane Street, and +when he had paid his board and washing he sometimes had as much as fifty cents +to lay away. +</p> + +<p> +He did not like the board. He had been accustomed to the Southern mode of +cooking, and wrote home complaining that New-Yorkers did not have +“hot-bread” or biscuits, but ate “light-bread,” which +they allowed to get stale, seeming to prefer it in that way. On the whole, +there was not much inducement to remain in New York after he had satisfied +himself with its wonders. He lingered, however, through the hot months of 1853, +and found it not easy to go. In October he wrote to Pamela, suggesting plans +for Orion; also for Henry and Jim Wolfe, whom he seems never to have +overlooked. Among other things he says: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +I have not written to any of the family for some time, from the fact, firstly, +that I didn’t know where they were, and, secondly, because I have been +fooling myself with the idea that I was going to leave New York every day for +the last two weeks. I have taken a liking to the abominable place, and every +time I get ready to leave I put it off a day or so, from some unaccountable +cause. I think I shall get off Tuesday, though. +</p> + +<p> +Edwin Forrest has been playing for the last sixteen days at the Broadway +Theater, but I never went to see him till last night. The play was the +“Gladiator.” I did not like parts of it much, but other portions +were really splendid. In the latter part of the last act, where the +“Gladiator” (Forrest) dies at his brother’s feet (in all the +fierce pleasure of gratified revenge), the man’s whole soul seems +absorbed in the part he is playing; and it is really 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. +</p> + +<p> +I have not received a letter from home lately, but got a “Journal” +the other day, in which I see the office has been sold . . . . +</p> + +<p> +If my letters do not come often, you need not bother yourself about me; for if +you have a brother nearly eighteen years of age who is not able to take care of +himself a few miles from home, such a brother is not worth one’s +thoughts; and if I don’t manage to take care of No. 1, be assured you +will never know it. I am not afraid, however; I shall ask favors of no one and +endeavor to be (and shall be) as “independent as a wood-sawyer’s +clerk.”. . . +</p> + +<p> +Passage to Albany (160 miles) on the finest steamers that ply the Hudson is now +25 cents—cheap enough, but is generally cheaper than that in the summer. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“I have been fooling myself with the idea that I was going to leave New +York” is distinctly a Mark Twain phrase. He might have said that fifty +years later. +</p> + +<p> +He did go to Philadelphia presently and found work “subbing” on a +daily paper,‘The Inquirer.’ He was a fairly swift compositor. He +could set ten thousand ems a day, and he received pay according to the amount +of work done. Days or evenings when there was no vacant place for him to fill +he visited historic sites, the art-galleries, and the libraries. He was still +acquiring education, you see. Sometimes at night when he returned to his +boardinghouse his room-mate, an Englishman named Sumner, grilled a herring, and +this was regarded as a feast. He tried his hand at writing in Philadelphia, +though this time without success. For some reason he did not again attempt to +get into the Post, but offered his contributions to the Philadelphia +‘Ledger’—mainly poetry of an obituary kind. Perhaps it was +burlesque; he never confessed that, but it seems unlikely that any other +obituary poetry would have failed of print. +</p> + +<p> +“My efforts were not received with approval,” was all he ever said +of it afterward. +</p> + +<p> +There were two or three characters in the ‘Inquirer’ office whom he +did not forget. One of these was an old compositor who had “held a +case” in that office for many years. His name was Frog, and sometimes +when he went away the “office devils” would hang a line over his +case, with a hook on it baited with a piece of red flannel. They never got +tired of this joke, and Frog was always able to get as mad over it as he had +been in the beginning. Another old fellow there furnished amusement. He owned a +house in the distant part of the city and had an abnormal fear of fire. Now and +then, when everything was quiet except the clicking of the types, some one +would step to the window and say with a concerned air: +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t that smoke—[or that light, if it was +evening]—seem to be in the northwestern part of the city?” or +“There go the fire-bells again!” and away the old man would tramp +up to the roof to investigate. It was not the most considerate sport, and it is +to be feared that Sam Clemens had his share in it. +</p> + +<p> +He found that he liked Philadelphia. He could save a little money there, for +one thing, and now and then sent something to his mother—small amounts, +but welcome and gratifying, no doubt. In a letter to Orion —whom he seems +to have forgiven with absence—written October 26th, he incloses a gold +dollar to buy her a handkerchief, and “to serve as a specimen of the kind +of stuff we are paid with in Philadelphia.” Further along he adds: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Unlike New York, I like this Philadelphia amazingly, and the people in it. +There is only one thing that gets my “dander” up—and that is +the hands are always encouraging me: telling me “it’s no use to get +discouraged—no use to be downhearted, for there is more work here than +you can do!” “Downhearted,” the devil! I have not had a +particle of such a feeling since I left Hannibal, more than four months ago. I +fancy they’ll have to wait some time till they see me downhearted or +afraid of starving while I have strength to work and am in a city of 400,000 +inhabitants. When I was in Hannibal, before I had scarcely stepped out of the +town limits, nothing could have convinced me that I would starve as soon as I +got a little way from home. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +He mentions the grave of Franklin in Christ Churchyard with its inscription +“Benjamin and Deborah Franklin,” and one is sharply reminded of the +similarity between the early careers of Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Clemens. +Each learned the printer’s trade; each worked in his brother’s +printing-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. +</p> + +<p> +The foregoing letter ends with a long description of a trip made on the +Fairmount stage. It is a good, vivid description—impressions of a fresh, +sensitive mind, set down with little effort at fine writing; a letter to convey +literal rather than literary enjoyment. The Wire Bridge, Fairmount Park and +Reservoir, new buildings—all these passed in review. A fine residence +about completed impressed him: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +It was built entirely of great blocks of red granite. The pillars in front were +all finished but one. These pillars were beautiful, ornamental fluted columns, +considerably larger than a hogshead at the base, and about as high as +Clapinger’s second-story front windows . . . . To see some of them +finished and standing, and then the huge blocks lying about, looks so massy, +and carries one, in imagination, to the ruined piles of ancient Babylon. I +despise the infernal bogus brick columns plastered over with mortar. Marble is +the cheapest building-stone about Philadelphia. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +There is a flavor of the ‘Innocents’ about it; then a little +further along: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +I saw small steamboats, with their signs up—“For Wissahickon and +Manayunk 25 cents.” Geo. Lippard, in his Legends of Washington and his +Generals, has rendered the Wissahickon sacred in my eyes, and I shall make that +trip, as well as one to Germantown, soon . . . . +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +There is one fine custom observed in Phila. A gentleman is always expected to +hand up a lady’s money for her. Yesterday I sat in the front end of the +bus, directly under the driver’s box—a lady sat opposite me. She +handed me her money, which was right. But, Lord! a St. Louis lady would think +herself ruined if she should be so familiar with a stranger. In St. Louis a man +will sit in the front end of the stage, and see a lady stagger from the far end +to pay her fare. +</p> + +<p> +There are two more letters from Philadelphia: one of November, 28th, to Orion, +who by this time had bought a paper in Muscatine, Iowa, and located the family +there; and one to Pamela dated December 5th. Evidently Orion had realized that +his brother might be of value as a contributor, for the latter says: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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…. I believe I am the only person in the Inquirer office that does not +drink. One young fellow makes $18 for a few weeks, and gets on a grand +“bender” and spends every cent of it. +</p> + +<p> +How do you like “free soil”?—I would like amazingly to see a +good old-fashioned negro. My love to all. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Truly your brother, S<small>AM</small> +</p> + +<p> +In the letter to Pamela he is clearly homesick. +</p> + +<p> +“I only want to return to avoid night work, which is injuring my +eyes,” is the excuse, but in the next sentence he complains of the +scarcity of letters from home and those “not written as they should +be.” “One only has to leave home to learn how to write interesting +letters to an absent friend,” he says, and in conclusion, “I +don’t like our present prospect for cold weather at all.” +</p> + +<p> +He had been gone half a year, and the first attack of home-longing, for a boy +of his age, was due. The novelty of things had worn off; it was coming on +winter; changes had taken place among his home people and friends; the life he +had known best and longest was going on and he had no part in it. Leaning over +his case, he sometimes hummed: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain.” +</p> + +<p> +He weathered the attack and stuck it out for more than half a year longer. In +January, when the days were dark and he grew depressed, he made a trip to +Washington to see the sights of the capital. His stay was comparatively brief, +and he did not work there. He returned to Philadelphia, working for a time on +the Ledger and North American. Finally he went back to New York. There are no +letters of this period. His second experience in New York appears not to have +been recorded, and in later years was only vaguely remembered. It was late in +the summer of 1854 when he finally set out on his return to the West. His +‘Wanderjahr’ had lasted nearly fifteen months. +</p> + +<p> +He went directly to St. Louis, sitting up three days and nights in a +smoking-car to make the journey. He was worn out when he arrived, but stopped +there only a few hours to see Pamela. It was his mother he was anxious for. He +took the Keokuk Packet that night, and, flinging himself on his berth, slept +the clock three times around, scarcely rousing or turning over, only waking at +last at Muscatine. For a long time that missing day confused his calculations. +</p> + +<p> +When he reached Orion’s house the family sat at breakfast. He came in +carrying a gun. They had not been expecting him, and there was a general +outcry, and a rush in his direction. He warded them off, holding the butt of +the gun in front of him. +</p> + +<p> +“You wouldn’t let me buy a gun,” he said, “so I bought +one myself, and I am going to use it, now, in self-defense.” +</p> + +<p> +“You, Sam! You, Sam!” cried Jane Clemens. “Behave +yourself,” for she was wary of a gun. +</p> + +<p> +Then he had had his joke and gave himself into his mother’s arms. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XX<br/> +KEOKUK DAYS</h2> + +<p> +Orion wished his brother to remain with him in the Muscatine office, but the +young man declared he must go to St. Louis and earn some money before he would +be able to afford that luxury: He returned to his place on the St. Louis +Evening News, where he remained until late winter or early spring of the +following year. +</p> + +<p> +He lived at this time with a Pavey family, probably one of the Hannibal Paveys, +rooming with a youth named Frank E. Burrough, a journeyman chair-maker with a +taste for Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, and Disraeli. Burrough had really a fine +literary appreciation for his years, and the boys were comrades and close +friends. Twenty-two years later Mark Twain exchanged with Burrough some +impressions of himself at that earlier time. Clemens wrote: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +M<small>Y</small> D<small>EAR</small> B<small>URROUGH</small>,—As you +describe me I can picture myself as I was 22 years ago. The portrait is +correct. You think I have grown some; upon my word there was room for it. You +have described a callow fool, a self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug, +stern in air, heaving at his bit of dung, imagining that he is remodeling the +world and is entirely capable of doing it right…. That is what I was at 19–20. +</p> + +<p> +Orion Clemens in the mean time had married and removed to Keokuk. He had +married during a visit to that city, in the casual, impulsive way so +characteristic of him, and the fact that he had acquired a wife in the +operation seemed at first to have escaped his inner consciousness. He tells it +himself; he says: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +At sunrise on the next morning after the wedding we left in a stage for +Muscatine. We halted for dinner at Burlington. After despatching that meal we +stood on the pavement when the stage drove up, ready for departure. I climbed +in, gathered the buffalo robe around me, and leaned back unconscious that I had +anything further to do. A gentleman standing on the pavement said to my wife, +“Miss, do you go by this stage?” I said, “Oh, I +forgot!” and sprang out and helped her in. A wife was a new kind of +possession to which I had not yet become accustomed; I had forgotten her. +</p> + +<p> +Orion’s wife had been Mary Stotts; her mother a friend of Jane +Clemens’s girlhood. She proved a faithful helpmate to Orion; but in those +early days of marriage she may have found life with him rather trying, and it +was her homesickness that brought them to Keokuk. Brother Sam came up from St. +Louis, by and by, to visit them, and Orion offered him five dollars a week and +board to remain. He accepted. The office at this time, or soon after, was +located on the third floor of 52 Main Street, in the building at present +occupied by the Paterson Shoe Company. Henry Clemens, now seventeen, was also +in Orion’s employ, and a lad by the name of Dick Hingham. Henry and Sam +slept in the office, and Dick came in for social evenings. Also a young man +named Edward Brownell, who clerked in the book-store on the ground floor. +</p> + +<p> +These were likely to be lively evenings. A music dealer and teacher, Professor +Isbell, occupied the floor just below, and did not care for their diversions. +He objected, but hardly in the right way. Had he gone to Samuel Clemens gently, +he undoubtedly would have found him willing to make any concessions. Instead, +he assailed him roughly, and the next evening the boys set up a lot of empty +wine-bottles, which they had found in a barrel in a closet, and, with stones +for balls, played tenpins on the office floor. This was Dick and Sam; Henry +declined to join the game. Isbell rushed up-stairs and battered on the door, +but they paid no attention. Next morning he waited for the young men and +denounced them wildly. They merely ignored him, and that night organized a +military company, made up of themselves and a new German apprentice-boy, and +drilled up and down over the singing-class. Dick Hingham led these military +manoeuvers. He was a girlish sort of a fellow, but he had a natural taste for +soldiering. The others used to laugh at him. They called him a disguised girl, +and declared he would run if a gun were really pointed in his direction. They +were mistaken; seven years later Dick died at Fort Donelson with a bullet in +his forehead: this, by the way. +</p> + +<p> +Isbell now adopted new tactics. He came up very pleasantly and said: +</p> + +<p> +“I like your military practice better than your tenpin exercise, but on +the whole it seems to disturb the young ladies. You see how it is yourself. You +couldn’t possibly teach music with a company of raw recruits drilling +overhead—now, could you? Won’t you please stop it? It bothers my +pupils.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam Clemens regarded him with mild surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“Does it?” he said, very deliberately. “Why didn’t you +mention it before? To be sure we don’t want to disturb the young +ladies.” +</p> + +<p> +They gave up the horse-play, and not only stopped the disturbance, but joined +one of the singing—classes. Samuel Clemens had a pretty good voice in +those days and could drum fairly well on a piano and guitar. He did not become +a brilliant musician, but he was easily the most popular member of the +singing-class. +</p> + +<p> +They liked his frank nature, his jokes, and his humor; his slow, quaint fashion +of speech. The young ladies called him openly and fondly a +“fool”—a term of endearment, as they applied it meaning only +that he kept them in a more or less constant state of wonder and merriment; and +indeed it would have been hard for them to say whether he was really +light-minded and frivolous or the wisest of them all. He was twenty now and at +the age for love-making; yet he remained, as in Hannibal, a beau rather than a +suitor, good friend and comrade to all, wooer of none. Ella Creel, a cousin on +the Lampton side, a great belle; also Ella Patterson (related through +Orion’s wife and generally known as “Ick”), and Belle Stotts +were perhaps his favorite companions, but there were many more. He was always +ready to stop and be merry with them, full of his pranks and pleasantries; +though they noticed that he quite often carried a book under his arm—a +history or a volume of Dickens or the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. +</p> + +<p> +He read at odd moments; at night voluminously—until very late, sometimes. +Already in that early day it was his habit to smoke in bed, and he had made him +an Oriental pipe of the hubble-bubble variety, because it would hold more and +was more comfortable than the regular short pipe of daytime use. +</p> + +<p> +But it had its disadvantages. Sometimes it would go out, and that would mean +sitting up and reaching for a match and leaning over to light the bowl which +stood on the floor. Young Brownell from below was passing upstairs to his room +on the fourth floor one night when he heard Sam Clemens call. The two were +great chums by this time, and Brownell poked his head in at the door. +</p> + +<p> +“What will you have, Sam?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Come in, Ed; Henry’s asleep, and I am in trouble. I want somebody +to light my pipe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you get up and light it yourself?” Brownell asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I would, only I knew you’d be along in a few minutes and would do +it for me.” +</p> + +<p> +Brownell scratched the necessary match, stooped down, and applied it. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you reading, Sam?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, nothing much—a so-called funny book—one of these days +I’ll write a funnier book than that, myself.” +</p> + +<p> +Brownell laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“No, you won’t, Sam,” he said. “You are too lazy ever +to write a book.” +</p> + +<p> +A good many years later when the name “Mark Twain” had begun to +stand for American humor the owner of it gave his “Sandwich Island” +lecture in Keokuk. Speaking of the unreliability of the islanders, he said: +“The king is, I believe, one of the greatest liars on the face of the +earth, except one; and I am very sorry to locate that one right here in the +city of Keokuk, in the person of Ed Brownell.” +</p> + +<p> +The Keokuk episode in Mark Twain’s life was neither very long nor very +actively important. It extended over a period of less than two years —two +vital years, no doubt, if all the bearings could be known—but they were +not years of startling occurrence. +</p> + +<p> +Yet he made at least one beginning there: at a printers’ banquet he +delivered his first after-dinner speech; a hilarious speech—its humor of +a primitive kind. Whatever its shortcomings, it delighted his audience, and +raised him many points in the public regard. He had entered a field of +entertainment in which he would one day have no rival. They impressed him into +a debating society after that, and there was generally a stir of attention when +Sam Clemens was about to take the floor. +</p> + +<p> +Orion Clemens records how his brother undertook to teach the German apprentice +music. +</p> + +<p> +“There was an old guitar in the office and Sam taught Fritz a song +beginning: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Grasshopper sitting on a sweet-potato vine,<br/> +Turkey came along and yanked him from behind.” +</p> + +<p> +The main point in the lesson was in giving to the word “yanked” the +proper expression and emphasis, accompanied by a sweep of the fingers across +the strings. With serious face and deep earnestness Fritz in his broken English +would attempt these lines, while his teacher would bend over and hold his sides +with laughter at each ridiculous effort. Without intending it, Fritz had his +revenge. One day his tormentor’s hand was caught in the press when the +German boy was turning the wheel. Sam called to him to stop, but the +boy’s mind was slow to grasp the situation. The hand was badly wounded, +though no bones were broken. In due time it recovered, its power and dexterity, +but the trace of the scars remained. +</p> + +<p> +Orion’s printing-office was not a prosperous one; he had not the gift of +prosperity in any form. When he found it difficult to pay his brother’s +wages, he took him into partnership, which meant that Sam got no wages at all, +barely a living, for the office could not keep its head above water. +</p> + +<p> +The junior partner was not disturbed, however. He cared little for money in +those days, beyond his actual needs, and these were modest enough. His mother, +now with Pamela, was amply provided for. Orion himself tells how his business +dwindled away. He printed a Keokuk directory, but it did not pay largely. He +was always too eager for the work; too low in his bid for it. Samuel Clemens in +this directory is set down as “an antiquarian” a joke, of course, +though the point of it is now lost. +</p> + +<p> +Only two of his Keokuk letters have been preserved. The first indicates the +general disorder of the office and a growing dissatisfaction. It is addressed +to his mother and sister and bears date of June 10, 1856. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I don’t like to work at too many things at once. They take Henry and Dick +away from me, too. Before we commenced the Directory, I could tell before +breakfast just how much work could be done during the day, and manage +accordingly—but now, they throw all my plans into disorder by taking my +hands away from their work…. I am not getting along well with the job-work. I +can’t work blindly—without system. I gave Dick a job yesterday, +which I calculated he could set in two hours and I could work off on the press +in three, and therefore just finish it by supper-time, but he was transferred +to the Directory,* and the job, promised this morning, remains untouched. +Through all the great pressure of job-work lately, I never before failed in a +promise of the kind . . . +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Orion printed two editions of the directory. This was probably the second +one. +</p> + +<p> +The other letter is dated two months later, August 5th. It was written to +Henry, who was visiting in St. Louis or Hannibal at the time, and introduces +the first mention of the South American fever, which now possessed the writer. +Lynch and Herndon had completed their survey of the upper Amazon, and +Lieutenant Herndon’s account of the exploration was being widely read. +Poring over the book nights, young Clemens had been seized with a desire to go +to the headwaters of the South American river, there to collect coca and make a +fortune. All his life he was subject to such impulses as that, and ways and +means were not always considered. It did not occur to him that it would be +difficult to get to the Amazon and still more difficult to ascend the river. It +was his nature to see results with a dazzling largeness that blinded him to the +detail of their achievement. In the “Turning-point” article already +mentioned he refers to this. He says: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +That was more than fifty years ago. In all that time my temperament has not +changed by even a shade. I have been punished many and many a time, and +bitterly, for doing things and reflecting afterward, but these tortures have +been of no value to me; I still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and +Temperament, and reflect afterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting on +these occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think. +</p> + +<p> +In the letter to Henry we see that his resolve was already made, his plans +matured; also that Orion had not as yet been taken into full confidence. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Ma knows my determination, but even she counsels me to keep it from Orion. She +says I can treat him as I did her when I started to St. Louis and went to New +York—I can start for New York and go to South America. +</p> + +<p> +He adds that Orion had promised him fifty or one hundred dollars, but that he +does not depend upon it, and will make other arrangements. He fears obstacles +may be put in his way, and he will bring various influences to bear. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I shall take care that Ma and Orion are plentifully supplied with South +American books: They have Herndon’s report now. Ward and the Dr. and +myself will hold a grand consultation to-night at the office. We have agreed +that no more shall be admitted into our company. +</p> + +<p> +He had enlisted those two adventurers in his enterprise: a Doctor Martin and +the young man, Ward. They were very much in earnest, but the start was not made +as planned, most likely for want of means. +</p> + +<p> +Young Clemens, however, did not give up the idea. He made up his mind to work +in the direction of his desire, following his trade and laying by money for the +venture. But Fate or Providence or Accident—whatever we may choose to +call the unaccountable—stepped in just then, and laid before him the +means of turning another sharp corner in his career. One of those things +happened which we refuse to accept in fiction as possible; but fact has a +smaller regard for the credibilities. +</p> + +<p> +As in the case of the Joan of Arc episode (and this adds to its marvel), it was +the wind that brought the talismanic gift. It was a day in early +November—bleak, bitter, and gusty, with curling snow; most persons were +indoors. Samuel Clemens, going down Main Street, saw a flying bit of paper pass +him and lodge against the side of 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. +</p> + +<p> +The temptation came to pocket his good-fortune and say nothing. His need of +money was urgent, but he had also an urgent and troublesome conscience; in the +end he advertised his find. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +In the “Turning-point” article he says: “I advertised the +find and left for the Amazon the same day,” a statement which we may +accept with a literary discount. +</p> + +<p> +As a matter of fact, he remained ample time and nobody ever came for the money. +It may have been swept out of a bank or caught up by the wind from some +counting-room table. It may have materialized out of the unseen—who +knows? At all events it carried him the first stage of a journey, the end of +which he little dreamed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXI<br/> +SCOTCHMAN NAMED MACFARLANE</h2> + +<p> +He concluded to go to Cincinnati, which would be on the way either to New York +or New Orleans (he expected to sail from one of these points), but first paid a +brief visit to his mother in St. Louis, for he had a far journey and a long +absence in view. Jane Clemens made him renew his promise as to cards and +liquor, and gave him her blessing. He had expected to go from St. Louis to +Cincinnati, but a new idea—a literary idea—came to him, and he +returned to Keokuk. The Saturday Post, a Keokuk weekly, was a prosperous sheet +giving itself certain literary airs. He was in favor with the management, of +which George Rees was the head, and it had occurred to him that he could send +letters of his travels to the Post—for, a consideration. He may have had +a still larger ambition; at least, the possibility of a book seems to have been +in his consciousness. Rees agreed to take letters from him at five dollars +each—good payment for that time and place. The young traveler, jubilant +in the prospect of receiving money for literature, now made another start, this +time by way of Quincy, Chicago, and Indianapolis according to his first letter +in the Post.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Supplied by Thomas Rees, of the Springfield (Illinois) Register, son of +George Rees named. +</p> + +<p> +This letter is dated Cincinnati, November 14, 1856, and it is not a promising +literary production. It was written in the exaggerated dialect then regarded as +humorous, and while here and there are flashes of the undoubted Mark Twain +type, they are few and far between. The genius that a little more than ten +years later would delight the world flickered feebly enough at twenty-one. The +letter is a burlesque account of the trip to Cincinnati. A brief extract from +it, as characteristic as any, will serve. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I went down one night to the railroad office there, purty close onto the +Laclede House, and bought about a quire o’ yaller paper, cut up into +tickets—one for each railroad in the United States, I thought, but I +found out afterwards that the Alexandria and Boston Air-Line was left +out—and then got a baggage feller to take my trunk down to the boat, +where he spilled it out on the levee, bustin’ it open and shakin’ +out the contents, consisting of “guides” to Chicago, and +“guides” to Cincinnati, and travelers’ guides, and all kinds +of sich books, not excepting a “guide to heaven,” which last aint +much use to a Teller in Chicago, I kin tell you. Finally, that fast packet quit +ringing her bell, and started down the river—but she hadn’t gone +morn a mile, till she ran clean up on top of a sand-bar, whar she stuck till +plum one o’clock, spite of the Captain’s swearin’ —and +they had to set the whole crew to cussin’ at last afore they got her off. +</p> + +<p> +This is humor, we may concede, of that early American type which a little later +would have its flower in Nasby and Artemus Ward. Only careful examination +reveals in it a hint of the later Mark Twain. The letters were signed +“Snodgrass,” and there are but two of them. The second, dated +exactly four months after the first, is in the same assassinating dialect, and +recounts among other things the scarcity of coal in Cincinnati and an absurd +adventure in which Snodgrass has a baby left on his hands. +</p> + +<p> +From the fewness of the letters we may assume that Snodgrass found them hard +work, and it is said he raised on the price. At all events, the second +concluded the series. They are mainly important in that they are the first of +his contributions that have been preserved; also the first for which he +received a cash return. +</p> + +<p> +He secured work at his trade in Cincinnati at the printing-office of Wrightson +& Co., and remained there until April, 1857. That winter in Cincinnati was +eventless enough, but it was marked by one notable association—one that +beyond doubt forwarded Samuel Clemens’s general interest in books, +influenced his taste, and inspired in him certain views and philosophies which +he never forgot. +</p> + +<p> +He lodged at a cheap boarding-house filled with the usual commonplace people, +with one exception. This exception was a long, lank, unsmiling Scotchman named +Macfarlane, who was twice as old as Clemens and wholly unlike him—without +humor or any comprehension of it. Yet meeting on the common plane of intellect, +the two became friends. Clemens spent his evenings in Macfarlane’s room +until the clock struck ten; then Macfarlane grilled a herring, just as the +Englishman Sumner in Philadelphia had done two years before, and the evening +ended. +</p> + +<p> +Macfarlane had books, serious books: histories, philosophies, and scientific +works; also a Bible and a dictionary. He had studied these and knew them by +heart; he was a direct and diligent talker. He never talked of himself, and +beyond the statement that he had acquired his knowledge from reading, and not +at school, his personality was a mystery. He left the house at six in the +morning and returned at the same hour in the evening. His hands were hardened +from some sort of toil-mechanical labor, his companion thought, but he never +knew. He would have liked to know, and he watched for some reference to slip +out that would betray Macfarlane’s trade; but this never happened. +</p> + +<p> +What he did learn was that Macfarlane was a veritable storehouse of abstruse +knowledge; a living dictionary, and a thinker and philosopher besides. He had +at least one vanity: the claim that he knew every word in the English +dictionary, and he made it good. The younger man tried repeatedly to discover a +word that Macfarlane could not define. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps Macfarlane was vain of his other mental attainments, for he never tired +of discoursing upon deep and grave matters, and his companion never tired of +listening. This Scotch philosopher did not always reflect the conclusions of +others; he had speculated deeply and strikingly on his own account. That was a +good while before Darwin and Wallace gave out—their conclusions on the +Descent of Man; yet Macfarlane was already advancing a similar philosophy. He +went even further: Life, he said, had been developed in the course of ages from +a few microscopic seed-germs—from one, perhaps, planted by the Creator in +the dawn of time, and that from this beginning development on an ascending +scale had finally produced man. Macfarlane said that the scheme had stopped +there, and failed; that man had retrograded; that man’s heart was the +only bad one in the animal kingdom: that man was the only animal capable of +malice, vindictiveness, drunkenness—almost the only animal that could +endure personal uncleanliness. He said that man’s intellect was a +depraving addition to him which, in the end, placed him in a rank far below the +other beasts, though it enabled him to keep them in servitude and captivity, +along with many members of his own race. +</p> + +<p> +They were long, fermenting discourses that young Samuel Clemens listened to +that winter in Macfarlane’s room, and those who knew the real Mark Twain +and his philosophies will recognize that those evenings left their impress upon +him for life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXII<br/> +THE OLD CALL OF THE RIVER</h2> + +<p> +When spring came, with budding life and quickening impulses; when the trees in +the parks began to show a hint of green, the Amazonian idea developed afresh, +and the would-be coca-hunter prepared for his expedition. He had saved a little +money—enough to take him to New Orleans—and he decided to begin his +long trip with a peaceful journey down the Mississippi, for once, at least, to +give himself up to that indolent luxury of the majestic stream that had been so +large a part of his early dreams. +</p> + +<p> +The Ohio River steamers were not the most sumptuous craft afloat, but they were +slow and hospitable. The winter had been bleak and hard. “Spring +fever” and a large love of indolence had combined in that drowsy +condition which makes one willing to take his time. +</p> + +<p> +Mark Twain tells us in Life on the Mississippi that he “ran away,” +vowing never to return until he could come home a pilot, shedding glory. This +is a literary statement. The pilot ambition had never entirely died; but it was +coca and the Amazon that were uppermost in his head when he engaged passage on +the Paul Jones for New Orleans, and so conferred immortality on that ancient +little craft. He bade good-by to Macfarlane, put his traps aboard, the bell +rang, the whistle blew, the gang-plank was hauled in, and he had set out on a +voyage that was to 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. +</p> + +<p> +In the Mississippi book the author conveys the impression of being then a boy +of perhaps seventeen. Writing from that standpoint he records incidents that +were more or less inventions or that happened to others. He was, in reality, +considerably more than twenty-one years old, for it was in April, 1857, that he +went aboard the Paul Jones; and he was fairly familiar with steamboats and the +general requirements of piloting. He had been brought up in a town that turned +out pilots; he had heard the talk of their trade. One at least of the Bowen +boys was already on the river while Sam Clemens was still a boy in Hannibal, +and had often been home to air his grandeur and dilate on the marvel of his +work. That learning the river was no light task Sam Clemens very well knew. +Nevertheless, as the little boat made its drowsy way down the river into lands +that grew ever pleasanter with advancing spring, the old “permanent +ambition” of boyhood stirred again, and the call of the far-away Amazon, +with its coca and its variegated zoology, grew faint. +</p> + +<p> +Horace Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones, then a man of thirty-two, still living +(1910) and at the wheel,* was looking out over the bow at the head of Island +No. 35 when he heard a slow, pleasant voice say: +</p> + +<p> +“Good morning.” +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* The writer of this memoir interviewed Mr. Bixby personally, and has followed +his phrasing throughout. +</p> + +<p> +Bixby was a clean-cut, direct, courteous man. +</p> + +<p> +“Good morning, sir,” he said, briskly, without looking around. +</p> + +<p> +As a rule Mr. Bixby did not care for visitors in the pilot-house. This one +presently came up and stood a little behind him. +</p> + +<p> +“How would you like a young man to learn the river?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The pilot glanced over his shoulder and saw a rather slender, loose-limbed +young fellow with a fair, girlish complexion and a great tangle of auburn hair. +</p> + +<p> +“I wouldn’t like it. Cub pilots are more trouble than they’re +worth. A great deal more trouble than profit.” +</p> + +<p> +The applicant was not discouraged. +</p> + +<p> +“I am a printer by trade,” he went on, in his easy, deliberate way. +“It doesn’t agree with me. I thought I’d go to South +America.” +</p> + +<p> +Bixby kept his eye on the river; but a note of interest crept into his voice. +</p> + +<p> +“What makes you pull your words that way?” (“pulling” +being the river term for drawling), he asked. +</p> + +<p> +The young man had taken a seat on the visitors’ bench. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll have to ask my mother,” he said, more slowly than +ever. “She pulls hers, too.” +</p> + +<p> +Pilot Bixby woke up and laughed; he had a keen sense of humor, and the manner +of the reply amused him. His guest made another advance. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know the Bowen boys?” he asked—“pilots in the +St. Louis and New Orleans trade?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know them well—all three of them. William Bowen did his first +steering for me; a mighty good boy, too. Had a Testament in his pocket when he +came aboard; in a week’s time he had swapped it for a pack of cards. I +know Sam, too, and Bart.” +</p> + +<p> +“Old schoolmates of mine in Hannibal. Sam and Will especially were my +chums.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come over and stand by the side of me,” he said. “What is +your name?” +</p> + +<p> +The applicant told him, and the two stood looking at the sunlit water. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you drink?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you gamble?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, Sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you swear?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not for amusement; only under pressure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you chew?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir, never; but I must smoke.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you ever do any steering?” was Bixby’s next question. +</p> + +<p> +“I have steered everything on the river but a steamboat, I guess.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well; take the wheel and see what you can do with a steamboat. Keep +her as she is—toward that lower cottonwood, snag.” +</p> + +<p> +Bixby had a sore foot and was glad of a little relief. He sat down on the bench +and kept a careful eye on the course. By and by he said: +</p> + +<p> +“There is just one way that I would take a young man to learn the river: +that is, for money.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you charge?” +</p> + +<p> +“Five hundred dollars, and I to be at no expense whatever.” +</p> + +<p> +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 looked rather discouraging. +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t got five hundred dollars in money,” Sam said; +“I’ve got a lot of Tennessee land worth twenty-five cents an acre; +I’ll give you two thousand acres of that.” +</p> + +<p> +Bixby dissented. +</p> + +<p> +“No; I don’t want any unimproved real estate. I have too much +already.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam reflected upon the amount he could probably borrow from Pamela’s +husband without straining his credit. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, I’ll give you one hundred dollars cash and the rest +when I earn it.” +</p> + +<p> +Something about this young man had won Horace Bixby’s heart. His slow, +pleasant speech; his unhurried, quiet manner with the wheel, his evident +sincerity of purpose—these were externals, but beneath them the pilot +felt something of that quality of mind or heart which later made the world love +Mark Twain. The terms proposed were agreed upon. The deferred payments were to +begin when the pupil had learned the river and was receiving pilot’s +wages. During Mr. Bixby’s daylight watches his pupil was often at the +wheel, that trip, while the pilot sat directing him and nursing his sore foot. +Any literary ambitions Samuel Clemens may have had grew dim; by the time they +had reached New Orleans he had almost forgotten he had been a printer, and when +he learned that no ship would be sailing to the Amazon for an indefinite period +the feeling grew that a directing hand had taken charge of his affairs. +</p> + +<p> +From New Orleans his chief did not return to Cincinnati, but went to St. Louis, +taking with him his new cub, who thought it fine, indeed, to come steaming up +to that great city with its thronging water-front; its levee fairly packed with +trucks, drays, and piles of freight, the whole flanked with a solid mile of +steamboats lying side by side, bow a little up-stream, their belching stacks +reared high against the blue—a towering front of trade. It was glorious +to nose one’s way to a place in that stately line, to become a unit, +however small, of that imposing fleet. At St. Louis Sam borrowed from Mr. +Moffett the funds necessary to make up his first payment, and so concluded his +contract. Then, when he suddenly found himself on a fine big boat, in a +pilot-house so far above the water that he seemed perched on a mountain—a +“sumptuous temple”—his happiness seemed complete. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXIII<br/> +THE SUPREME SCIENCE</h2> + +<p> +In his Mississippi book Mark Twain has given us a marvelous exposition of the +science of river-piloting, and of the colossal task of acquiring and keeping a +knowledge requisite for that work. He has not exaggerated this part of the +story of developments in any detail; he has set down a simple confession. +</p> + +<p> +Serenely enough he undertook the task of learning 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. As already suggested, he had at least +an inkling of what that undertaking meant. His statement that he +“supposed all that a pilot had to do was to keep his boat in the +river” is not to be accepted literally. Still he could hardly have +realized the full majesty of his task; nobody could do that —not until +afterward. +</p> + +<p> +Horace Bixby was a “lightning” pilot with a method of instruction +as direct and forcible as it was effective. He was a small man, hot and +quick-firing, though kindly, too, and gentle when he had blown off. After one +rather pyrotechnic misunderstanding as to the manner of imparting and acquiring +information he said: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +So Sam Clemens got the little book, and presently it “fairly +bristled” with the names of towns, points, bars, islands, bends, and +reaches, but it made his heart ache to think that he had only half of the river +set down; for, as the “watches” were four hours off and four hours +on, there were long gaps during which he had slept. +</p> + +<p> +The little note-book still exists—thin and faded, with black water-proof +covers—its neat, tiny, penciled notes still, telling, the story of that +first trip. Most of them are cryptographic abbreviations, not readily +deciphered now. Here and there is an easier line: +</p> + +<p class="center"> +MERIWEATHER’S BEND +</p> + +<p> +1/4 less 3*—run shape of upper bar and go into the low place in +willows about 200(ft.) lower down than last year. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Depth of water. One-quarter less than three fathoms. +</p> + +<p> +One simple little note out of hundreds far more complicated. It would take days +for the average mind to remember even a single page of such statistics. And +those long four-hour gaps where he had been asleep, they are still there, and +somehow, after more than fifty years, the old heart-ache is still in them. He +got a new book, maybe, for the next trip, and laid this one away. +</p> + +<p> +There is but one way to account for the fact that the man whom the world knew +as Mark Twain—dreamy, unpractical, and indifferent to details—ever +persisted in acquiring knowledge like that—in the vast, the absolutely +limitless quantity necessary to Mississippi piloting. It lies in the fact that +he loved the river in its every mood and aspect and detail, and not only the +river, but a steam boat; and still more, perhaps, the freedom of the +pilot’s life and its prestige. Wherever he has written of the +river—and in one way or another he was always writing of it we feel the +claim of the old captivity and that it still holds him. In the Huckleberry Finn +book, during those nights and days with Huck and Nigger Jim on the +raft—whether in stormlit blackness, still noontide, or the lifting mists +of morning—we can fairly “smell” the river, as Huck himself +would say, and we know that it is because the writer loved it with his heart of +hearts and literally drank in its environment and atmosphere during those +halcyon pilot days. +</p> + +<p> +So, in his love lay the secret of his marvelous learning, and it is recorded +(not by himself, but by his teacher) that he was an apt pupil. Horace Bixby has +more than once declared: +</p> + +<p> +“Sam was always good-natured, and he had a natural taste for the river. +He had a fine memory and never forgot anything I told him.” +</p> + +<p> +Mark Twain himself records a different opinion of his memory, with the size of +its appalling task. It can only be presented in his own words. In the pages +quoted he had mastered somewhat of the problem, and had begun to take on airs. +His chief was a constant menace at such moments: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +One day he turned on me suddenly with this settler: +</p> + +<p> +“What is the shape of Walnut Bend?” +</p> + +<p> +He might as well have asked me my grandmother’s opinion of protoplasm. I +reflected respectfully, and then 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: +</p> + +<p> +“My boy, you’ve got to know the shape of the river perfectly. It is +all there is left to steer by on a very dark night. Everything is blotted out +and gone. But mind you, it hasn’t the same shape in the night that it has +in the daytime.” +</p> + +<p> +“How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know the shape +of it. You can’t see it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I was dead!” +</p> + +<p> +“Now, I don’t want to discourage you, but——” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see, this has got to be learned; there isn’t any getting +around it. A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that, if you +didn’t know the shape of a shore perfectly, you would claw away from +every bunch of timber, because you would take the black shadow of it for a +solid cape; and, you see, you would be getting scared to death every fifteen +minutes by the watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all the time when you +ought to be within fifty feet of it. You can’t see a snag in one of those +shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and the shape of the river tells you +when you are coming to it. Then there’s your pitch-dark night; the river +is a very different shape on a pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight +night. All shores seem to be straight lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too; +and you’d run them for straight lines, only you know better. You boldly +drive your boat right into what seems to be a solid, straight wall (you know +very well that in reality there is a curve there), and that wall falls back and +makes way for you. Then there’s your gray mist. You take a night when +there’s one of these grisly, drizzly, gray mists, and then there +isn’t any particular shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle the head +of the oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different kinds of moonlight +change the shape of the river in different ways. You see——” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t say any more, please! Have I got to learn the shape of +the river according to all these five hundred thousand different ways? If I +tried to carry all that cargo in my head it would make me +stoop-shouldered.” +</p> + +<p> +“No! you only learn the shape of the river; and you learn it with such +absolute certainty that you can always steer by the shape that’s in your +head, and never mind the one that’s before your eyes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, I’ll try it; but, after I have learned it, can I depend +on it? Will it keep the same form, and not go fooling around?” +</p> + +<p> +Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W. came in to take the watch, and he said: +</p> + +<p> +“Bixby, you’ll have to look out for President’s island, and +all that country clear away up above the Old Hen and Chickens. The banks are +caving and the shape of the shores changing like everything. Why, you +wouldn’t know the point about 40. You can go up inside the old sycamore +snag now.” +</p> + +<p> +So that question was answered. Here were leagues of shore changing shape. My +spirits were down in the mud again. Two things seemed pretty apparent to me. +One was that in order to be a pilot a man had got to learn more than any one +man ought to be allowed to know; and the other was that he must learn it all +over again in a different way every twenty-four hours. +</p> + +<p> +I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the eluding and +ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands on, that was the +chief. I would fasten my eyes upon a sharp, wooded point that projected far +into the river some miles ahead of me and go to laboriously photographing its +shape upon my brain; and just as I was beginning to succeed to my satisfaction +we would draw up to it, and the exasperating thing would begin to melt away and +fold back into the bank! +</p> + +<p> +It was plain that I had got to learn the shape of the river in all the +different ways that could be thought of—upside down, wrong end first, +inside out, fore-and-aft, and “thort-ships,”—and then know +what to do on gray nights when it hadn’t any shape at all. So I set about +it. In the course of time I began to get the best of this knotty lesson, and my +self-complacency moved to the front once more. Mr. Bixby was all fixed and +ready to start it to the rear again. He opened on me after this fashion: +</p> + +<p> +“How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-The-Wall, +trip before last?” +</p> + +<p> +I considered this an outrage. I said: +</p> + +<p> +“Every trip down and up the leadsmen are singing through that tangled +place for three-quarters of an hour on a stretch. How do you reckon I can +remember such a mess as that?” +</p> + +<p> +“My boy, you’ve got to remember it. You’ve got to remember +the exact spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had the shoalest +water, in every one of the five hundred shoal places between St. Louis and New +Orleans; and you mustn’t get the shoal soundings and marks of one trip +mixed up with the shoal soundings and marks of another, either, for +they’re not often twice alike. You must keep them separate.” +</p> + +<p> +When I came to myself again, I said: +</p> + +<p> +“When I get so that I can do that, I’ll be able to raise the dead, +and then I won’t have to pilot a steamboat to make a living. I want to +retire from this business. I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I’m only +fit for a roustabout. I haven’t got brains enough to be a pilot; and if I +had I wouldn’t have strength enough to carry them around, unless I went +on crutches.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now drop that! When I say I’ll learn a man the river I mean it. +And you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +We have quoted at length from this chapter because it seems of very positive +importance here. It is one of the most luminous in the book so far as the +mastery of the science of piloting is concerned, and shows better than could +any other combination of words something of what is required of the learner. It +does not cover the whole problem, by any means—Mark Twain himself could +not present that; and even considering his old-time love of the river and the +pilot’s trade, it is still incredible that a man of his temperament could +have persisted, as he did, against such obstacles. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXIV<br/> +THE RIVER CURRICULUM</h2> + +<p> +He acquired other kinds of knowledge. As the streets of Hannibal in those early +days, and the printing-offices of several cities, had taught him human nature +in various unvarnished aspects, so the river furnished an added course to that +vigorous education. Morally, its atmosphere could not be said to be an +improvement on the others. Navigation in the West had begun with crafts of the +flat-boat type—their navigators rude, hardy men, heavy drinkers, reckless +fighters, barbaric in their sports, coarse in their wit, profane in everything. +Steam-boatmen were the natural successors of these pioneers—a shade less +coarse, a thought less profane, a veneer less barbaric. But these things were +mainly “above stairs.” You had but to scratch lightly a mate or a +deck-hand to find the old keel-boatman savagery. Captains were overlords, and +pilots kings in this estate; but they were not angels. In Life on the +Mississippi Clemens refers to his chief’s explosive vocabulary and tells +us how he envied the mate’s manner of giving an order. It was easier to +acquire those things than piloting, and, on the whole, quicker. One could +improve upon them, too, with imagination and wit and a natural gift for terms. +That Samuel Clemens maintained his promise as to drink and cards during those +apprentice days is something worth remembering; and if he did not always +restrict his profanity to moments of severe pressure or sift the quality of his +wit, we may also remember that he was an extreme example of a human being, in +that formative stage which gathers all as grist, later to refine it for the +uses and delights of men. +</p> + +<p> +He acquired a vast knowledge of human character. He says: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +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. When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or +biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the reason +that I have, known him before—met him on the river. +</p> + +<p> +Undoubtedly the river was a great school for the study of life’s broader +philosophies and humors: philosophies that avoid vague circumlocution and aim +at direct and sure results; humors of the rugged and vigorous sort that in +Europe are known as “American” and in America are known as +“Western.” Let us be thankful that Mark Twain’s school was no +less than it was—and no more. +</p> + +<p> +The demands of the Missouri River trade took Horace Bixby away from the +Mississippi, somewhat later, and he consigned his pupil, according to custom, +to another pilot—it is not certain, now, to just which pilot, but +probably to Zeb Leavenworth or Beck Jolly, of the John J. Roe. The Roe was a +freight-boat, “as slow as an island and as comfortable as a farm.” +In fact, the Roe was owned and conducted by farmers, and Sam Clemens thought if +John Quarles’s farm could be set afloat it would greatly resemble that +craft in the matter of good-fellowship, hospitality, and speed. It was said of +her that up-stream she could even beat an island, though down-stream she could +never quite overtake the current, but was a “love of a steamboat” +nevertheless. The Roe was not licensed to carry passengers, but she always had +a dozen “family guests” aboard, and there was a big boiler-deck for +dancing and moonlight frolics, also a piano in the cabin. The young pilot +sometimes played on the piano and sang to his music songs relating to the +“grasshopper on the sweet-potato vine,” or to an old horse by the +name of Methusalem: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem,<br/> +A long time ago. +</p> + +<p> +There were forty-eight stanzas about this ancient horse, all pretty much alike; +but the assembled company was not likely to be critical, and his efforts won +him laurels. He had a heavenly time on the John J. Roe, and then came what +seemed inferno by contrast. Bixby returned, made a trip or two, then left and +transferred him again, this time to a man named Brown. Brown had a berth on the +fine new steamer Pennsylvania, one of the handsomest boats on the river, and +young Clemens had become a fine steersman, so it is not unlikely that both men +at first were gratified by the arrangement. +</p> + +<p> +But Brown was a fault-finding, tyrannical chief, ignorant, vulgar, and +malicious. In the Mississippi book the author gives his first interview with +Brown, also his last one. For good reasons these occasions were burned into his +memory, and they may be accepted as substantially correct. Brown had an +offensive manner. His first greeting was a surly question. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you Horace Bigsby’s cub?” +</p> + +<p> +“Bixby” was usually pronounced “Bigsby” on the river, +but Brown made it especially obnoxious and followed it up with questions and +comments and orders still more odious. His subordinate soon learned to detest +him thoroughly. It was necessary, however, to maintain a respectable +deportment—custom, discipline, even the law, required that—but it +must have been a hard winter and spring the young steersman put in during those +early months of 1858, restraining himself from the gratification of slaying +Brown. Time would bring revenge—a tragic revenge and at a fearful cost; +but he could not guess that, and he put in his spare time planning punishments +of his own. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +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 +my river in my mind, as was my duty, I threw business aside for pleasure and +killed Brown. I killed Brown every night for a month; not in old, stale, +commonplace ways, but in new and picturesque ones—ways that were +sometimes surprising for freshness of design and ghastly for situation and +environment. +</p> + +<p> +Once when Brown had been more insulting than usual his subordinate went to bed +and killed him in “seventeen different ways—all of them new.” +</p> + +<p> +He had made an effort at first to please Brown, but it was no use. Brown was +the sort of a man that refused to be pleased; no matter how carefully his +subordinate steered, he as always at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Here,” he would shout, “where are you going now? Pull her +down! Pull her down! Don’t you hear me? Dod-derned mud-cat!” +</p> + +<p> +His assistant lost all desire to be obliging to such a person and even took +occasion now and then to stir him up. One day they were steaming up the river +when Brown noticed that the boat seemed to be heading toward some unusual +point. +</p> + +<p> +“Here, where are you heading for now?” he yelled. “What in +nation are you steerin’ at, anyway? Deyned numskull!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” said Sam, in unruffled deliberation, “I didn’t +see much else I could steer for, and I was heading for that white heifer on the +bank.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get away from that wheel! and get outen this pilothouse!” yelled +Brown. “You ain’t fit to become no pilot!” +</p> + +<p> +Which was what Sam wanted. Any temporary relief from the carping tyranny of +Brown was welcome. +</p> + +<p> +He had been on the river nearly a year now, and, though universally liked and +accounted a fine steersman, he was receiving no wages. There had been small +need of money for a while, for he had no board to pay; but clothes wear out at +last, and there were certain incidentals. The Pennsylvania made a round trip in +about thirty-five days, with a day or two of idle time at either end. The young +pilot found that he could get night employment, watching freight on the New +Orleans levee, and thus earn from two and a half to three dollars for each +night’s watch. Sometimes there would be two nights, and with a capital of +five or six dollars he accounted himself rich. +</p> + +<p> +“It was a desolate experience,” he said, long afterward, +“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 sorts of +situations and possibilities. Those things got into my books by and by and +furnished me with many a chapter. I can trace the effect of those nights +through most of my books in one way and another.” +</p> + +<p> +Many of the curious tales in the latter half of the Mississippi book came out +of those long night-watches. It was a good time to think of such things. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXV<br/> +LOVE-MAKING AND ADVENTURE</h2> + +<p> +Of course, life with Brown was not all sorrow. At either end of the trip there +was respite and recreation. In St. Louis, at Pamela’s there was likely to +be company: Hannibal friends mostly, schoolmates—girls, of course. At New +Orleans he visited friendly boats, especially the John J. Roe, where he was +generously welcomed. One such visit on the Roe he never forgot. A young girl +was among the boat’s guests that trip —another Laura, fifteen, +winning, delightful. They met, and were mutually attracted; in the life of each +it was one of those bright spots which are likely to come in youth: one of +those sudden, brief periods of romance, love—call it what you will the +thing that leads to marriage, if pursued. +</p> + +<p> +“I was not four inches from that girl’s elbow during our waking +hours for the next three days.” +</p> + +<p> +Then came a sudden interruption: Zeb Leavenworth came flying aft shouting: +</p> + +<p> +“The Pennsylvania is backing out.” +</p> + +<p> +A flutter of emotion, a fleeting good-by, a flight across the decks, a flying +leap from romance back to reality, and it was all over. He wrote her, but +received no reply. He never saw her again, never heard from her for forty-eight +years, when both were married, widowed, and old. She had not received his +letter. +</p> + +<p> +Even on the Pennsylvania life had its interests. A letter dated March 9, 1858, +recounts a delightfully dangerous night-adventure in the steamer’s yawl, +hunting for soundings in the running ice. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Then the fun commenced. We made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the +yawl, and put the men (both crews) to it like horses on the shore. 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 till the yawl would bring +up 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. +Sent back and warped up the other yawl, and then George (George Ealer, the +other pilot) and myself took a double crew of fresh men and tried it again. +This time we found the channel in less than half an hour, and landed on an +island till the Pennsylvania came along and took us off. 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…. We sounded Hat Island, warped up +around a bar, and sounded again—but in order to understand our situation +you will have to read Dr. Kane. It would have been impossible to get back to +the boat. But 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 then been out in the yawl from four o’clock in the +morning till half past nine without being near a fire. There was a thick +coating of ice over men, and yawl, ropes and everything else, and we looked +like rock-candy statuary. +</p> + +<p> +This was the sort of thing he loved in those days. We feel the writer’s +evident joy and pride in it. In the same letter he says: “I can’t +correspond with the paper, because when one is learning the river he is not +allowed to do or think about anything else.” Then he mentions his brother +Henry, and we get the beginning of that tragic episode for which, though +blameless, Samuel Clemens always held himself responsible. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Henry was doing little or nothing here (St. Louis), and I sent him to our clerk +to work his way for a trip, measuring wood-piles, counting coal-boxes, and +doing other clerkly duties, which he performed satisfactorily. He may go down +with us again. +</p> + +<p> +Henry Clemens was about twenty at this time, a handsome, attractive boy of whom +his brother was lavishly fond and proud. He did go on the next trip and +continued to go regularly after that, as third clerk in line of promotion. It +was a bright spot in those hard days with Brown to have Henry along. The boys +spent a good deal of their leisure with the other pilot, George Ealer, who +“was as kindhearted as Brown wasn’t,” and quoted Shakespeare +and Goldsmith, and played the flute to his fascinated and inspiring audience. +These were things worth while. The young steersman could not guess that the +shadow of a long sorrow was even then stretching across the path ahead. +</p> + +<p> +Yet in due time he received a warning, a remarkable and impressive warning, +though of a kind seldom heeded. One night, when the Pennsylvania lay in St. +Louis, he slept at his sister’s house and had this vivid dream: +</p> + +<p> +He saw Henry, a corpse, lying in a metallic burial case in the sitting-room, +supported on two chairs. On his breast lay a bouquet of flowers, white, with a +single crimson bloom in the center. +</p> + +<p> +When he awoke, it was morning, but the dream was so vivid that he believed it +real. Perhaps something of the old hypnotic condition was upon him, for he rose +and dressed, thinking he would go in and look at his dead brother. Instead, he +went out on the street in the early morning and had walked to the middle of the +block before it suddenly flashed upon him that it was only a dream. He bounded +back, rushed to the sitting-room, and felt a great trembling revulsion of joy +when he found it really empty. He told Pamela the dream, then put it out of his +mind as quickly as he could. The Pennsylvania sailed from St. Louis as usual, +and made a safe trip to New Orleans. +</p> + +<p> +A safe trip, but an eventful one; on it occurred that last interview with +Brown, already mentioned. It is recorded in the Mississippi book, but cannot be +omitted here. Somewhere down the river (it was in Eagle Bend) Henry appeared on +the hurricane deck to bring an order from the captain for a landing to be made +a little lower down. Brown was somewhat deaf, but would never confess it. He +may not have understood the order; at all events he gave no sign of having +heard it, and went straight ahead. He disliked Henry as he disliked everybody +of finer grain than himself, and in any case was too arrogant to ask for a +repetition. They were passing the landing when Captain Klinefelter appeared on +deck and called to him to let the boat come around, adding: +</p> + +<p> +“Didn’t Henry tell you to land here?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +Captain. Klinefelter turned to Sam: +</p> + +<p> +“Didn’t you hear him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +Brown said: “Shut your mouth! You never heard anything of the +kind.” +</p> + +<p> +By and by Henry came into the pilot-house, unaware of any trouble. Brown set +upon him in his ugliest manner. +</p> + +<p> +“Here, why didn’t you tell me we had got to land at that +plantation?” he demanded. +</p> + +<p> +Henry was always polite, always gentle. +</p> + +<p> +“I did tell you, Mr. Brown.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a lie.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam Clemens could stand Brown’s abuse of himself, but not of Henry. He +said: “You lie yourself. He did tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +Brown was dazed for a moment and then he shouted: +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll attend to your case in half a minute!” and ordered +Henry out of the pilot-house. +</p> + +<p> +The boy had started, when Brown suddenly seized him by the collar and struck +him in the face.* Instantly Sam was upon Brown, with a heavy stool, and +stretched him on the floor. Then all the bitterness and indignation that had +been smoldering for months flamed up, and, leaping upon Brown and holding him +with his knees, he pounded him with his fists until strength and fury gave out. +Brown struggled free, then, and with pilot instinct sprang to the wheel, for +the vessel had been drifting and might have got into trouble. Seeing there was +no further danger, he seized a spy-glass as a weapon. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* In the Mississippi book the writer states that Brown started to strike Henry +with a large piece of coal; but, in a letter written soon after the occurrence +to Mrs. Orion Clemens, he says:<br/> + “Henry started out of the pilot-house-Brown jumped up and collared +him —turned him half-way around and struck him in the face!-and him +nearly six feet high-struck my little brother. I was wild from that moment. I +left the boat to steer herself, and avenged the insult—and the captain +said I was right.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get out of this here pilot-house,” he raged. +</p> + +<p> +But his subordinate was not afraid of him now. +</p> + +<p> +“You should leave out the ‘here,’” he drawled, +critically. “It is understood, and not considered good English +form.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you give me none of your airs,” yelled Brown. “I +ain’t going to stand nothing more from you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You should say, ‘Don’t give me any of your +airs,’” Sam said, sweetly, “and the last half of your +sentence almost defies correction.” +</p> + +<p> +A group of passengers and white-aproned servants, assembled on the deck +forward, applauded the victor. +</p> + +<p> +Brown turned to the wheel, raging and growling. Clemens went below, where he +expected Captain Klinefelter to put him in irons, perhaps, for it was thought +to be felony to strike a pilot. The officer took him into his private room and +closed the door. At first he looked at the culprit thoughtfully, then he made +some inquiries: +</p> + +<p> +“Did you strike him first?” Captain Klinefelter asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“What with?” +</p> + +<p> +“A stool, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hard?” +</p> + +<p> +“Middling, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did it knock him down?” +</p> + +<p> +“He—he fell, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did you do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Pounded him, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pounded him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you pound him much—that is, severely?” +</p> + +<p> +“One might call it that, sir, maybe.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am deuced 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.”* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* “Life on the Mississippi.” +</p> + +<p> +Captain Klinefelter told him to clear out, then, and the culprit heard him +enjoying himself as the door closed behind him. Brown, of course, forbade him +the pilothouse after that, and he spent the rest of the trip “an +emancipated slave” listening to George Ealer’s flute and his +readings from Goldsmith and Shakespeare; playing chess with him sometimes, and +learning a trick which he would use himself in the long after-years—that +of taking back the last move and running out the game differently when he saw +defeat. +</p> + +<p> +Brown swore that he would leave the boat at New Orleans if Sam Clemens remained +on it, and Captain Klinefelter told Brown to go. Then when another pilot could +not be obtained to fill his place, the captain offered to let Clemens himself +run the daylight watches, thus showing his confidence in the knowledge of the +young steersman, who had been only a little more than a year at the wheel. But +Clemens himself had less confidence and advised the captain to keep Brown back +to St. Louis. He would follow up the river by another boat and resume his place +as steersman when Brown was gone. Without knowing it, he may have saved his +life by that decision. +</p> + +<p> +It is doubtful if he remembered his recent disturbing dream, though some +foreboding would seem to have hung over him the night before the Pennsylvania +sailed. Henry liked to join in the night-watches on the levee when he had +finished his duties, and the brothers often walked the round chatting together. +On this particular night the elder spoke of disaster on the river. Finally he +said: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +It was good manly advice, but it yielded a long harvest of sorrow. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXVI<br/> +THE TRAGEDY OF THE “PENNSYLVANIA”</h2> + +<p> +Captain Klinefelter obtained his steersman a pass on the A. T. Lacey, which +left two days behind the Pennsylvania. This was pleasant, for Bart Bowen had +become captain of that fine boat. The Lacey touched at Greenville, Mississippi, +and a voice from the landing shouted: +</p> + +<p> +“The Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis, at Ship Island! One +hundred and fifty lives lost!” +</p> + +<p> +Nothing further could be learned there, but that evening at Napoleon a Memphis +extra reported some of the particulars. Henry Clemens’s name was +mentioned as one of those, who had escaped injury. Still farther up the river +they got a later extra. Henry was again mentioned; this time as being scalded +beyond recovery. By the time they reached Memphis they knew most of the +details: At six o’clock that warm mid-June morning, while loading wood +from a large flat-boat sixty miles below Memphis, four out of eight of the +Pennsylvania’s boilers had suddenly exploded with fearful results. All +the forward end of the boat had been blown out. Many persons had been killed +outright; many more had been scalded and crippled and would die. It was one of +those hopeless, wholesale steamboat slaughters which for more than a generation +had made the Mississippi a river of death and tears. +</p> + +<p> +Samuel Clemens found his brother stretched upon a mattress on the floor of an +improvised hospital—a public hall—surrounded by more than thirty +others more or less desperately injured. He was told that Henry had inhaled +steam and that his body was badly scalded. His case was considered hopeless. +</p> + +<p> +Henry was one of those who had been blown into the river by the explosion. He +had started to swim for the shore, only a few hundred yards away, but +presently, feeling no pain and believing himself unhurt, he had turned back to +assist in the rescue of the others. What he did after that could not be clearly +learned. The vessel had taken fire; the rescued were being carried aboard the +big wood-boat still attached to the wreck. The fire soon raged so that the +rescuers and all who could be saved were driven into the wood-flat, which was +then cut adrift and landed. There the sufferers had to lie in the burning sun +many hours until help could come. Henry was among those who were insensible by +that time. Perhaps he had really been uninjured at first and had been scalded +in his work of rescue; it will never be known. +</p> + +<p> +His brother, hearing these things, was thrown into the deepest agony and +remorse. He held himself to blame for everything; for Henry’s presence on +the boat; for his advice concerning safety of others; for his own absence when +he might have been there to help and protect the boy. He wanted to telegraph at +once to his mother and sister to come, but the doctors persuaded him to +wait—just why, he never knew. He sent word of the disaster to Orion, who +by this time had sold out in Keokuk and was in East Tennessee studying law; +then he set himself to the all but hopeless task of trying to bring Henry back +to life. Many Memphis ladies were acting as nurses, and one, a Miss Wood, +attracted by the boy’s youth and striking features, joined in the +desperate effort. Some medical students had come to assist the doctors, and one +of these also took special interest in Henry’s case. Dr. Peyton, an old +Memphis practitioner, declared that with such care the boy might pull through. +</p> + +<p> +But on the fourth night he was considered to be dying. Half delirious with +grief and the strain of watching, Samuel Clemens wrote to his mother and to his +sister-in-law in Tennessee. The letter to Orion Clemens’s wife has been +preserved. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +M<small>EMPHIS</small>, T<small>ENN</small>., <i>Friday, June</i> 18, 1858. +</p> + +<p> +D<small>EAR</small> S<small>ISTER</small> M<small>OLLIE</small>,—Long +before this reaches you my poor Henry—my darling, my pride, my glory, my +all will have finished his blameless career, and the light of my life will have +gone out in utter darkness. The horrors of three days have swept over +me—they have blasted my youth and left me an old man before my time. +Mollie, there are gray hairs in my head to-night. For forty-eight hours I +labored at the bedside of my poor burned and bruised but uncomplaining brother, +and then the star of my hope went out and left me in the gloom of despair. Men +take me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me “lucky” +because I was not on the Pennsylvania when she blew up! May God forgive them, +for they know not what they say. +</p> + +<p> +I was on the Pennsylvania five minutes before she left N. Orleans, and I must +tell you the truth, Mollie—three hundred human beings perished by that +fearful disaster. But may God bless Memphis, the noblest city on the face of +the earth. She has done her duty by these poor afflicted +creatures—especially Henry, for he has had five—aye, ten, fifteen, +twenty times the care and attention that any one else has had. Dr. Peyton, the +best physician in Memphis (he is exactly like the portraits of Webster), sat by +him for 36 hours. There are 32 scalded men in that room, and you would know Dr. +Peyton better than I can describe him if you could follow him around and hear +each man murmur as he passes, “May the God of Heaven bless you, +Doctor!” The ladies have done well, too. Our second mate, a handsome, +noble-hearted young fellow, will die. Yesterday a beautiful girl of 15 stooped +timidly down by his side and handed him a pretty bouquet. The poor suffering +boy’s eyes kindled, his lips quivered out a gentle “God bless you, +Miss,” and he burst into tears. He made them write her name on a card for +him, that he might not forget it. +</p> + +<p> +Pray for me, Mollie, and pray for my poor sinless brother. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Your unfortunate brother,<br/> +S<small>AML</small>. L. C<small>LEMENS</small>. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +P. S.—I got here two days after Henry. +</p> + +<p> +But, alas, this was not all, nor the worst. It would seem that Samuel +Clemens’s cup of remorse must be always overfull. The final draft that +would embitter his years was added the sixth night after the accident +—the night that Henry died. He could never bring himself to write it. He +was never known to speak of it but twice. +</p> + +<p> +Henry had rallied soon after the foregoing letter had been mailed, and improved +slowly that day and the next: Dr. Peyton came around about eleven o’clock +on the sixth night and made careful examination. He said: +</p> + +<p> +“I believe he is out of danger and will get well. He is likely to be +restless during the night; the groans and fretting of the others will disturb +him. If he cannot rest without it, tell the physician in charge to give him +one-eighth of a grain of morphine.” +</p> + +<p> +The boy did wake during the night, and was disturbed by the complaining of the +other sufferers. His brother told the young medical student in charge what the +doctor had said about the morphine. But morphine was a new drug then; the +student hesitated, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“I have no way of measuring. I don’t know how much an eighth of a +grain would be.” +</p> + +<p> +Henry grew rapidly worse—more and more restless. His brother was half +beside himself with the torture of it. He went to the medical student. +</p> + +<p> +“If you have studied drugs,” he said, “you ought to be able +to judge an eighth of a grain of morphine.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man’s courage was over-swayed. He yielded and ladled out in the +old-fashioned way, on the point of a knife-blade, what he believed to be the +right amount. Henry immediately sank into a heavy sleep. He died before +morning. His chance of life had been infinitesimal, and his death was not +necessarily due to the drug, but Samuel Clemens, unsparing in his self-blame, +all his days carried the burden of it. +</p> + +<p> +He saw the boy taken to the dead room, then the long strain of grief, the days +and nights without sleep, the ghastly realization of the end overcame him. A +citizen of Memphis took him away in a kind of daze and gave him a bed in his +house, where he fell into a stupor of fatigue and surrender. It was many hours +before he woke; when he did, at last, he dressed and went to where Henry lay. +The coffin provided for the dead were of unpainted wood, but the youth and +striking face of Henry Clemens had aroused a special interest. The ladies of +Memphis had made up a fund of sixty dollars and bought for him a metallic case. +Samuel Clemens entering, saw his brother lying exactly as he had seen him in +his dream, lacking only the bouquet of white flowers with its crimson +center—a detail made complete while he stood there, for at that moment an +elderly lady came in with a large white bouquet, and in the center of it was a +single red rose. +</p> + +<p> +Orion arrived from Tennessee, and the brothers took their sorrowful burden to +St. Louis, subsequently to Hannibal, his old home. The death of this lovely boy +was a heavy sorrow to the community where he was known, for he had been a +favorite with all.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* For a fine characterization of Henry Clemens the reader is referred to a +letter written by Orion Clemens to Miss Wood. See Appendix A, at the end of the +last volume. +</p> + +<p> +From Hannibal the family returned to Pamela’s home in St. Louis. There +one night Orion heard his brother moaning and grieving and walking the floor of +his room. By and by Sam came in to where Orion was. He could endure it no +longer, he said; he must, “tell somebody.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he poured all the story of that last tragic night. It has been set down +here because it accounts for much in his after-life. It magnified his natural +compassion for the weakness and blunders of humanity, while it increased the +poor opinion implanted by the Scotchman Macfarlane of the human being as a +divine invention. Two of Mark Twain’s chief characteristics +were—consideration for the human species, and contempt for it. +</p> + +<p> +In many ways he never overcame the tragedy of Henry’s death. He never +really looked young again. Gray hairs had come, as he said, and they did not +disappear. His face took on the serious, pathetic look which from that time it +always had in repose. At twenty-three he looked thirty. At thirty he looked +nearer forty. After that the discrepancy in age and looks became less notable. +In vigor, complexion, and temperament he was regarded in later life as young +for his years, but never in looks. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXVII<br/> +THE PILOT</h2> + +<p> +The young pilot 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.* Bixby had returned by this time, and they were again together, +first on the Crescent City, later on a fine new boat called the New Falls City. +Clemens was still a steersman when Bixby returned; but as soon as his license +was granted (September 9, 1858) his old chief took him as full partner. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* In Life on the Mississippi he gives his period of learning at from two to two +and a half years; but documentary evidence as well as Mr. Bixby’s +testimony places the apprenticeship at eighteen months +</p> + +<p> +He was a pilot at last. In eighteen months he had packed away in his head all +the multitude of volatile statistics and acquired that confidence and courage +which made him one of the elect, a river sovereign. He knew every snag and bank +and dead tree and reef in all those endless miles between St. Louis and New +Orleans, every cut-off and current, every depth of water—the whole +story—by night and by day. He could smell danger in the dark; he could +read the surface of the water as an open page. At twenty-three he had acquired +a profession which surpassed all others for absolute sovereignty and yielded an +income equal to that then earned by the Vice-President of the United States. +Boys generally finish college at about that age, but it is not likely that any +boy ever finished college with the mass of practical information and training +that was stored away in Samuel Clemens’s head, or with his knowledge of +human nature, his preparation for battle with the world. +</p> + +<p> +“Not only was he a pilot, but a good one.” These are Horace +Bixby’s words, and he added: +</p> + +<p> +“It is the fashion to-day to disparage Sam’s piloting. Men who were +born since he was on the river and never saw him will tell you that Sam was +never much of a pilot. Most of them will tell you that he was never a pilot at +all. As a matter of fact, 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 sand—bars and changing +shores, a pilot’s judgment had to be founded on absolute +certainty.” +</p> + +<p> +He had plenty of money now. He could help his mother with a liberal hand, and +he did it. He helped Orion, too, with money and with advice. From a letter +written toward the end of the year, we gather the new conditions. Orion would +seem to have been lamenting over prospects, and the young pilot, strong and +exalted in his new estate, urges him to renewed consistent effort: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +What is a government without energy?—[he says]—. And what is a man +without energy? Nothing—nothing at all. What is the grandest thing in +“Paradise Lost”—the Arch-Fiend’s terrible energy! What +was the greatest feature in Napoleon’s character? His unconquerable +energy! Sum all the gifts that man is endowed with, and we give our greatest +share of admiration to his energy. And to-day, if I were a heathen, I would +rear a statue to Energy, and fall down and worship it!<br/> + I want a man to—I want you to—take up a line of action, and +follow it out, in spite of the very devil. +</p> + +<p> +Orion and his wife had returned to Keokuk by this time, waiting for something +in the way of a business opportunity. +</p> + +<p> +His pilot brother, wrote him more than once letters of encouragement and +council. Here and there he refers to the tragedy of Henry’s death, and +the shadow it has cast upon his life; but he was young, he was successful, his +spirits were naturally exuberant. In the exhilaration of youth and health and +success he finds vent at times in that natural human outlet, self-approval. He +not only exhibits this weakness, but confesses it with characteristic freedom. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Putting all things together, I begin to think I am rather lucky than +otherwise—a notion which I was slow to take up. The other night I was +about to “round to” for a storm, but concluded that I could find a +smoother bank somewhere. I landed five miles below. The storm came, passed away +and did not injure us. Coming up, day before yesterday, I looked at the spot I +first chose, and half the trees on the bank were torn to shreds. We +couldn’t have lived 5 minutes in such a tornado. And I am also lucky in +having a berth, while all the other young pilots are idle. This is the luckiest +circumstance that ever befell me. Not on account of the wages—for that is +a secondary consideration-but from the fact that the City of Memphis is the +largest boat in the trade, and the hardest to pilot, and consequently I can get +a reputation on her, which is a thing I never could accomplish on a transient +boat. I can “bank” in the neighborhood of $100 a month on her, and +that will satisfy me for the present (principally because the other youngsters +are sucking their fingers). Bless me! what a pleasure there is in +revenge!—and what vast respect Prosperity commands! Why, six months ago, +I could enter the “Rooms,” and receive only the customary fraternal +greeting now they say, “Why, how are you, old fellow—when did you +get in?” +</p> + +<p> +And the young pilots who use to tell me, patronizingly, that I could never +learn the river cannot keep from showing a little of their chagrin at seeing me +so far ahead of them. Permit me to “blow my horn,” for I derive a +living pleasure from these things, and I must confess that when I go to pay my +dues, I rather like to let the d—-d rascals get a glimpse of a +hundred-dollar bill peeping out from amongst notes of smaller dimensions whose +face I do not exhibit! You will despise this egotism, but I tell you there is a +“stern joy” in it. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +We are dwelling on this period of Mark Twain’s life, for it was a period +that perhaps more than any other influenced his future years. He became +completely saturated with the river its terms, its memories, its influence +remained a definite factor in his personality to the end of his days. Moreover, +it was his first period of great triumph. Where before he had been a subaltern +not always even a wage-earner—now all in a moment he had been transformed +into a high chief. The fullest ambition of his childhood had been +realized—more than realized, for in that day he had never dreamed of a +boat or of an income of such stately proportions. Of great personal popularity, +and regarded as a safe pilot, he had been given one of the largest, most +difficult of boats. Single-handed and alone he had fought his way into the +company of kings. +</p> + +<p> +And we may pardon his vanity. He could hardly fail to feel his glory and revel +in it and wear it as a halo, perhaps, a little now and then in the Association +Rooms. To this day he is remembered as a figure there, though we may believe, +regardless of his own statement, that it was not entirely because of his +success. As the boys of Hannibal had gathered around to listen when Sam Clemens +began to speak, so we may be certain that the pilots at St. Louis and New +Orleans laid aside other things when he had an observation to make or a tale to +tell. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +He was much given to spinning yarns—[writes one associate of those +days]—so funny that his hearers were convulsed, and yet all the time his +own face was perfectly sober. If he laughed at all, it must have been inside. +It would have killed his hearers to do that. Occasionally some of his droll +yarns would get into the papers. He may have written them himself. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Another riverman of those days has recalled a story he heard Sam Clemens tell: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +We were speaking of presence of mind in accidents—we were always talking +of such things; then he said: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +This was one of the stories that got into print and traveled far. Perhaps, as +the old pilot suggests, he wrote some of them himself, for Horace Bixby +remembers that “Sam was always scribbling when not at the wheel.” +</p> + +<p> +But if he published any work in those river-days he did not acknowledge it +later—with one exception. The exception was not intended for publication, +either. It was a burlesque written for the amusement of his immediate friends. +He has told the story himself, more than once, but it belongs here for the +reason that some where out of the general circumstance of it there originated a +pseudonym, one day to become the best-known in the hemispheres the name Mark +Twain. +</p> + +<p> +That terse, positive, peremptory, dynamic pen-name was first used by an old +pilot named Isaiah Sellers—a sort of “oldest inhabitant” of +the river, who made the other pilots weary with the scope and antiquity of his +reminiscent knowledge. He contributed paragraphs of general information and +Nestorian opinions to the New Orleans Picayune, and signed them “Mark +Twain.” They were quaintly egotistical in tone, usually beginning: +“My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans,” and +reciting incidents and comparisons dating as far back as 1811. +</p> + +<p> +Captain Sellers naturally was regarded as fair game by the young pilots, who +amused themselves by imitating his manner and general attitude of speech. But +Clemens went further; he wrote at considerable length a broadly burlesque +imitation signed “Sergeant Fathom,” with an introduction which +referred to the said Fathom as “one of the oldest cub pilots on the +river.” The letter that followed related a perfectly impossible trip, +supposed to have been made in 1763 by the steamer “the old first +Jubilee” with a “Chinese captain and a Choctaw crew.” It is a +gem of its kind, and will bear reprint in full today.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* See Appendix B, at the end of the last volume. +</p> + +<p> +The burlesque delighted Bart Bowen, who was Clemens’s pilot partner on +the Edward J. Gay at the time. He insisted on showing it to others and finally +upon printing it. Clemens was reluctant, but consented. It appeared in the True +Delta (May 8 or 9, 1859), and was widely and boisterously enjoyed. +</p> + +<p> +It broke Captain Sellers’s literary heart. He never contributed another +paragraph. Mark Twain always regretted the whole matter deeply, and his own +revival of the name was a sort of tribute to the old man he had thoughtlessly +wounded. If Captain Sellers has knowledge of material matters now, he is +probably satisfied; for these things brought to him, and to the name he had +chosen, what he could never himself have achieved —immortality. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXVIII<br/> +PILOTING AND PROPHECY</h2> + +<p> +Those who knew Samuel Clemens best in those days say that he was a slender, +fine-looking man, well dressed—even dandified—given to patent +leathers, blue serge, white duck, and fancy striped shirts. Old for his years, +he heightened his appearance at times by wearing his beard in the atrocious +mutton-chop fashion, then popular, but becoming to no one, least of all to him. +The pilots regarded him as a great reader—a student of history, travels, +literature, and the sciences—a young man whom it was an education as well +as an entertainment to know. When not at the wheel, he was likely to be reading +or telling yarns in the Association Rooms. +</p> + +<p> +He began the study of French one day when he passed a school of languages, +where three tongues, 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 dollars. The student was provided with a set of cards for each room and +supposed to walk from one apartment to another, changing tongues at each +threshold. With his unusual enthusiasm and prodigality, the young pilot decided +to take all three languages, but after the first two or three round trips +concluded that for the present French would do. He did not return to the +school, but kept his cards and bought text-books. He must have studied pretty +faithfully when he was off watch and in port, for his river note-book contains +a French exercise, all neatly written, and it is from the Dialogues of +Voltaire. +</p> + +<p> +This old note-book is interesting for other things. The notes are no longer +timid, hesitating memoranda, but vigorous records made with the dash of +assurance that comes from confidence and knowledge, and with the authority of +one in supreme command. Under the head of “2d high-water trip—Jan., +1861—Alonzo Child,” we have the story of a rising river with its +overflowing banks, its blind passages and cut-offs—all the circumstance +and uncertainty of change. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Good deal of water all over Coles Creek Chute, 12 or 15 ft. bank —could +have gone up shore above General Taylor’s—too much drift….<br/> + Night—didn’t run either 77 or 76 towheads—8 ft. bank on +main shore Ozark Chute…. +</p> + +<p> +And so on page after page of cryptographic memoranda. It means little enough to +the lay reader, yet one gets an impression somehow of the swirling, turbulent +water and a lonely figure in that high glassed-in place peering into the dark +for blind land-marks and possible dangers, picking his way up the dim, hungry +river of which he must know every foot as well as a man knows the hall of his +own home. All the qualifications must come into play, then memory, judgment, +courage, and the high art of steering. “Steering is a very high, +art,” he says; “one must not keep a rudder dragging across a +boat’s stern if he wants to get up the river fast.” +</p> + +<p> +He had an example of the perfection of this art one misty night on the Alonzo +Child. Nearly fifty years later, sitting on his veranda in the dark, he +recalled it. He said: +</p> + +<p> +“There was a pilot in those days by the name of Jack Leonard who was a +perfectly wonderful creature. I do not know that Jack knew anymore about the +river than most of us and perhaps could not read the water any better, but he +had a knack of steering away ahead of our ability, and I think he must have had +an eye that could see farther into the darkness. +</p> + +<p> +“I had never seen Leonard steer, but I had heard a good deal about it. I +had heard it said that the crankiest old tub afloat—one that would kill +any other man to handle—would obey and be as docile as a child when Jack +Leonard took the wheel. I had a chance one night to verify that for myself. We +were going up the river, and it was one of the nastiest nights I ever saw. +Besides that, the boat was loaded in such a way that she steered very hard, and +I was half blind and crazy trying to locate the safe channel, and was pulling +my arms out to keep her in it. It was one of those nights when everything looks +the same whichever way you look: just two long lines where the sky comes down +to the trees and where the trees meet the water with all the trees precisely +the same height —all planted on the same day, as one of the boys used to +put it—and not a thing to steer by except the knowledge in your head of +the real shape of the river. Some of the boats had what they call a +‘night hawk’ on the jackstaff, a thing which you could see when it +was in the right position against the sky or the water, though it seldom was in +the right position and was generally pretty useless. +</p> + +<p> +“I was in a bad way that night and wondering how I could ever get through +it, when the pilot-house door opened, and Jack Leonard walked in. He was a +passenger that trip, and I had forgotten he was aboard. I was just about in the +worst place and was pulling the boat first one way, then another, running the +wheel backward and forward, and climbing it like a squirrel. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Sam,’ he said, ‘let me take the wheel. Maybe I have +been over this place since you have.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t argue the question. Jack took the wheel, gave it a little +turn one way, then a little turn the other; that old boat settled down as +quietly as a lamb—went right along as if it had been broad daylight in a +river without snags, bars, bottom, or banks, or anything that one could +possibly hit. I never saw anything so beautiful. He stayed my watch out for me, +and I hope I was decently grateful. I have never forgotten it.” +</p> + +<p> +The old note-book contained the record of many such nights as that; but there +were other nights, too, when the stars were blazing out, or when the moon on +the water made the river a wide mysterious way of speculative dreams. He was +always speculating; the planets and the remote suns were always a marvel to +him. A love of astronomy—the romance of it, its vast distances, and its +possibilities—began with those lonely river-watches and never waned to +his last day. For a time a great comet blazed in the heavens, a +“wonderful sheaf of light” that glorified his lonely watch. Night +after night he watched it as it developed and then grew dim, and he read +eagerly all the comet literature that came to his hand, then or afterward. He +speculated of many things: of life, death, the reason of existence, of +creation, the ways of Providence and Destiny. It was a fruitful time for such +meditation; out of such vigils grew those larger philosophies that would find +expression later, when the years had conferred the magic gift of phrase. +</p> + +<p> +Life lay all ahead of him then, and during those still watches he must have +revolved many theories of how the future should be met and mastered. In the old +notebook there still remains a well-worn clipping, the words of some unknown +writer, which he had preserved and may have consulted as a sort of creed. It is +an interesting little document—a prophetic one, the reader may concede: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +H<small>OW TO</small> T<small>AKE</small> L<small>IFE</small>.—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. +</p> + +<p> +The old note-book contains no record of disasters. Horace Bixby, who should +know, has declared: +</p> + +<p> +“Sam Clemens never had an accident either as a steersman or as a pilot, +except once when he got aground for a few hours in the bagasse (cane) smoke, +with no damage to anybody though of course there was some good luck in that +too, for the best pilots do not escape trouble, now and then.” +</p> + +<p> +Bixby and Clemens were together that winter on the Alonzo Child, and a letter +to Orion contains an account of great feasting which the two enjoyed at a +“French restaurant” in New Orleans—“dissipating on a +ten-dollar dinner—tell it not to Ma!”—where they had +sheepshead fish, oysters, birds, mushrooms, and what not, “after which +the day was too far gone to do anything.” So it appears that he was not +always reading Macaulay or studying French and astronomy, but sometimes went +frivoling with his old chief, now his chum, always his dear friend. +</p> + +<p> +Another letter records a visit with Pamela to a picture-gallery in St. Louis +where was being exhibited Church’s “Heart of the Andes.” He +describes the picture in detail and with vast enthusiasm. +</p> + +<p> +“I have seen it several times,” he concludes, “but it is +always a new picture—totally new—you seem to see nothing the second +time that you saw the first.” +</p> + +<p> +Further along he tells of having taken his mother and the girls—his +cousin Ella Creel and another—for a trip down the river to New Orleans. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Ma was delighted with her trip, but she was disgusted with the girls for +allowing me to embrace and kiss them—and she was horrified at the +‘schottische’ as performed by Miss Castle and myself. She was +perfectly willing for me to dance until 12 o’clock at the imminent peril +of my going to sleep on the after-watch—but then she would top off with a +very inconsistent sermon on dancing in general; ending with a terrific +broadside aimed at that heresy of heresies, the ‘schottische’. +</p> + +<p> +I took Ma and the girls in a carriage round that portion of New Orleans where +the finest gardens and residences are to be seen, and, although it was a +blazing hot, dusty day, they seemed hugely delighted. To use an expression +which is commonly ignored in polite society, they were “hell-bent” +on stealing some of the luscious-looking oranges from branches which overhung +the fence, but I restrained them. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +In another letter of this period we get a hint of the future Mark Twain. It was +written to John T. Moore, a young clerk on the John J. Roe. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +What a fool old Adam was. Had everything his own way; had succeeded in gaining +the love of the best-looking girl in the neighborhood, but yet, unsatisfied +with his conquest, he had to eat a miserable little apple. Ah, John, if you had +been in his place you would not have eaten a mouthful of the apple—that +is, if it had required any exertion. I have noticed that you shun exertion. +There comes in the difference between us. I court exertion. I love work. Why, +sir, when I have a piece of work to perform, I go away to myself, sit down in +the shade, and muse over the coming enjoyment. Sometimes I am so industrious +that I muse too long. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +There remains another letter of this period—a sufficiently curious +document. There was in those days a famous New Orleans clairvoyant known as +Madame Caprell. Some of the young pilot’s friends had visited her and +obtained what seemed to be satisfying results. From time to time they had urged +him to visit the fortune-teller, and one idle day he concluded to make the +experiment. As soon as he came away he wrote to Orion in detail. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +She’s a very pleasant little lady—rather pretty—about +28—say 5 feet 2 1/4—would weigh 116—has black eyes and +hair—is polite and intelligent—used good language, and talks much +faster than I do. +</p> + +<p> +She invited me into the little back parlor, closed the door; and we were alone. +We sat down facing each other. Then she asked my age. Then she put her hands +before her eyes a moment, and commenced talking as if she had a good deal to +say and not much time to say it in. Something after this style: +</p> + +<p> +‘Madame.’ Yours is a watery planet; you gain your livelihood on the +water; but you should have been a lawyer—there is where your talents lie; +you might have distinguished yourself as an orator, or as an editor—, you +have written a great deal; you write well—but you are rather out of +practice; no matter—you will be in practice some day; you have a superb +constitution, and as excellent health as any man in the world; you have great +powers of endurance; in your profession your strength holds out against the +longest sieges without flagging; still, the upper part of your lungs, the top +of them, is slightly affected—you must take care of yourself; you do not +drink, but you use entirely too much tobacco; and you must stop it; mind, not +moderate, but stop the use of it, totally; then I can almost promise you 86, +when you will surely die; otherwise, look out for 28, 31, 34, 47, and 65; be +careful—for you are not of a long-lived race, that is, on your +father’s side; you are the only healthy member of your family, and the +only one in it who has anything like the certainty of attaining to a great +age—so, stop using tobacco, and be careful of yourself…. In some respects +you take after your father, but you are much more like your mother, who belongs +to the long-lived, energetic side of the house…. You never brought all your +energies to bear upon any subject but what you accomplished it —for +instance, you are self-made, self-educated. +</p> + +<p> +‘S. L. C.’ Which proves nothing. +</p> + +<p> +‘Madame.’ Don’t interrupt. When you sought your present +occupation, you found a thousand obstacles in your way—obstacles +unknown—not even suspected by any save you and me, since you keep such +matter to yourself—but you fought your way, and hid the long struggle +under a mask of cheerfulness, which saved your friends anxiety on your account. +To do all this requires the qualities which I have named. +</p> + +<p> +‘S. L. C.’ You flatter well, Madame. +</p> + +<p> +‘Madame.’ Don’t interrupt. Up to within a short time you had +always lived from hand to mouth—now you are in easy circumstances +—for which you need give credit to no one but yourself. The turning-point +in your life occurred in 1840-7-8. +</p> + +<p> +‘S. L. C.’ Which was? +</p> + +<p> +‘Madame.’ A death, perhaps, and this threw you upon the world and +made you what you are; it was always intended that you should make yourself; +therefore, it was well that this calamity occurred as early as it did. You will +never die of water, although your career upon it in the future seems well +sprinkled with misfortune. You will continue upon the water for some time yet; +you will not retire finally until ten years from now…. What is your +brother’s age? 23—and a lawyer? and in pursuit of an office? Well, +he stands a better chance than the other two, and he may get it; he is too +visionary—is always flying off on a new hobby; this will never do +—tell him I said so. He is a good lawyer—a very good +lawyer—and a fine speaker—is very popular and much respected, and +makes many friends; but although he retains their friendship, he loses their +confidence by displaying his instability of character…. The land he has now +will be very valuable after a while—— ‘S. L. C.’ Say +250 years hence, or thereabouts, Madame—— ‘Madame.’ +No—less time—but never mind the land, that is a secondary +consideration—let him drop that for the present, and devote himself to +his business and politics with all his might, for he must hold offices under +Government…. +</p> + +<p> +After a while you will possess a good deal of property—retire at the end +of ten years—after which your pursuits will be literary —try the +law—you will certainly succeed. I am done now. If you have any questions +to ask—ask them freely—and if it be in my power, I will answer +without reserve—without reserve. +</p> + +<p> +I asked a few questions of minor importance-paid her and left-under the decided +impression that going to the fortune-teller’s was just as good as going +to the opera, and cost scarcely a trifle more —ergo, I will disguise +myself and go again, one of these days, when other amusements fail. Now +isn’t she the devil? That is to say, isn’t she a right smart little +woman? +</p> + +<p> +When you want money, let Ma know, and she will send it. She and Pamela are +always fussing about change, so I sent them a hundred and twenty quarters +yesterday—fiddler’s change enough to last till I get back, I +reckon. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +S<small>AM</small>. +</p> + +<p> +In the light of preceding and subsequent events, we must confess that Madame +Caprell was “indeed a right smart little woman.” She made mistakes +enough (the letter is not quoted in full), but when we remember that she not +only gave his profession at the moment, but at least suggested his career for +the future; that she approximated the year of his father’s death as the +time when he was thrown upon the world; that she admonished him against his +besetting habit, tobacco; that she read. minutely not only his characteristics, +but his brother Orion’s; that she outlined the struggle in his conquest +of the river; that she seemingly had knowledge of Orion’s legal bent and +his connection with the Tennessee land, all seems remarkable enough, supposing, +of course, she had no material means of acquiring knowledge—one can never +know certainly about such things. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXIX<br/> +THE END OF PILOTING</h2> + +<p> +It is curious, however, that Madame Caprell, with clairvoyant vision, should +not have seen an important event then scarcely more than two months distant: +the breaking-out of the Civil War, with the closing of the river and the end of +Mark Twain’s career as a pilot. Perhaps these things were so near as to +be “this side” the range of second sight. +</p> + +<p> +There had been plenty of war-talk, but few of the pilots believed that war was +really coming. Traveling that great commercial highway, the river, with +intercourse both of North and South, they did not believe that any political +differences would be allowed to interfere with the nation’s trade, or +would be settled otherwise than on the street corners, in the halls of +legislation, and at the polls. True, several States, including Louisiana, had +declared the Union a failure and seceded; but the majority of opinions were not +clear as to how far a State had rights in such a matter, or as to what the real +meaning of secession might be. Comparatively few believed it meant war. Samuel +Clemens had no such belief. His Madame Caprell letter bears date of February 6, +1861, yet contains no mention of war or of any special excitement in New +Orleans —no forebodings as to national conditions. +</p> + +<p> +Such things came soon enough: President Lincoln was inaugurated on the 4th of +March, and six weeks later Fort Sumter was fired upon. Men began to speak out +then and to take sides. +</p> + +<p> +It was a momentous time in the Association Rooms. There were pilots who would +go with the Union; there were others who would go with the Confederacy. Horace +Bixby was one of the former, and in due time became chief of the Union River +Service. Another pilot named Montgomery (Samuel Clemens had once steered for +him) declared for the South, and later commanded the Confederate Mississippi +fleet. They were all good friends, and their discussions, though warm, were not +always acrimonious; but they took sides. +</p> + +<p> +A good many were not very clear as to their opinions. Living both North and +South as they did, they saw various phases of the question and divided their +sympathies. Some were of one conviction one day and of another the next. Samuel +Clemens was of the less radical element. He knew there was a good deal to be +said for either cause; furthermore, he was not then bloodthirsty. A pilot-house +with its elevated position and transparency seemed a poor place to be in when +fighting was going on. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll think about it,” he said. “I’m not very +anxious to get up into a glass perch and be shot at by either side. I’ll +go home and reflect on the matter.” +</p> + +<p> +He did not realize it, but he had made his last trip as a pilot. It is rather +curious that his final brief note-book entry should begin with his future nom +de plume—a memorandum of soundings—“mark twain,” and +should end with the words “no lead.” +</p> + +<p> +He went up the river as a passenger on a steamer named the <i>Uncle Sam</i>. +Zeb Leavenworth was one of the pilots, and Sam Clemens usually stood watch with +him. They heard war-talk all the way and saw preparations, but they were not +molested, though at Memphis they barely escaped the blockade. At Cairo, +Illinois, they saw soldiers drilling—troops later commanded by Grant. The +<i>Uncle Sam</i> came steaming up toward St. Louis, those on board +congratulating themselves on having come through unscathed. They were not quite +through, however. Abreast of Jefferson Barracks they suddenly heard the boom of +a cannon and saw a great whorl of smoke drifting in their direction. They did +not realize that it was a signal—a thunderous halt—and kept +straight on. Less than a minute later there was another boom, and a shell +exploded directly in front of the pilot-house, breaking a lot of glass and +destroying a good deal of the upper decoration. Zeb Leavenworth fell back into +a corner with a yell. +</p> + +<p> +“Good Lord Almighty! Sam;” he said, “what do they mean by +that?” +</p> + +<p> +Clemens stepped to the wheel and brought the boat around. “I guess they +want us to wait a minute, Zeb,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +They were examined and passed. It was the last steamboat to make the trip from +New Orleans to St. Louis. Mark Twain’s pilot-days were over. He would +have grieved had he known this fact. +</p> + +<p> +“I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since,” +he long afterward declared, “and I took a measureless pride in it.” +</p> + +<p> +The dreamy, easy, romantic existence suited him exactly. A sovereign and an +autocrat, the pilot’s word was law; he wore his responsibilities as a +crown. As long as he lived Samuel Clemens would return to those old days with +fondness and affection, and with regret that they were no more. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXX<br/> +THE SOLDIER</h2> + +<p> +Clemens spent a few days in St. Louis (in retirement, for there was a pressing +war demand for Mississippi pilots), then went up to Hannibal to visit old +friends. They were glad enough to see him, and invited him to join a company of +gay military enthusiasts who were organizing to “help Gov. +‘Claib’ Jackson repel the invader.” A good many companies +were forming in and about Hannibal, and sometimes purposes were conflicting and +badly mixed. Some of the volunteers did not know for a time which invader they +intended to drive from Missouri soil, and more than one company in the +beginning was made up of young fellows whose chief ambition was to have a lark +regardless as to which cause they might eventually espouse.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* The military organizations of Hannibal and Palmyra, in 1861, were as follows: +The Marion Artillery; the Silver Grays; Palmyra Guards; the W. E. Dennis +company, and one or two others. Most of them were small private affairs, +usually composed of about half-and-half Union and Confederate men, who knew +almost nothing of the questions or conditions, and disbanded in a brief time, +to attach themselves to the regular service according as they developed +convictions. The general idea of these companies was a little camping-out +expedition and a good time. One such company one morning received unexpected +reinforcements. They saw the approach of the recruits, and, remarking how well +drilled the new arrivals seemed to be, mistook them for the enemy and fled. +</p> + +<p> +Samuel Clemens had by this time decided, like Lee, that he would go with his +State and lead battalions to victory. The “battalion” in this +instance consisted of a little squad of young fellows of his own age, mostly +pilots and schoolmates, including Sam Bowen, Ed Stevens, and Ab Grimes, about a +dozen, all told. They organized secretly, for the Union militia was likely to +come over from Illinois any time and look up any suspicious armies that made an +open demonstration. An army might lose enthusiasm and prestige if it spent a +night or two in the calaboose. +</p> + +<p> +So they met in a secret place above Bear Creek Hill, just as Tom Sawyer’s +red-handed bandits had gathered so long before (a good many of them were of the +same lawless lot), and they planned how they would sell their lives on the +field of glory, just as Tom Sawyer’s band might have done if it had +thought about playing “War,” instead of “Indian” and +“Pirate” and “Bandit” with fierce raids on peach +orchards and melon patches. Then, on the evening before marching away, they +stealthily called on their sweethearts—those who had them did, and the +others pretended sweethearts for the occasion—and when it was dark and +mysterious they said good-by and suggested that maybe those girls would never +see them again. And as always happens in such a case, some of them were in +earnest, and two or three of the little group that slipped away that night +never did come back, and somewhere sleep in unmarked graves. +</p> + +<p> +The “two Sams”—Sam Bowen and Sam Clemens—called on +Patty Gore and Julia Willis for their good-by visit, and, when they left, +invited the girls to “walk through the pickets” with them, which +they did as far as Bear Creek Hill. The girls didn’t notice any pickets, +because the pickets were away calling on girls, too, and probably +wouldn’t be back to begin picketing for some time. So the girls stood +there and watched the soldiers march up Bear Creek Hill and disappear among the +trees. +</p> + +<p> +The army had a good enough time that night, marching through the brush and +vines toward New London, though this sort of thing grew rather monotonous by +morning. When they took a look at themselves by daylight, with their +nondescript dress and accoutrements, there was some thing about it all which +appealed to one’s sense of humor rather than to his patriotism. Colonel +Ralls, of Ralls County, however, received them cordially and made life happier +for them with a good breakfast and some encouraging words. He was authorized to +administer the oath of office, he said, and he proceeded to do it, and made +them a speech besides; also he sent out notice to some of the +neighbors—to Col. Bill Splawn, Farmer Nuck Matson, and others—that +the community had an army on its hands and perhaps ought to do something for +it. This brought in a number of contributions, provisions, paraphernalia, and +certain superfluous horses and mules, which converted the battalion into a +cavalry, and made it possible for it to move on to the front without further +delay. Samuel Clemens, mounted on a small yellow mule whose tail had been +trimmed down to a tassel at the end in a style that suggested his name, Paint +Brush, upholstered and supplemented with an extra pair of cowskin boots, a pair +of gray blankets, a home-made quilt, frying-pan, a carpet sack, a small valise, +an overcoat, an old-fashioned Kentucky rifle, twenty yards of rope, and an +umbrella, was a representative unit of the brigade. The proper thing for an +army loaded like that was to go into camp, and they did it. They went over on +Salt River, near Florida, and camped not far from a farm-house with a big log +stable; the latter they used as headquarters. Somebody suggested that when they +went into battle they ought to have short hair, so that in a hand-to-hand +conflict the enemy could not get hold of it. Tom Lyon found a pair of +sheep-shears in the stable and acted as barber. They were not very sharp +shears, but the army stood the torture for glory in the field, and a group of +little darkies collected from the farm-house to enjoy the performance. The army +then elected its officers. William Ely was chosen captain, with Asa Glasscock +as first lieutenant. Samuel Clemens was then voted second lieutenant, and there +were sergeants and orderlies. There were only three privates when the election +was over, and these could not be distinguished by their deportment. There was +scarcely any discipline in this army. +</p> + +<p> +Then it set in to rain. It rained by day and it rained by night. Salt River +rose until it was bank full and overflowed the bottoms. Twice there was a false +night alarm of the enemy approaching, and the battalion went slopping through +the mud and brush into the dark, picking out the best way to retreat, plodding +miserably back to camp when the alarm was over. Once they fired a volley at a +row of mullen stalks, waving on the brow of a hill, and once a picket shot at +his own horse that had got loose and had wandered toward him in the dusk. +</p> + +<p> +The rank and file did not care for picket duty. Sam Bowen—ordered by +Lieutenant Clemens to go on guard one afternoon—denounced his superior +and had to be threatened with court-martial and death. Sam went finally, but he +sat in a hot open place and swore at the battalion and the war in general, and +finally went to sleep in the broiling sun. These things began to tell on +patriotism. Presently Lieutenant Clemens developed a boil, and was obliged to +make himself comfortable with some hay in a horse-trough, where he lay most of +the day, violently denouncing the war and the fools that invented it. Then word +came that “General” Tom Harris, who was in command of the district, +was stopping at a farmhouse two miles away, living on the fat of the land. +</p> + +<p> +That settled it. Most of them knew Tom Harris, and they regarded his neglect of +them as perfidy. They broke camp without further ceremony. +</p> + +<p> +Lieutenant Clemens needed assistance to mount Paint Brush, and the little mule +refused to cross the river; so Ab Grimes took the coil of rope, hitched one end +of it to his own saddle and the other end to Paint Brush’s neck. Grimes +was mounted on a big horse, and when he started it was necessary for Paint +Brush to follow. Arriving at the farther bank, Grimes looked around, and was +horrified to see that the end of the rope led down in the water with no horse +and rider in view. He spurred up the bank, and the hat of Lieutenant Clemens +and the ears of Paint Brush appeared. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Clemens, as he mopped his face, “do you know that +little devil waded all the way across?” +</p> + +<p> +A little beyond the river they met General Harris, who ordered them back to +camp. They admonished him to “go there himself.” They said they had +been in that camp and knew all about it. They were going now where there was +food—real food and plenty of it. Then he begged them, but it was no use. +By and by they stopped at a farm-house for supplies. A tall, bony woman came to +the door: +</p> + +<p> +“You’re secesh, ain’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +They acknowledged that they were defenders of the cause and that they wanted to +buy provisions. The request seemed to inflame her. +</p> + +<p> +“Provisions!” she screamed. “Provisions for secesh, and my +husband a colonel in the Union Army. You get out of here!” +</p> + +<p> +She reached for a hickory hoop-pole that stood by the door, and the army moved +on. When they arrived at Col. Bill Splawn’s that night Colonel Splawn and +his family had gone to bed, and it seemed unwise to disturb them. The hungry +army camped in the barnyard and crept into the hay-loft to sleep. Presently +somebody yelled “Fire!” One of the boys had been smoking and +started the hay. Lieutenant Clemens suddenly wakened, made a quick rolling +movement from the blaze, and rolled out of a big hay-window into the barnyard +below. The rest of the army, startled into action, seized the burning hay and +pitched it out of the same window. The lieutenant had sprained his ankle when +he struck the ground, and his boil was far from well, but when the burning hay +descended he forgot his disabilities. Literally and figuratively this was the +final straw. With a voice and vigor suited to the urgencies of the case, he +made a spring from under the burning stuff, flung off the remnants, and with +them his last vestige of interest in the war. The others, now that the fire +was, out, seemed to think the incident boisterously amusing. Whereupon the +lieutenant rose up and told them, collectively and individually, what he +thought of them; also he spoke of the war and the Confederacy, and of the human +race at large. They helped him in, then, for his ankle was swelling badly. Next +morning, when Colonel Splawn had given them a good breakfast, the army set out +for New London. +</p> + +<p> +But Lieutenant Clemens never got any farther than Nuck Matson’s +farm-house. His ankle was so painful by that time that Mrs. Matson had him put +to bed, where he stayed for several weeks, recovering from the injury and +stress of war. A little negro boy was kept on watch for Union +detachments—they were passing pretty frequently now—and when one +came in sight the lieutenant was secluded until the danger passed. When he was +able to travel, he had had enough of war and the Confederacy. He decided to +visit Orion in Keokuk. Orion was a Union abolitionist and might lead him to +mend his doctrines. +</p> + +<p> +As for the rest of the army, it was no longer a unit in the field. Its members +had drifted this way and that, some to return to their occupations, some to +continue in the trade of war. Sam Bowen is said to have been caught by the +Federal troops and put to sawing wood in the stockade at Hannibal. Ab (A. C.) +Grimes became a noted Confederate spy and is still among those who have lived +to furnish the details here set down. Properly officered and disciplined, that +detachment would have made as brave soldiers as any. Military effectiveness is +a matter of leaders and tactics. +</p> + +<p> +Mark Twain’s own Private History of a ‘Campaign that Failed’ +is, of course, built on this episode. He gives us a delicious account, even if +it does not strikingly resemble the occurrence. The story might have been still +better if he had not introduced the shooting of the soldier in the dark. The +incident was invented, of course, to present the real horror of war, but it +seems incongruous in this burlesque campaign, and, to some extent at least, it +missed fire in its intention.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* In a book recently published, Mark Twain’s “nephew” is +quoted as authority for the statement that Mark Twain was detailed for river +duty, captured, and paroled, captured again, and confined in a +tobacco-warehouse in St. Louis, etc. Mark Twain had but one nephew: Samuel E. +Moffett, whose Biographical Sketch (vol. xxii, Mark Twain’s Works) +contains no such statement; and nothing of the sort occurred. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXI<br/> +OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY</h2> + +<p> +When Madame Caprell prophesied that Orion Clemens would hold office under +government, she must have seen with true clairvoyant vision. The inauguration +of Abraham Lincoln brought Edward Bates into his Cabinet, and Bates was +Orion’s friend. Orion applied for something, and got it. James W. Nye had +been appointed Territorial governor of Nevada, and Orion was made Territorial +secretary. You could strain a point and refer to the office as “secretary +of state,” which was an imposing title. Furthermore, the secretary would +be acting governor in the governor’s absence, and there would be various +subsidiary honors. When Lieutenant Clemens arrived in Keokuk, Orion was in the +first flush of his triumph and needed only money to carry him to the scene of +new endeavor. The late lieutenant C. S. A. had accumulated money out of his +pilot salary, and there was no comfortable place just then in the active Middle +West for an officer of either army who had voluntarily retired from the +service. He agreed that if Orion would overlook his recent brief defection from +the Union and appoint him now as his (Orion’s) secretary, he would supply +the funds for both overland passages, and they would start with no unnecessary +delay for a country so new that all human beings, regardless of previous +affiliations and convictions, were flung into the common fusing-pot and recast +in the general mold of pioneer. +</p> + +<p> +The offer was a boon to Orion. He was always eager to forgive, and the money +was vitally necessary. In the briefest possible time he had packed his +belongings, which included a large unabridged dictionary, and the brothers were +on their way to St. Louis for final leave-taking before setting out for the +great mysterious land of promise—the Pacific West. From St. Louis they +took the boat for St. Jo, whence the Overland stage started, and for six days +“plodded” up the shallow, muddy, snaggy Missouri, a new experience +for the pilot of the Father of Waters. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +In fact, the boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo by land, for she was +walking most of the time, anyhow—climbing over reefs and clambering over +snags patiently and laboriously all day long. The captain said she was a +“bully” boat, and all she wanted was some “shear” and a +bigger wheel. I thought she wanted a pair of stilts, but I had the deep +sagacity not to say so.’* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* ‘Roughing It’. +</p> + +<p> +At St. Jo they paid one hundred and fifty dollars apiece for their stage fare +(with something extra for the dictionary), and on the twenty-sixth of July, +1861, set out on that long, delightful trip behind sixteen galloping +horses—or mules—never stopping except for meals or to change teams, +heading steadily into the sunset, following it from horizon to horizon over the +billowy plains, across the snow-clad Rockies, covering the seventeen hundred +miles between St. Jo and Carson City (including a two-day halt in Salt Lake +City) in nineteen glorious days. What an inspiration in such a trip! In +‘Roughing It’ he tells it all, and says: “Even at this day 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.” +</p> + +<p> +The nights, with the uneven mail-bags for a bed and the bounding dictionary for +company, were less exhilarating; but then youth does not mind. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +All things being now ready, stowed the uneasy dictionary where it would lie as +quiet as possible, and placed the water-canteen and pistols where we could find +them in the dark. Then we smoked a final pipe and swapped a final yarn; after +which we put the pipes, tobacco, and bag of coin in snug holes and caves among +the mail-bags, and made the place as dark as the inside of a cow, as the +conductor phrased it in his picturesque way. It was certainly as dark as any +place could be—nothing was even dimly visible in it. And finally we +rolled ourselves up like silkworms, each person in his own blanket, and sank +peacefully to sleep. +</p> + +<p> +Youth loves that sort of thing, despite its inconvenience. And sometimes the +clatter of the pony-rider swept by in the night, carrying letters at five +dollars apiece and making the Overland trip in eight days; just a quick beat of +hoofs in the distance, a dash, and a hail from the darkness, the beat of hoofs +again, then only the rumble of the stage and the even, swinging gallop of the +mules. Sometimes they got a glimpse of the ponyrider by day—a flash, as +it were, as he sped by. And every morning brought new scenery, new phases of +frontier life, including, at last, what was to them the strangest phase of all, +Mormonism. +</p> + +<p> +They spent two wonderful days at Salt Lake City, that mysterious and remote +capital of the great American monarchy, who still flaunts her lawless, orthodox +creed the religion of David and Solomon—and thrives. An obliging official +made it his business to show them the city and the life there, the result of +which would be those amusing chapters in ‘Roughing It’ by and by. +The Overland travelers set out refreshed from Salt Lake City, and with a new +supply of delicacies—ham, eggs, and tobacco—things that make such a +trip worth while. The author of ‘Roughing It’ assures us of this: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a +pipe—an old, rank, delicious pipe—ham and eggs and scenery, a +“down-grade,” a flying coach, a fragrant pipe, and a contented +heart—these make happiness. It is what all the ages have struggled for. +</p> + +<p> +But one must read all the story of that long-ago trip. It was a trip so well +worth taking, so well worth recording, so well worth reading and rereading +to-day. We can only read of it now. The Overland stage long ago made its last +trip, and will not start any more. Even if it did, the life and conditions, the +very scenery itself, would not be the same. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXII<br/> +THE PIONEER</h2> + +<p> +It was a hot, dusty August 14th that the stage reached Carson City and drew up +before the Ormsby Hotel. It was known that the Territorial secretary was due to +arrive; and something in the nature of a reception, with refreshments and +frontier hospitality, had been planned. Governor Nye, formerly police +commissioner in New York City, had arrived a short time before, and with his +party of retainers (“heelers” we would call them now), had made an +imposing entrance. Perhaps something of the sort was expected with the advent +of the secretary of state. Instead, the committee saw two way-worn individuals +climb down from the stage, unkempt, unshorn—clothed in the roughest of +frontier costume, the same they had put on at St. Jo—dusty, grimy, +slouchy, and weather-beaten with long days of sun and storm and alkali desert +dust. It is not likely there were two more unprepossessing officials on the +Pacific coast at that moment than the newly arrived Territorial secretary and +his brother: Somebody identified them, and the committee melted away; the +half-formed plan of a banquet faded out and was not heard of again. Soap and +water and fresh garments worked a transformation; but that first impression had +been fatal to festivities of welcome. +</p> + +<p> +Carson City, the capital of Nevada, was a “wooden town,” with a +population of two thousand souls. Its main street consisted of a few blocks of +small frame stores, some of which are still standing. In ‘Roughing +It’ the author writes: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +In the middle of the town, opposite the stores, was a “Plaza,” +which is native to all towns beyond the Rocky Mountains, a large, unfenced, +level vacancy with a Liberty Pole in it, and very useful as a place for public +auctions, horse trades, and mass-meetings, and likewise for teamsters to camp +in. Two other sides of the Plaza were faced by stores, offices, and stables. +The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering. +</p> + +<p> +One sees the place pretty clearly from this brief picture of his, but it +requires an extract from a letter written to his mother somewhat later to +populate it. The mineral excitement was at its height in those days of the +early sixties, and had brought together such a congress of nations as only the +greed for precious metal can assemble. The sidewalks and streets of Carson, and +the Plaza, thronged all day with a motley aggregation—a museum of races, +which it was an education merely to gaze upon. Jane Clemens had required him to +write everything just as it was —“no better and no worse.” +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Well—[he says]—, “Gold Hill” sells at $5,000 per foot, +cash down; “Wild Cat” isn’t worth ten cents. The country is +fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, coal, iron, quicksilver, marble, +granite, chalk, plaster of Paris (gypsum), thieves, murderers, desperadoes, +ladies, children, lawyers, Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, +sharpens; coyotes (pronounced ki-yo-ties), poets, preachers, and jackass +rabbits. I overheard a gentleman say, the other day, that it was “the +d—-dest country under the sun,” and that comprehensive conception I +fully subscribe to. It never rains here, and the dew never falls. No flowers +grow here, and no green thing gladdens the eye. The birds that fly over the +land carry their provisions with them. Only the crow and the raven tarry with +us. Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest, most unadulterated +and uncompromising sand, in which infernal soil nothing but that fag-end of +vegetable creation, “sage-brush,” ventures to grow. . . . I said +we are situated in a flat, sandy desert—true. And surrounded on all sides +by such prodigious mountains that when you look disdainfully down (from them) +upon the insignificant village of Carson, in that instant you are seized with a +burning desire to stretch forth your hand, put the city in your pocket, and +walk off with it.<br/> + As to churches, I believe they have got a Catholic one here, but, like that +one the New York fireman spoke of, I believe “they don’t run her +now.” +</p> + +<p> +Carson has been through several phases of change since this was written +—for better and for worse. It is a thriving place in these later days, +and new farming conditions have improved the country roundabout. But it was a +desert outpost then, a catch-all for the human drift which every whirlwind of +discovery sweeps along. Gold and silver hunting and mine speculations were the +industries—gambling, drinking, and murder were the diversions—of +the Nevada capital. Politics developed in due course, though whether as a +business or a diversion is not clear at this time. +</p> + +<p> +The Clemens brothers took lodging with a genial Irishwoman, Mrs. Murphy, a New +York retainer of Governor Nye, who boarded the camp-followers.* This retinue +had come in the hope of Territorial pickings and mine adventure—soldiers +of fortune they were, and a good-natured lot all together. One of them, Bob +Howland, a nephew of the governor, attracted Samuel Clemens by his clean-cut +manner and commanding eye. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* The Mrs. O’Flannigan of ‘Roughing It’. +</p> + +<p> +“The man who has that eye doesn’t need to go armed,” he wrote +later. “He can move upon an armed desperado and quell him and take him a +prisoner without saying a single word.” It was the same Bob Howland who +would be known by and by as the most fearless man in the Territory; who, as +city marshal of Aurora, kept that lawless camp in subjection, and, when the +friends of a lot of condemned outlaws were threatening an attack with general +massacre, sent the famous message to Governor Nye: “All quiet in Aurora. +Five men will be hung in an hour.” And it was quiet, and the programme +was carried out. But this is a digression and somewhat premature. +</p> + +<p> +Orion Clemens, anxious for laurels, established himself in the meager fashion +which he thought the government would approve; and his brother, finding neither +duties nor salary attached to his secondary position, devoted himself mainly to +the study of human nature as exhibited under frontier conditions. Sometimes, +when the nights were cool, he would build a fire in the office stove, and, with +Bob Howland and a few other choice members of the “Brigade” +gathered around, would tell river yarns in that inimitable fashion which would +win him devoted audiences all his days. His river life had increased his +natural languor of habit, and his slow speech heightened the lazy impression +which he was never unwilling to convey. His hearers generally regarded him as +an easygoing, indolent good fellow with a love of humor—with talent, +perhaps—but as one not likely ever to set the world afire. They did not +happen to think that the same inclination which made them crowd about to listen +and applaud would one day win for him the attention of all mankind. +</p> + +<p> +Within a brief time Sam Clemens (he was never known as otherwise than +“Sam” among those pioneers) was about the most conspicuous figure +on the Carson streets. His great bushy head of auburn hair, his piercing, +twinkling eyes, his loose, lounging walk, his careless disorder of dress, drew +the immediate attention even of strangers; made them turn to look a second time +and then inquire as to his identity. +</p> + +<p> +He had quickly adapted himself to the frontier mode. Lately a river sovereign +and dandy, in fancy percales and patent leathers, he had become the roughest of +rough-clad pioneers, in rusty slouch hat, flannel shirt, coarse trousers +slopping half in and half out of the heavy cowskin boots Always something of a +barbarian in love with the loose habit of unconvention, he went even further +than others and became a sort of paragon of disarray. The more energetic +citizens of Carson did not prophesy much for his future among them. Orion +Clemens, with the stir and bustle of the official new broom, earned their quick +respect; but his brother—well, they often saw him leaning for an hour or +more at a time against an awning support at the corner of King and Carson +streets, smoking a short clay pipe and staring drowsily at the human +kaleidoscope of the Plaza, scarcely changing his position, just watching, +studying, lost in contemplation—all of which was harmless enough, of +course, but how could any one ever get a return out of employment like that? +</p> + +<p> +Samuel Clemens did not catch the mining fever immediately; there was too much +to see at first to consider any special undertaking. The mere coming to the +frontier was for the present enough; he had no plans. His chief purpose was to +see the world beyond the Rockies, to derive from it such amusement and profit +as might fall in his way. The war would end, by and by, and he would go back to +the river, no doubt. He was already not far from homesick for the +“States” and his associations there. He closed one letter: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I heard a military band play “What Are the Wild Waves Saying” the +other night, and it brought Ella Creel and Belle (Stotts) across the desert in +an instant, for they sang the song in Orion’s yard the first time I ever +heard it. It was like meeting an old friend. I tell you I could have swallowed +that whole band, trombone and all, if such a compliment would have been any +gratification to them. +</p> + +<p> +His friends contracted the mining mania; Bob Howland and Raish Phillips went +down to Aurora and acquired “feet” in mini-claims and wrote him +enthusiastic letters. With Captain Nye, the governor’s brother, he +visited them and was presented with an interest which permitted him to +contribute an assessment every now and then toward the development of the mine; +but his enthusiasm still languished. +</p> + +<p> +He was interested more in the native riches above ground than in those +concealed under it. He had heard that the timber around Lake Bigler (Tahoe) +promised vast wealth which could be had for the asking. The lake itself and the +adjacent mountains were said to be beautiful beyond the dream of art. He +decided to locate a timber claim on its shores. +</p> + +<p> +He made the trip afoot with a young Ohio lad, John Kinney, and the account of +this trip as set down in ‘Roughing It’ is one of the best things in +the book. The lake proved all they had expected—more than they expected; +it was a veritable habitation of the gods, with its delicious, winy atmosphere, +its vast colonnades of pines, its measureless depths of water, so clear that to +drift on it was like floating high aloft in mid-nothingness. They staked out a +timber claim and made a semblance of fencing it and of building a habitation, +to comply with the law; but their chief employment was a complete abandonment +to the quiet luxury of that dim solitude: wandering among the trees, lounging +along the shore, or drifting on that transparent, insubstantial sea. They did +not sleep in their house, he says: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +They lived by their camp-fire on the borders of the lake, and one day—it +was just at nightfall—it got away from them, fired the forest, and +destroyed their fence and habitation. His picture in ‘Roughing It’ +of the superb night spectacle, the mighty mountain conflagration reflected in +the waters of the lake, is splendidly vivid. The reader may wish to compare it +with this extract from a letter written to Pamela at the time. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +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. The mighty roaring of the +conflagration, together with our solitary and somewhat unsafe position (for +there was no one within six miles of us), rendered the scene very impressive. +Occasionally one of us would remove his pipe from his mouth and say, +“Superb, magnificent!—beautifull—but—by the Lord God +Almighty, if we attempt to sleep in this little patch to-night, we’ll +never live till morning!” +</p> + +<p> +This is good writing too, but it lacks the fancy and the choice of phrasing +which would develop later. The fire ended their first excursion to Tahoe, but +they made others and located other claims—claims in which the +“folks at home,” Mr. Moffett, James Lampton, and others, were +included. It was the same James Lampton who would one day serve as a model for +Colonel Sellers. Evidently Samuel Clemens had a good opinion of his business +capacity in that earlier day, for he writes: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +This is just the country for cousin Jim to live in. I don’t believe it +would take him six months to make $100,000 here if he had $3,000 to commence +with. I suppose he can’t leave his family, though. +</p> + +<p> +Further along in the same letter his own overflowing Seller’s optimism +develops. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Orion and I have confidence enough 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. +</p> + +<p> +This letter bears date of October 25th, and from it we gather that a certain +interest in mining claims had by this time developed. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +We have got 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.<br/> + You see, Pamela, the trouble does not consist in getting mining +ground—for there is plenty enough—but the money to work it with +after you get it. +</p> + +<p> +He refers to Pamela’s two little children, his niece Annie and Baby Sam,* +and promises to enter claims for them—timber claims probably—for he +was by no means sanguine as yet concerning the mines. That was a long time ago. +Tahoe land is sold by the lot, now, to summer residents. Those claims would +have been riches to-day, but they were all abandoned presently, forgotten in +the delirium which goes only with the pursuit of precious ores. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Samuel E. Moffett, in later life a well-known journalist and editor. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXIII<br/> +THE PROSPECTOR</h2> + +<p> +It was not until early winter that Samuel Clemens got the real mining +infection. Everybody had it by that time; the miracle is that he had not fallen +an earlier victim. The wildest stories of sudden fortune were in the air, some +of them undoubtedly true. Men had gone to bed paupers, on the verge of +starvation, and awakened to find themselves millionaires. Others had sold for a +song claims that had been suddenly found to be fairly stuffed with precious +ores. Cart-loads of bricks—silver and gold—daily drove through the +streets. +</p> + +<p> +In the midst of these things reports came from the newly opened Humboldt +region—flamed up with a radiance that was fairly blinding. The papers +declared that Humboldt County “was the richest mineral region on +God’s footstool.” The mountains were said to be literally bursting +with gold and silver. A correspondent of the daily Territorial Enterprise +fairly wallowed in rhetoric, yet found words inadequate to paint the +measureless wealth of the Humboldt mines. No wonder those not already mad +speedily became so. No wonder Samuel Clemens, with his natural tendency to +speculative optimism, yielded to the epidemic and became as “frenzied as +the craziest.” The air to him suddenly began to shimmer; all his thoughts +were of “leads” and “ledges” and “veins”; +all his clouds had silver linings; all his dreams were of gold. He joined an +expedition at once; he reproached himself bitterly for not having started +earlier. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +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 1,800 pounds of +provisions and mining tools in the wagon and drove out of Carson on a chilly +December afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +In a letter to his mother he states that besides provisions and mining tools, +their load consisted of certain luxuries viz., ten pounds of killikinick, +Watts’s Hymns, fourteen decks of cards, Dombey and Son, a cribbage-board, +one small keg of lager-beer, and the “Carmina Sacra.” +</p> + +<p> +The two young lawyers were A. W.(Gus) Oliver (Oliphant in ‘Roughing +It’), and W. H. Clagget. Sam Clemens had known Billy Clagget as a law +student in Keokuk, and they were brought together now by this association. Both +Clagget and Oliver were promising young men, and would be heard from in time. +The blacksmith’s name was Tillou (Ballou), a sturdy, honest soul with a +useful knowledge of mining and the repair of tools. There were also two dogs in +the party—a small curly-tailed mongrel, Curney, the property of Mr. +Tillou, and a young hound. The combination seemed a strong one. +</p> + +<p> +It proved a weak one in the matter of horses. Oliver and Clemens had furnished +the team, and their selection had not been of the best. It was two hundred +miles to Humboldt, mostly across sand. The horses could not drag their load and +the miners too, so the miners got out. Then they found it necessary to push. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Not because we were fond of it, Ma—oh, no! but on Bunker’s account. +Bunker was the “near” horse on the larboard side, named after the +attorney-general of this Territory. My horse—and I am sorry you do not +know him personally, Ma, for I feel toward him, sometimes, as if he were a +blood relation of our family—he is so lazy, you know—my +horse—I was going to say, was the “off” horse on the +starboard side. But it was on Bunker’s account, principally, that we +pushed behind the wagon. In fact, Ma, that horse had something on his mind all +the way to Humboldt.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* S. L. C. to his mother. Published in the Keokuk (Iowa) Gate city. +</p> + +<p> +So they had to push, and most of that two hundred miles through snow and sand +storm they continued to push and swear and groan, sustained only by the thought +that they must arrive at last, when their troubles would all be at an end, for +they would be millionaires in a brief time and never know want or fatigue any +more. +</p> + +<p> +There were compensations: the camp-fire at night was cheerful, the food +satisfying. They bundled close under the blankets and, when it was too cold to +sleep, looked up at the stars, while the future entertainer of kings would spin +yarn after yarn that made his hearers forget their discomforts. Judge Oliver, +the last one of the party alive, in a recent letter to the writer of this +history, says: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +He was the life of the camp; but sometimes there would come a reaction and he +could hardly speak for a day or two. One day a pack of wolves chased us, and +the hound Sam speaks of never stopped to look back till he reached the next +station, many miles ahead. +</p> + +<p> +Judge Oliver adds that an Indian war had just ended, and that they occasionally +passed the charred ruin of a shack, and new graves: This was disturbing enough. +Then they came to that desolation of desolations, the Alkali Desert, where the +sand is of unknown depth, where the road is strewn thickly with the carcasses +of dead beasts of burden, the charred remains of wagons, chains, bolts, and +screws, which thirsty emigrants, grown desperate, have thrown away in the grand +hope of being able, when less encumbered, to reach water. +</p> + +<p> +They traveled all day and night, pushing through that fierce, waterless waste +to reach camp on the other side. It was three o’clock in the morning when +they got across and dropped down utterly exhausted. Judge Oliver in his letter +tells what happened then: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +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 +pictures of burning cabins and the lonely graves we had passed were 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 then with his inimitable drawl said: +“Boys, they have left us our scalps. Let’s give them all the flour +and sugar they ask for.” And we did give them a good supply, for we were +grateful. +</p> + +<p> +They were eleven weary days pushing their wagon and team the two hundred miles +to Unionville, Humboldt County, arriving at last in a driving snow-storm. +Unionville consisted of eleven poor cabins built in the bottom of a canon, five +on one side and six facing them on the other. They were poor, three-sided, +one-room huts, the fourth side formed by the hill; the roof, a spread of white +cotton. Stones used to roll down on them sometimes, and Mark Twain tells of +live stock—specifically of a mule and cow—that interrupted the +patient, long-suffering Oliver, who was trying to write poetry, and only +complained when at last “an entire cow came rolling down the hill, +crashed through on the table, and made a shapeless wreck of +everything.”* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* ‘The Innocents Abroad.’ +</p> + +<p> +Judge Oliver still does not complain; but he denies the cow. He says there were +no cows in Humboldt in those days, so perhaps it was only a literary cow, +though in any case it will long survive. Judge Oliver’s name will go down +with it to posterity. +</p> + +<p> +In the letter which Samuel Clemens wrote home he tells of what they found in +Unionville. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“National” there was selling at $50 per foot and assayed $2,496 per +ton at the mint in San Francisco. And the “Alda Nueva,” +“Peru,” “Delirio,” “Congress,” +“Independent,” and others were immensely rich leads. And moreover, +having winning ways with us, we could get “feet” enough to make us +all rich one of these days. +</p> + +<p> +“I confess with shame,” says the author of ‘Roughing +It’, “that I expected to find masses of silver lying all about the +ground.” And he adds that he slipped away from the cabin to find a claim +on his own account, and tells how he came staggering back under a load of +golden specimens; also how his specimens proved to be only worthless mica; and +how he learned that in mining nothing that glitters is gold. His account in +‘Roughing It’ of the Humboldt mining experience is sufficiently +good history to make detail here unnecessary. Tillou instructed them in +prospecting, and in time they located a fairly promising claim. They went to +work on it with pick and shovel, then with drill and blasting-powder. Then they +gave it up. +</p> + +<p> +“One week of this satisfied me. I resigned.” +</p> + +<p> +They tried to tunnel, but soon resigned again. It was pleasanter to prospect +and locate and trade claims and acquire feet in every new ledge than it was to +dig-and about as profitable. The golden reports of Humboldt had been based on +assays of selected rich specimens, and were mainly delirium and insanity. The +Clemens-Clagget-Oliver-Tillou combination never touched their claims again with +pick and shovel, though their faith, or at least their hope, in them did not +immediately die. Billy Clagget put out his shingle as notary public, and Gus +Oliver put out his as probate judge. Sam Clemens and Tillou, with a fat-witted, +arrogant Prussian named Pfersdoff (Ollendorf) set out for Carson City. It is +not certain what became of the wagon and team, or of the two dogs. +</p> + +<p> +The Carson travelers were water-bound at a tavern on the Carson River (the +scene of the “Arkansas” sketch), with a fighting, drinking lot. +Pfersdoff got them nearly drowned getting away, and finally succeeded in +getting them absolutely lost in the snow. The author of ‘Roughing +It’ tells us how they gave themselves up to die, and how each swore off +whatever he had in the way of an evil habit, how they cast their +tempters-tobacco, cards, and whisky-into the snow. He further tells us how next +morning, when they woke to find themselves alive, within a few rods of a +hostelry, they surreptitiously dug up those things again and, deep in shame and +luxury, resumed their fallen ways: It was the 29th of January when they reached +Carson City. They had been gone not quite two months, one of which had been +spent in travel. It was a brief period, but it contained an episode, and it +seemed like years. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXIV<br/> +TERRITORIAL CHARACTERISTICS</h2> + +<p> +Meantime, the Territorial secretary had found difficulties in launching the +ship of state. There was no legislative hall in Carson City; and if Abram +Curry, one of the original owners of the celebrated Gould and Curry +mine—“Curry—old Curry—old Abe Curry,” as he +called himself—had not tendered the use of a hall rent free, the first +legislature would have been obliged to “sit in the desert.” +Furthermore, Orion had met with certain acute troubles of his own. The +government at Washington had not appreciated his economies in the matter of +cheap office rental, and it had stipulated the price which he was to pay for +public printing and various other services-prices fixed according to Eastern +standards. These prices did not obtain in Nevada, and when Orion, confident +that because of his other economies the comptroller would stretch a point and +allow the increased frontier tariff, he was met with the usual thick-headed +official lack of imagination, with the result that the excess paid was deducted +from his slender salary. With a man of less conscience this condition would +easily have been offset by another wherein other rates, less arbitrary, would +have been adjusted to negotiate the official deficit. With Orion Clemens such a +remedy was not even considered; yielding, unstable, blown by every wind of +influence though he was, Orion’s integrity was a rock. +</p> + +<p> +Governor Nye was among those who presently made this discovery. Old politician +that he was—former police commissioner of New York City—Nye took +care of his own problems in the customary manner. To him, politics was simply a +game—to be played to win. He was a popular, jovial man, well liked and +thought of, but he did not lie awake, as Orion did, planning economies for the +government, or how to make up excess charges out of his salary. To him Nevada +was simply a doorway to the United States Senate, and in the mean time his +brigade required official recognition and perquisites. The governor found Orion +Clemens an impediment to this policy. Orion could not be brought to a proper +political understanding of “special bills and accounts,” and +relations between the secretary of state and the governor were becoming +strained. +</p> + +<p> +It was about this time that the man who had been potentate of the pilot-house +of a Mississippi River steamer returned from Humboldt. He was fond of the +governor, but he had still higher regard for the family integrity. When he had +heard Orion’s troubled story, he called on Governor Nye and delivered +himself in his own fashion. In his former employments he had acquired a +vocabulary and moral backbone sufficient to his needs. We may regret that no +stenographic report was made of the interview. It would be priceless now. But +it is lost; we only know that Orion’s rectitude was not again assailed, +and that curiously enough Governor Nye apparently conceived a strong admiration +and respect for his brother. +</p> + +<p> +Samuel Clemens, miner, remained but a brief time in Carson City—only long +enough to arrange for a new and more persistent venture. He did not confess his +Humboldt failure to his people; in fact, he had not as yet confessed it to +himself; his avowed purpose was to return to Humboldt after a brief +investigation of the Esmeralda mines. He had been paying heavy assessments on +his holdings there; and, with a knowledge of mining gained at Unionville, he +felt that his personal attention at Aurora might be important. As a matter of +fact, he was by this time fairly daft on the subject of mines and mining, with +the rest of the community for company. +</p> + +<p> +His earlier praises of the wonders and climate of Tahoe had inspired his sister +Pamela, always frail, with a desire to visit that health-giving land. Perhaps +he felt that he recommended the country somewhat too highly. +</p> + +<p> +“By George, Pamela,” he said, “I begin to fear that I have +invoked a spirit of some kind or other, which I will find more than difficult +to allay.” He proceeds to recommend California as a residence for any or +all of them, but he is clearly doubtful concerning Nevada. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Some people are malicious enough to think that if the devil were set at liberty +and told to confine himself to Nevada Territory, he would come here and look +sadly around awhile, and then get homesick and go back to hell again …. Why, I +have had my whiskers and mustaches so full of alkali dust that you’d have +thought I worked in a starch factory and boarded in a flour barrel. +</p> + +<p> +But then he can no longer restrain his youth and optimism. How could he, with a +fortune so plainly in view? It was already in his grasp in imagination; he was +on the way home with it. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +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. I came down here from Humboldt, in order to look after our +Esmeralda interests. Yesterday, Bob Howland arrived here, and I have had a talk +with him. He owns with me in the “Horatio and Derby” ledge. He says +our tunnel is in 52 feet, and a small stream of water has been struck, which +bids fair to become a “big thing” by the time the ledge is +reached—sufficient to supply a mill. Now, if you knew anything of the +value of water here, you would perceive at a glance that if the water should +amount to 50 or 100 inches, we wouldn’t care whether school kept or not. +If the ledge should prove to be worthless, we’d sell the water for money +enough to give us quite a lift. But, you see, the ledge will not prove to be +worthless. We have located, near by, a fine site for a mill, and when we strike +the ledge, you know, we’ll have a mill-site, water-power, and payrock, +all handy. Then we sha’n’t care whether we have capital or not. +Mill folks will build us a mill, and wait for their pay. If nothing goes wrong, +we’ll strike the ledge in June—and if we do, I’ll be home in +July, you know. +</p> + +<p> +He pauses at this point for a paragraph of self-analysis—characteristic +and crystal-clear. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +So, just keep your clothes on, Pamela, until I come. Don’t you know that +undemonstrated human calculations won’t do to bet on? Don’t you +know that I have only talked, as yet, but proved nothing? Don’t you know +that I have expended money in this country but have made none myself? +Don’t you know that I have never held in my hands a gold or silver bar +that belonged to me? Don’t you know that it’s all talk and no cider +so far? 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 unconcealable 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 40-horse +microscopic power? +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +But—but—<br/> +In the bright lexicon of youth,<br/> +There is <i>no such</i> word as Fail—<br/> +and I’ll prove it! +</p> + +<p> +Whereupon, he lets himself go again, full-tilt: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +By George, if I just had a thousand dollars I’d be all right! Now +there’s the “Horatio,” for instance. There are five or six +shareholders in it, and I know I could buy half of their interests at, say $20 +per foot, now that flour is worth $50 per barrel and they are pressed for +money, but I am hard up myself, and can’t buy —and in June +they’ll strike the ledge, and then “good-by canary.” I +can’t get it for love or money. Twenty dollars a foot! Think of it! For +ground that is proven to be rich. Twenty dollars, Madam—and we +wouldn’t part with a foot of our 75 for five times the sum. So it will be +in Humboldt next summer. The boys will get pushed and sell ground for a song +that is worth a fortune. But I am at the helm now. I have convinced Orion that +he hasn’t business talent enough to carry on a peanut-stand, and he has +solemnly promised me that he will meddle no more with mining or other matters +not connected with the secretary’s office. So, you see, if mines are to +be bought or sold, or tunnels run or shafts sunk, parties have to come to +me—and me only. I’m the “firm,” you know. +</p> + +<p> +There are pages of this, all glowing with golden expectations and plans. Ah, +well! we have all written such letters home at one time and another-of +gold-mines of one form or another. +</p> + +<p> +He closes at last with a bit of pleasantry for his mother. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Ma says: “It looks like a man can’t hold public office and be +honest.” Why, certainly not, Madam. A man can’t hold public office +and be honest. Lord bless you, it is a common practice with Orion to go about +town stealing little things that happen to be lying around loose. And I +don’t remember having heard him speak the truth since we have been in +Nevada. He even tries to prevail upon me to do these things, Ma, but I +wasn’t brought up in that way, you know. You showed the public what you +could do in that line when you raised me, Madam. But then you ought to have +raised me first, so that Orion could have had the benefit of my example. Do you +know that he stole all the stamps out of an 8-stamp quartz-mill one night, and +brought them home under his overcoat and hid them in the back room? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXV<br/> +THE MINER</h2> + +<p> +He had about exhausted his own funds by this time, and it was necessary that +Orion should become the financier. The brothers owned their Esmeralda claims in +partnership, and it was agreed that Orion, out of his modest depleted pay, +should furnish the means, while the other would go actively into the field and +develop their riches. Neither had the slightest doubt but that they would be +millionaires presently, and both were willing to struggle and starve for the +few intervening weeks. +</p> + +<p> +It was February when the printer-pilot-miner arrived in Aurora, that rough, +turbulent camp of the Esmeralda district lying about one hundred miles south of +Carson City, on the edge of California, in the Sierra slopes. Everything was +frozen and covered with snow; but there was no lack of excitement and +prospecting and grabbing for “feet” in this ledge and that, buried +deep under the ice and drift. The new arrival camped with Horatio Phillips +(Raish), in a tiny cabin with a domestic roof (the ruin of it still stands), +and they cooked and bunked together and combined their resources in a common +fund. Bob Howland joined them presently, and later an experienced miner, Calvin +H. Higbie (Cal), one day to be immortalized in the story of ‘Roughing +It’ and in the dedication of that book. Around the cabin stove they would +gather, and paw over their specimens, or test them with blow-pipe and +“horn” spoon, after which they would plan tunnels and figure +estimates of prospective wealth. Never mind if the food was poor and scanty, +and the chill wind came in everywhere, and the roof leaked like a filter; they +were living in a land where all the mountains were banked with nuggets, where +all the rivers ran gold. Bob Howland declared later that they used to go out at +night and gather up empty champagne-bottles and fruit-tins and pile them in the +rear of their cabin to convey to others the appearance of affluence and high +living. When they lacked for other employment and were likely to be +discouraged, the ex-pilot would “ride the bunk” and smoke and, +without money and without price, distribute riches more valuable than any they +would ever dig out of those Esmeralda Hills. At other times he talked little or +not at all, but sat in one corner and wrote, wholly oblivious of his +surroundings. They thought he was writing letters, though letters were not many +and only to Orion during this period. It was the old literary impulse stirring +again, the desire to set things down for their own sake, the natural hunger for +print. One or two of his earlier letters home had found their way into a Keokuk +paper —the ‘Gate City’. Copies containing them had gone back +to Orion, who had shown them to a representative of the Territorial Enterprise, +a young man named Barstow, who thought them amusing. The Enterprise reprinted +at least one of these letters, or portions of it, and with this encouragement +the author of it sent an occasional contribution direct to that paper over the +pen-name “Josh.” He did not care to sign his own name. He was a +miner who was soon to be a magnate; he had no desire to be known as a camp +scribbler. +</p> + +<p> +He received no pay for these offerings, and expected none. They were sketches +of a broadly burlesque sort, the robust horse-play kind of humor that belongs +to the frontier. They were not especially promising efforts. One of them was +about an old rackabones of a horse, a sort of preliminary study for +“Oahu,” of the Sandwich Islands, or “Baalbec” and +“Jericho,” of Syria. If any one had told him, or had told any +reader of this sketch, that the author of it was knocking at the door of the +house of fame such a person’s judgment or sincerity would have been open +to doubt. Nevertheless, it was true, though the knock was timid and halting and +the summons to cross the threshold long delayed. +</p> + +<p> +A winter mining-camp is the most bleak and comfortless of places. The saloon +and gambling-house furnished the only real warmth and cheer. Our Aurora miners +would have been less than human, or more, if they had not found diversion now +and then in the happy harbors of sin. Once there was a great ball given at a +newly opened pavilion, and Sam Clemens is said to have distinguished himself by +his unrestrained and spontaneous enjoyment of the tripping harmony. Cal Higbie, +who was present, writes: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +In changing partners, whenever he saw a hand raised he would grasp it with +great pleasure and sail off into another set, oblivious to his surroundings. +Sometimes he would act as though there was no use in trying to go right or to +dance like other people, and with his eyes closed he would do a hoe-down or a +double-shuffle all alone, talking to himself and saying that he never dreamed +there was so much pleasure to be obtained at a ball. It was all as natural as a +child’s play. By the second set, all the ladies were falling over +themselves to get him for a partner, and most of the crowd, too full of mirth +to dance, were standing or sitting around, dying with laughter. +</p> + +<p> +What a child he always was—always, to the very end? With the first break +of winter the excitement that had been fermenting and stewing around camp +stoves overflowed into the streets, washed up the gullies, and assailed the +hills. There came then a period of madness, beside which the Humboldt +excitement had been mere intoxication. Higbie says: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +It was amazing how wild the people became all over the Pacific coast. In San +Francisco and other large cities barbers, hack-drivers, servant-girls, +merchants, and nearly every class of people would club together and send agents +representing all the way from $5,000 to $500,000 or more to buy mines. They +would buy anything. in the shape of quartz, whether it contained any mineral +value or not. +</p> + +<p> +The letters which went from the Aurora miner to Orion are humanly documentary. +They are likely to be staccato in their movement; they show nervous haste in +their composition, eagerness, and suppressed excitement; they are not always +coherent; they are seldom humorous, except in a savage way; they are often +profane; they are likely to be violent. Even the handwriting has a terse look; +the flourish of youth has gone out of it. Altogether they reveal the tense +anxiety of the gambling mania of which mining is the ultimate form. An extract +from a letter of April is a fair exhibit: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Work not yet begun on the “Horatio and Derby”—haven’t +seen it yet. It is still in the snow. Shall begin on it within 3 or 4 weeks +—strike the ledge in July: Guess it is good—worth from $30 to $50 a +foot in California…. +</p> + +<p> +Man named Gebhart shot here yesterday while trying to defend a claim on Last +Chance Hill. Expect he will die. +</p> + +<p> +These mills here are not worth a d—n—except +Clayton’s—and it is not in full working trim yet. +</p> + +<p> +Send me $40 or $50—by mail-immediately. I go to work to-morrow with pick +and shovel. Something’s got to come, by G—, before I let go here. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +By the end of April work had become active in the mines, though the snow in +places was still deep and the ground stony with frost. On the 28th he writes: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I have been at work all day blasting and digging, and d—ning 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, 10 or 12 a feet. We +are following down under the ledge, but not taking it out. If we get up a +windlass to-morrow we shall take out the ledge, and see whether it is worth +anything or not. +</p> + +<p> +It must have been hard work picking away at the flinty ledges in the cold; and +the “Dashaway” would seem to have proven a disappointment, for +there is no promising mention of it again. Instead, we hear of the +“Flyaway;” and “Annipolitan” and the “Live +Yankee” and of a dozen others, each of which holds out the beacon of hope +for a little while and then passes from notice forever. In May it is the +“Monitor” that is sure to bring affluence, though realization is no +longer regarded as immediate. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +To use a French expression, I have “got my d—-d satisfy” at +last. Two years’ time will make us capitalists, in spite of anything. +</p> + +<p> +Therefore we need fret and fume and worry and doubt no more, but just lie still +and put up with privation for six months. Perhaps 3 months will “let us +out.” Then, if government refuses to pay the rent on your new office we +can do it ourselves. We have got to wait six weeks, anyhow, for a +dividend—maybe longer—but that it will come there is no shadow of a +doubt. I have got the thing sifted down to a dead moral certainty. I own +one-eighth of the new “Monitor Ledge, Clemens Company,” and money +can’t buy a foot of it; because I know it to contain our fortune. The +ledge is six feet wide, and one needs no glass to see gold and silver in it…. +</p> + +<p> +When you and I came out here we did not expect ’63 or ’64 to find +us rich men—and if that proposition had been made we would have accepted +it gladly. Now, it is made. I am willing, now, that “Neary’s +tunnel” or anybody else’s tunnel shall succeed. Some of them may +beat us a few months, but we shall be on hand in the fullness of time, as sure +as fate. I would hate to swap chances with any member of the tribe . . . . +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +It is the same man who twenty-five years later would fasten his faith and +capital to a type-setting machine and refuse to exchange stock in it, share for +share, with the Mergenthaler linotype. He adds: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +But I have struck my tent in Esmeralda, and I care for no mines but those which +I can superintend myself. I am a citizen here now, and I am satisfied, although +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. I prospected 3/4 of a pound of “Monitor” +yesterday, and Raish reduced it with the blow-pipe, and got about 10 or 12 +cents in gold and silver, besides the other half of it which we spilt on the +floor and didn’t get…. +</p> + +<p> +I tried to break a handsome chunk from a huge piece of my darling +“Monitor” which we brought from the croppings yesterday, but it all +splintered up, and I send you the scraps. I call that +“choice”—any d—-d fool would. +</p> + +<p> +Don’t ask if it has been assayed, for it hasn’t. It don’t +need it. It is simply able to speak for itself. It is six feet wide on top, and +traversed through with veins whose color proclaims their worth. +</p> + +<p> +What the devil does a man want with any more feet when he owns in the +invincible bomb-proof “Monitor”? +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +There is much more of this, and other such letters, most of them ending with +demands for money. The living, the tools, the blasting-powder, and the help eat +it up faster than Orion’s salary can grow. +</p> + +<p> +“Send me $50 or $100, all you can spare; put away $150 subject to my +call—we shall need it soon for the tunnel.” The letters are full of +such admonition, and Orion, more insane, if anything, than his brother, is +scraping his dollars and pennies together to keep the mines going. He is +constantly warned to buy no claims on his own account and promises faithfully, +but cannot resist now and then when luring baits are laid before him, though +such ventures invariably result in violent and profane protests from Aurora. +</p> + +<p> +“The pick and shovel are the only claims I have any confidence in +now,” the miner concludes, after one fierce outburst. “My back is +sore, and my hands are blistered with handling them to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +But even the pick and shovel did not inspire confidence a little later. He +writes that the work goes slowly, very slowly, but that they still hope to +strike it some day. “But—if we strike it rich—I’ve lost +my guess, that’s all.” Then he adds: “Couldn’t go on +the hill to-day. It snowed. It always snows here, I expect”; and the +final heart-sick line, “Don’t you suppose they have pretty much +quit writing at home?” +</p> + +<p> +This is midsummer, and snow still interferes with the work. One feels the +dreary uselessness of the quest. +</p> + +<p> +Yet resolution did not wholly die, or even enthusiasm. These things were as +recurrent as new prospects, which were plentiful enough. In a still subsequent +letter he declares that he will never look upon his mother’s face again, +or his sister’s, or get married, or revisit the “Banner +State,” until he is a rich man, though there is less assurance than +desperation in the words. +</p> + +<p> +In ‘Roughing It’ the author tells us that, when flour had reached +one dollar a pound and he could no longer get the dollar, he abandoned mining +and went to milling “as a common laborer in a quartz-mill at ten dollars +a week.” This statement requires modification. It was not entirely for +the money that he undertook the laborious task of washing “riffles” +and “screening tailings.” The money was welcome enough, no doubt, +but the greater purpose was to learn refining, so that when his mines developed +he could establish his own mill and personally superintend the work. It is like +him to wish us to believe that he was obliged to give up being a mining magnate +to become a laborer in a quartz-mill, for there is a grim humor in the +confession. That he abandoned the milling experiment at the end of a week is a +true statement. He got a violent cold in the damp place, and came near getting +salivated, he says in a letter, “working in the quicksilver and +chemicals. I hardly think I shall try the experiment again. It is a confining +business, and I will not be confined for love or money.” +</p> + +<p> +As recreation after this trying experience, Higbie took him on a tour, +prospecting for the traditional “Cement Mine,” a lost claim where, +in a deposit of cement rock, gold nuggets were said to be as thick as raisins +in a fruitcake. They did not find the mine, but they visited Mono Lake +—that ghastly, lifeless alkali sea among the hills, which in +‘Roughing It’ he has so vividly pictured. It was good to get away +from the stress of things; and they repeated the experiment. They made a +walking trip to Yosemite, carrying their packs, camping and fishing in that +far, tremendous isolation, which in those days few human beings had ever +visited at all. Such trips furnished a delicious respite from the fevered +struggle around tunnel and shaft. Amid mountain-peaks and giant forests and by +tumbling falls the quest for gold hardly seemed worth while. More than once +that summer he went alone into the wilderness to find his balance and to get +away entirely from humankind. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXVI<br/> +LAST MINING DAYS</h2> + +<p> +It was late in July when he wrote: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +If I do not forget it, I will send you, per next mail, a pinch of decom. +(decomposed rock) which I pinched with thumb and finger from Wide West ledge a +while ago. Raish and I have secured 200 out of a company with 400 ft. in it, +which perhaps (the ledge, I mean) is a spur from the W. W.—our shaft is +about 100 ft. from the W. W. shaft. In order to get in, we agreed to sink 30 +ft. We have sublet to another man for 50 ft., and we pay for powder and +sharpening tools. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +This was the “Blind Lead” claim of Roughing It, but the episode as +set down in that book is somewhat dramatized. It is quite true that he visited +and nursed Captain Nye while Higbie was off following the “Cement” +‘ignus fatuus’ and that the “Wide West” holdings were +forfeited through neglect. But if the loss was regarded as a heavy one, the +letters fail to show it. It is a matter of dispute to-day whether or not the +claim was ever of any value. A well-known California author* declares: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +No one need to fear that he ran any chance of being a millionaire through the +“Wide West” mine, for the writer, as a child, played over that +historic spot and saw only a shut-down mill and desolate hole in the ground to +mark the spot where over-hopeful men had sunk thousands and thousands, that +they never recovered. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Ella Sterling Cummins, author of The Story of the Files, etc. +</p> + +<p> +The “Blind Lead” episode, as related, is presumably a tale of what +might have happened—a possibility rather than an actuality. It is vividly +true in atmosphere, however, and forms a strong and natural climax for closing +the mining episode, while the literary privilege warrants any liberties he may +have taken for art’s sake. +</p> + +<p> +In reality the close of his mining career was not sudden and spectacular; it +was a lingering close, a reluctant and gradual surrender. The +“Josh” letters to the Enterprise had awakened at least a measure of +interest, and Orion had not failed to identify their author when any promising +occasion offered; as a result certain tentative overtures had been made for +similar material. Orion eagerly communicated such chances, for the money +situation was becoming a desperate one. A letter from the Aurora miner written +near the end of July presents the situation very fully. An extract or two will +be sufficient: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +My debts are greater than I thought for—I bought $25 worth of clothing +and sent $25 to Higbie, in the cement diggings. I owe about $45 or $50, and +have got about $45 in my pocket. But how in the h—l I am going to live on +something over $100 until October or November is singular. 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 I’ll 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 N. Orleans Crescent and other papers—and the Enterprise. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Nothing came of these possibilities, but about this time Barstow, of the +Enterprise, conferred with Joseph T. Goodman, editor and owner of the paper, as +to the advisability of adding the author of the “Josh” letters to +their local staff. Joe Goodman, who had as keen a literary perception as any +man that ever pitched a journalistic tent on the Pacific coast (and there could +be no higher praise than that), looked over the letters and agreed with Barstow +that the man who wrote them had “something in him.” Two of the +sketches in particular he thought promising. One of them was a burlesque report +of an egotistical lecturer who was referred to as “Professor Personal +Pronoun.” It closed by stating that it was “impossible to print his +lecture in full, as the type-cases had run out of capital I’s.” But +it was the other sketch which settled Goodman’s decision. It was also a +burlesque report, this time of a Fourth-of-July oration. It opened, “I +was sired by the Great American Eagle and foaled by a continental dam.” +This was followed by a string of stock patriotic phrases absurdly arranged. But +it was the opening itself that won Goodman’s heart. +</p> + +<p> +“That is the sort of thing we want,” he said. “Write to him, +Barstow, and ask him if he wants to come up here.” +</p> + +<p> +Barstow wrote, offering twenty-five dollars a week, a tempting sum. This was at +the end of July, 1862. +</p> + +<p> +In ‘Roughing It’ we are led to believe that the author regarded +this as a gift from heaven and accepted it straightaway. As a matter of fact, +he fasted and prayed a good while over the “call.” To Orion he +wrote: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Barstow has offered me the post as local reporter for the Enterprise at $25 a +week, and I have written him that I will let him know next mail, if possible. +</p> + +<p> +There was no desperate eagerness, you see, to break into literature, even under +those urgent conditions. It meant the surrender of all hope in the mines, the +confession of another failure. On August 7th he wrote again to Orion. He had +written to Barstow, he said, asking when they thought he might be needed. He +was playing for time to consider. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Now, I shall leave at midnight to-night, alone and on foot, for a walk of 60 or +70 miles through a totally uninhabited country, and it is barely possible that +mail facilities may prove infernally “slow.” 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. +</p> + +<p> +So he had gone into the wilderness to fight out his battle alone. But eight +days later, when he had returned, there was still no decision. In a letter to +Pamela of this date he refers playfully to the discomforts of his cabin and +mentions a hope that he will spend the winter in San Francisco; but there is no +reference in it to any newspaper prospects —nor to the mines, for that +matter. Phillips, Howland, and Higbie would seem to have given up by this time, +and he was camping with Dan Twing and a dog, a combination amusingly described. +It is a pleasant enough letter, but the note of discouragement creeps in: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I did think for a while of going home this fall—but when I found that +that was, and had been, the cherished intention and the darling aspiration +every year of these old care-worn Californians for twelve weary years, I felt a +little uncomfortable, so I stole a march on Disappointment and said I would not +go home this fall. This country suits me, and it shall suit me whether or no. +</p> + +<p> +He was dying hard, desperately hard; how could he know, to paraphrase the old +form of Christian comfort, that his end as a miner would mean, in another +sphere, “a brighter resurrection” than even his rainbow imagination +could paint? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXVII<br/> +THE NEW ESTATE</h2> + +<p> +It was the afternoon of a hot, dusty August day when a worn, travel-stained +pilgrim drifted laggingly into the office of the Virginia City Enterprise, then +in its new building on C Street, and, loosening a heavy roll of blankets from +his shoulders, dropped wearily into a chair. He wore a rusty slouch hat, no +coat, a faded blue flannel shirt, a Navy revolver; his trousers were hanging on +his boot tops. A tangle of reddish-brown hair fell on his shoulders, and a mass +of tawny beard, dingy with alkali dust, dropped half-way to his waist. +</p> + +<p> +Aurora lay one hundred and thirty miles from Virginia. He had walked that +distance, carrying his heavy load. Editor Goodman was absent at the moment, but +the other proprietor, Denis E. McCarthy, signified that the caller might state +his errand. The wanderer regarded him with a far-away look and said, absently +and with deliberation: +</p> + +<p> +“My starboard leg seems to be unshipped. I’d like about one hundred +yards of line; I think I am 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.” +</p> + +<p> +It was the master of the world’s widest estate come to claim his kingdom: +</p> + +<p> +William Wright, who had won a wide celebrity on the Coast as Dan de Quille, was +in the editorial chair and took charge of the new arrival. He was going on a +trip to the States soon; it was mainly on this account that the new man had +been engaged. The “Josh” letters were very good, in Dan’s +opinion; he gave their author a cordial welcome, and took him around to his +boarding-place. It was the beginning of an association that continued during +Samuel Clemens’s stay in Virginia City and of a friendship that lasted +many years. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +The Territorial Enterprise was one of the most remarkable frontier papers ever +published. Its editor-in-chief, Joseph Goodman, was a man with rare +appreciation, wide human understanding, and a comprehensive newspaper policy. +Being a young man, he had no policy, in fact, beyond the general purpose that +his paper should be a forum for absolutely free speech, provided any serious +statement it contained was based upon knowledge. His instructions to the new +reporter were about as follows: +</p> + +<p> +“Never say we learn so and so, or it is rumored, or we understand so and +so; but go to headquarters and get the absolute facts; then speak out and say +it is so and so. In the one case you are likely to be shot, and in the other +you are pretty certain to be; but you will preserve the public +confidence.” +</p> + +<p> +Goodman was not new to the West. He had come to California as a boy and had +been a miner, explorer, printer, and contributor by turns. Early in ’61, +when the Comstock Lode* was new and Virginia in the first flush of its monster +boom, he and Denis McCarthy had scraped together a few dollars and bought the +paper. It had been a hand-to-hand struggle for a while, but in a brief two +years, from a starving sheet in a shanty the Enterprise, with new building, new +presses, and a corps of swift compositors brought up from San Francisco, had +become altogether metropolitan, as well as the most widely considered paper on +the Coast. It had been borne upward by the Comstock tide, though its fearless, +picturesque utterance would have given it distinction anywhere. Goodman himself +was a fine, forceful writer, and Dan de Quille and R. M. Daggett (afterward +United States minister to Hawaii) were representative of Enterprise +men.** +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Named for its discoverer, Henry T. P. Comstock, a half-crazy miner, who +realized very little from his stupendous find. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +** The Comstock of that day became famous for its journalism. Associated with +the Virginia papers then or soon afterward were such men as Tom Fitch (the +silver-tongued orator), Alf Doten, W. J. Forbes, C. C. Goodwin, H. R. Mighels, +Clement T. Rice, Arthur McEwen, and Sam Davis—a great array indeed for a +new Territory. +</p> + +<p> +Samuel Clemens fitted precisely into this group. He added the fresh, rugged +vigor of thought and expression that was the very essence of the Comstock, +which was like every other frontier mining-camp, only on a more lavish, more +overwhelming scale. +</p> + +<p> +There was no uncertainty about the Comstock; the silver and gold were there. +Flanking the foot of Mount Davidson, the towns of Gold Hill and Virginia and +the long street between were fairly underburrowed and underpinned by the +gigantic mining construction of that opulent lode whose treasures were actually +glutting the mineral markets of the world. The streets overhead seethed and +swarmed with miners, mine owners, and adventurers—riotous, rollicking +children of fortune, always ready to drink and make merry, as eager in their +pursuit of pleasure as of gold. Comstockers would always laugh at a joke; the +rougher the better. The town of Virginia itself was just a huge joke to most of +them. Everybody had, money; everybody wanted to laugh and have a good time. The +Enterprise, “Comstock to the backbone,” did what it could to help +things along. +</p> + +<p> +It was a sort of free ring, with every one for himself. Goodman let the boys +write and print in accordance with their own ideas and upon any subject. Often +they wrote of each other—squibs and burlesques, which gratified the +Comstock far more than mere news.* It was the proper class-room for Mark Twain, +an encouraging audience and free utterance: fortune could have devised nothing +better for him than that. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* The indifference to ‘news’ was noble—none the less so +because it was so blissfully unconscious. Editors Mark or Dan would dismiss a +murder with a couple of inches and sit down and fill up a column with a fancy +sketch: “Arthur McEwen” +</p> + +<p> +He was peculiarly fitted for the position. Unspoiled humanity appealed to him, +and the Comstock presented human nature in its earliest landscape forms. +Furthermore, the Comstock was essentially optimistic—so was he; any hole +in the ground to him held a possible, even a probable, fortune. +</p> + +<p> +His pilot memory became a valuable asset in news-gathering. Remembering marks, +banks, sounding, and other river detail belonged apparently in the same +category of attainments as remembering items and localities of news. He could +travel all day without a note-book and at night reproduce the day’s +budget or at least the picturesqueness of it, without error. He was presently +accounted a good reporter, except where statistics —measurements and +figures—were concerned. These he gave “a lick and a promise,” +according to De Quille, who wrote afterward of their associations. De Quille +says further: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Mark and I agreed well in our work, which we divided when there was a rush of +events; but we often cruised in company, he taking the items of news he could +handle best, and I such as I felt competent to work up. However, we wrote at +the same table and frequently helped each other with such suggestions as +occurred to us during the brief consultations we held in regard to the handling +of any matters of importance. Never was there an angry word between us in all +the time we worked together. +</p> + +<p> +De Quille tells how Clemens clipped items with a knife when there were no +scissors handy, and slashed through on the top of his desk, which in time took +on the semblance “of a huge polar star, spiritedly dashing forth a +thousand rays.” +</p> + +<p> +The author of ‘Roughing It’ has given us a better picture of the +Virginia City of those days and his work there than any one else will ever +write. He has made us feel the general spirit of affluence that prevailed; how +the problem was not to get money, but to spend it; how “feet” in +any one of a hundred mines could be had for the asking; how such shares were +offered like apples or cigars or bonbons, as a natural matter of courtesy when +one happened to have his supply in view; how any one connected with a newspaper +would have stocks thrust upon him, and how in a brief time he had acquired a +trunk ful of such riches and usually had something to sell when any of the +claims made a stir on the market. He has told us of the desperadoes and their +trifling regard for human life, and preserved other elemental characters of +these prodigal days. The funeral of Buck Fanshaw that amazing +masterpiece—is a complete epitome of the social frontier. +</p> + +<p> +It would not be the part of wisdom to attempt another inclusive presentation of +Comstock conditions. We may only hope to add a few details of history, +justified now by time and circumstances, to supplement the picture with certain +data of personality preserved from the drift of years. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXVIII<br/> +ONE OF THE “STAFF”</h2> + +<p> +The new reporter found acquaintance easy. The office force was like one family +among which there was no line of caste. Proprietors, editors, and printers were +social equals; there was little ceremony among them—none at all outside +of the office.* Samuel Clemens immediately became “Sam,” or +“Josh,” to his associates, just as De Quille was “Dan” +and Goodman “Joe.” He found that he disliked the name of Josh, and, +as he did not sign it again, it was presently dropped. The office, and Virginia +City generally, quickly grew fond of him, delighting in his originality and +measured speech. Enterprise readers began to identify his work, then unsigned, +and to enjoy its fresh phrasing, even when it was only the usual local item or +mining notice. True to its name and reputation, the paper had added a new +attraction. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* “The paper went to press at two in the morning, then all the staff and +all the compositors gathered themselves together in the composing-room and +drank beer and sang the popular war-songs of the day until +dawn.”—S. L. C., in 1908. +</p> + +<p> +It was only a brief time after his arrival in Virginia City that Clemens began +the series of hoaxes which would carry his reputation, not always in an +enviable fashion, across the Sierras and down the Pacific coast. With one +exception these are lost to-day, for so far as known there is not a single file +of the Enterprise in existence. Only a few stray copies and clippings are +preserved, but we know the story of some of these literary pranks and of their +results. They were usually intended as a special punishment of some particular +individual or paper or locality; but victims were gathered by the wholesale in +their seductive web. Mark Twain himself, in his book of Sketches, has set down +something concerning the first of these, “The Petrified Man,” and +of another, “My Bloody Massacre,” but in neither case has he told +it all. “The Petrified Man” hoax was directed at an official named +Sewall, a coroner and justice of the peace at Humboldt, who had been pompously +indifferent in the matter of supplying news. The story, told with great +circumstance and apparent care as to detail, related the finding of a petrified +prehistoric man, partially imbedded in a rock, in a cave in the desert more +than one hundred miles from Humboldt, and how Sewall had made the perilous +five-day journey in the alkali waste to hold an inquest over a man that had +been dead three hundred years; also how, “with that delicacy so +characteristic of him,” Sewall had forbidden the miners from blasting him +from his position. The account further stated that the hands of the deceased +were arranged in a peculiar fashion; and the description of the arrangement was +so skilfully woven in with other matters that at first, or even second, reading +one might not see that the position indicated was the ancient one which begins +with the thumb at the nose and in many ages has been used impolitely to express +ridicule and the word “sold.” But the description was a shade too +ingenious. The author expected that the exchanges would see the joke and +perhaps assist in the fun he would have with Sewall. He did not contemplate a +joke on the papers themselves. As a matter of fact, no one saw the +“sell” and most of the papers printed his story of the petrified +man as a genuine discovery. This was a surprise, and a momentary +disappointment; then he realized that he had builded better than he knew. He +gathered up a bundle of the exchanges and sent them to Sewall; also he sent +marked copies to scientific men in various parts of the United States. The +papers had taken it seriously; perhaps the scientists would. Some of them did, +and Sewall’s days became unhappy because of letters received asking +further information. As literature, the effort did not rank high, and as a +trick on an obscure official it was hardly worth while; but, as a joke on the +Coast exchanges and press generally, it was greatly regarded and its author, +though as yet unnamed, acquired prestige. +</p> + +<p> +Inquiries began to be made as to who was the smart chap in Virginia that did +these things. The papers became wary and read Enterprise items twice before +clipping them. Clemens turned his attention to other matters to lull suspicion. +The great “Dutch Nick Massacre” did not follow until a year later. +</p> + +<p> +Reference has already been made to the Comstock’s delight in humor of a +positive sort. The practical joke was legal tender in Virginia. One might +protest and swear, but he must take it. An example of Comstock humor, regarded +as the finest assay, is an incident still told of Leslie Blackburn and Pat +Holland, two gay men about town. They were coming down C Street one morning +when they saw some fine watermelons on a fruit-stand at the International Hotel +corner. Watermelons were rare and costly in that day and locality, and these +were worth three dollars apiece. Blackburn said: +</p> + +<p> +“Pat, let’s get one of those watermelons. You engage that fellow in +conversation while I stand at the corner, where I can step around out of sight +easily. When you have got him interested, point to something on the back shelf +and pitch me a melon.” +</p> + +<p> +This appealed to Holland, and he carried out his part of the plan perfectly; +but when he pitched the watermelon Blackburn simply put his hands in his +pockets, and stepped around the corner, leaving the melon a fearful disaster on +the pavement. It was almost impossible for Pat to explain to the fruit-man why +he pitched away a three-dollar melon like that even after paying for it, and it +was still more trying, also more expensive, to explain to the boys facing the +various bars along C Street. +</p> + +<p> +Sam Clemens, himself a practical joker in his youth, found a healthy delight in +this knock-down humor of the Comstock. It appealed to his vigorous, elemental +nature. He seldom indulged physically in such things; but his printed squibs +and hoaxes and his keen love of the ridiculous placed him in the joker class, +while his prompt temper, droll manner, and rare gift of invective made him an +enticing victim. +</p> + +<p> +Among the Enterprise compositors was one by the name of Stephen E. Gillis +(Steve, of course—one of the “fighting Gillises”), a small, +fearless young fellow, handsome, quick of wit, with eyes like needle-points. +</p> + +<p> +“Steve weighed only ninety-five pounds,” Mark Twain once wrote of +him, “but it was well known throughout the Territory that with his fists +he could whip anybody that walked on two legs, let his weight and science be +what they might.” +</p> + +<p> +Clemens was fond of Steve Gillis from the first. The two became closely +associated in time, and were always bosom friends; but Steve was a merciless +joker, and never as long as they were together could he “resist the +temptation of making Sam swear,” claiming that his profanity was grander +than any music. +</p> + +<p> +A word hereabout Mark Twain’s profanity. Born with a matchless gift of +phrase, the printing-office, the river, and the mines had developed it in a +rare perfection. To hear him denounce a thing was to give one the fierce, +searching delight of galvanic waves. Every characterization seemed the most +perfect fit possible until he applied the next. And somehow his profanity was +seldom an offense. It was not mere idle swearing; it seemed always genuine and +serious. His selection of epithet was always dignified and stately, from +whatever source—and it might be from the Bible or the gutter. Some one +has defined dirt as misplaced matter. It is perhaps the greatest definition +ever uttered. It is absolutely universal in its application, and it recurs now, +remembering Mark Twain’s profanity. For it was rarely misplaced; hence it +did not often offend. It seemed, in fact, the safety-valve of his high-pressure +intellectual engine. When he had blown off he was always calm, gentle; +forgiving, and even tender. Once following an outburst he said, placidly: +</p> + +<p> +“In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate +circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.” +</p> + +<p> +It seems proper to add that it is not the purpose of this work to magnify or +modify or excuse that extreme example of humankind which forms its chief +subject; but to set him down as he was inadequately, of course, but with good +conscience and clear intent. +</p> + +<p> +Led by Steve Gillis, the Enterprise force used to devise tricks to set him +going. One of these was to hide articles from his desk. He detested the work +necessary to the care of a lamp, and wrote by the light of a candle. To hide +“Sam’s candle” was a sure way to get prompt and vigorous +return. He would look for it a little; then he would begin a slow, circular +walk—a habit acquired in the limitations of the pilot-house —and +his denunciation of the thieves was like a great orchestration of wrong. By and +by the office boy, supposedly innocent, would find another for him, and all +would be forgotten. He made a placard, labeled with fearful threats and +anathemas, warning any one against touching his candle; but one night both the +placard and the candle were gone. +</p> + +<p> +Now, among his Virginia acquaintances was a young minister, a Mr. Rising, +“the fragile, gentle new fledgling” of the Buck Fanshaw episode. +Clemens greatly admired Mr. Rising’s evident sincerity, and the young +minister had quickly recognized the new reporter’s superiority of mind. +Now and then he came to the office to call on him. Unfortunately, he happened +to step in just at that moment when, infuriated by the latest theft of his +property, Samuel Clemens was engaged in his rotary denunciation of the +criminals, oblivious of every other circumstance. Mr. Rising stood spellbound +by this, to him, new phase of genius, and at last his friend became dimly aware +of him. He did not halt in his scathing treadmill and continued in the slow +monotone of speech: +</p> + +<p> +“I know, Mr. Rising, I know it’s wicked to talk like this; I know +it is wrong. I know I shall certainly go to hell for it. But if you had a +candle, Mr. Rising, and those thieves should carry it off every night, I know +that you would say, just as I say, Mr. Rising, G-d d—n their impenitent +souls, may they roast in hell for a million years.” +</p> + +<p> +The little clergyman caught his breath. +</p> + +<p> +“Maybe I should, Mr. Clemens,” he replied, “but I should try +to say, ‘Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well! if you put it on the ground that they are just fools, that +alters the case, as I am one of that class myself. Come in and we’ll try +to forgive them and forget about it.”* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Mark Twain had a good many experiences with young ministers. He was always +fond of them, and they often sought him out. Once, long afterward, at a hotel, +he wanted a boy to polish his shoes, and had rung a number of times without +getting any response. Presently, he thought he heard somebody approaching in +the hall outside. He flung open the door, and a small, youngish-looking person, +who seemed to have been hesitating at the door, made a movement as though to +depart hastily. Clemens grabbed him by the collar.<br/> + “Look here,” he said, “I’ve been waiting and +ringing here for half an hour. Now I want you to take those shoes, and polish +them, quick. Do you hear?”<br/> + The slim, youthful person trembled a good deal, and said: “I would, +Mr. Clemens, I would indeed, sir, if I could. But I’m a minister of the +Gospel, and I’m not prepared for such work.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXIX<br/> +PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY</h2> + +<p> +There was a side to Samuel Clemens that in those days few of his associates +saw. This was the poetic, the philosophic, the contemplative side. Joseph +Goodman recognized this phase of his character, and, while he perhaps did not +regard it as a future literary asset, he delighted in it, and in their hours of +quiet association together encouraged its exhibition. It is rather curious that +with all his literary penetration Goodman did not dream of a future celebrity +for Clemens. He afterward said: +</p> + +<p> +“If I had been asked to prophesy which of the two men, Dan de Quille or +Sam, would become distinguished, I should have said De Quille. Dan was +talented, industrious, and, for that time and place, brilliant. Of course, I +recognized the unusualness of Sam’s gifts, but he was eccentric and +seemed to lack industry; it is not likely that I should have prophesied fame +for him then.” +</p> + +<p> +Goodman, like MacFarlane in Cincinnati, half a dozen years before, though by a +different method, discovered and developed the deeper vein. Often the two, +dining together in a French restaurant, discussed life, subtler philosophies, +recalled various phases of human history, remembered and recited the poems that +gave them especial enjoyment. “The Burial of Moses,” with its noble +phrasing and majestic imagery, appealed strongly to Clemens, and he recited it +with great power. The first stanza in particular always stirred him, and it +stirred his hearer as well. With eyes half closed and chin lifted, a lighted +cigar between his fingers, he would lose himself in the music of the stately +lines. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +By Nebo’s lonely mountain,<br/> + On this side Jordan’s wave,<br/> +In a vale in the land of Moab,<br/> + There lies a lonely grave.<br/> +And no man knows that sepulchre,<br/> + And no man saw it e’er,<br/> +For the angels of God, upturned the sod,<br/> + And laid the dead man there. +</p> + +<p> +Another stanza that he cared for almost as much was the one beginning: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +And had he not high honor<br/> + —The hill-side for a pall,<br/> +To lie in state while angels wait<br/> + With stars for tapers tall,<br/> +And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes,<br/> + Over his bier to wave,<br/> +And God’s own hand in that lonely land,<br/> + To lay him in the grave? +</p> + +<p> +Without doubt he was moved to emulate the simple grandeur of that poem, for he +often repeated it in those days, and somewhat later we find it copied into his +notebook in full. It would seem to have become to him a sort of literary +touchstone; and in some measure it may be regarded as accountable for the fact +that in the fullness of time “he made use of the purest English of any +modern writer.” These are Goodman’s words, though William Dean +Howells has said them, also, in substance, and Brander Matthews, and many +others who know about such things. Goodman adds, “The simplicity and +beauty of his style are almost without a parallel, except in the common version +of the Bible,” which is also true. One is reminded of what Macaulay said +of Milton: +</p> + +<p> +“There would seem at first sight to be no more in his words than in other +words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced than +the past is present and the distance near. New forms of beauty start at once +into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their +dead.” +</p> + +<p> +One drifts ahead, remembering these things. The triumph of words, the mastery +of phrases, lay all before him at the time of which we are writing now. He was +twenty-seven. At that age Rudyard Kipling had reached his meridian. Samuel +Clemens was still in the classroom. Everything came as a lesson-phrase, form, +aspect, and combination; nothing escaped unvalued. The poetic phase of things +particularly impressed him. Once at a dinner with Goodman, when the lamp-light +from the chandelier struck down through the claret on the tablecloth in a great +red stain, he pointed to it dramatically “Look, Joe,” he said, +“the angry tint of wine.” +</p> + +<p> +It was at one of these private sessions, late in ’62, that Clemens +proposed to report the coming meeting of the Carson legislature. He knew +nothing of such work and had small knowledge of parliamentary proceedings. +Formerly it had been done by a man named Gillespie, but Gillespie was now clerk +of the house. Goodman hesitated; then, remembering that whether Clemens got the +reports right or not, he would at least make them readable, agreed to let him +undertake the work. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XL<br/> +“MARK TWAIN”</h2> + +<p> +The early Nevada legislature was an interesting assembly. All State +legislatures are that, and this was a mining frontier. No attempt can be made +to describe it. It was chiefly distinguished for a large ignorance of +procedure, a wide latitude of speech, a noble appreciation of humor, and plenty +of brains. How fortunate Mark Twain was in his schooling, to be kept away from +institutional training, to be placed in one after another of those universities +of life where the sole curriculum is the study of the native inclinations and +activities of mankind! Sometimes, in after-years, he used to regret the lack of +systematic training. Well for him—and for us—that he escaped that +blight. +</p> + +<p> +For the study of human nature the Nevada assembly was a veritable lecture-room. +In it his understanding, his wit, his phrasing, his self-assuredness grew like +Jack’s bean-stalk, which in time was ready to break through into a land +above the sky. He made some curious blunders in his reports, in the beginning; +but he was so frank in his ignorance and in his confession of it that the very +unsophistication of his early letters became their chief charm. Gillespie +coached him on parliamentary matters, and in time the reports became +technically as well as artistically good. Clemens in return christened +Gillespie “Young, Jefferson’s Manual,” a title which he bore, +rather proudly indeed, for many years. +</p> + +<p> +Another “entitlement” growing out of those early reports, and +possibly less satisfactory to its owner, was the one accorded to Clement T. +Rice, of the Virginia City Union. Rice knew the legislative work perfectly and +concluded to poke fun at the Enterprise letters. +</p> + +<p> +But this was a mistake. Clemens in his next letter declared that Rice’s +reports might be parliamentary enough, but that they covered with glittering +technicalities the most festering mass of misstatement, and even crime. He +avowed that they were wholly untrustworthy; dubbed the author of them +“The Unreliable,” and in future letters never referred to him by +any other term. Carson and the Comstock and the papers of the Coast delighted +in this burlesque journalistic warfare, and Rice was “The +Unreliable” for life. +</p> + +<p> +Rice and Clemens, it should be said, though rivals, were the best of friends, +and there was never any real animosity between them. +</p> + +<p> +Clemens quickly became a favorite with the members; his sharp letters, with +their amusing turn of phrase and their sincerity, won general friendship. Jack +Simmons, speaker of the house, and Billy Clagget, the Humboldt delegation, were +his special cronies and kept him on the inside of the political machine. +Clagget had remained in Unionville after the mining venture, warned his Keokuk +sweetheart, and settled down into politics and law. In due time he would become +a leading light and go to Congress. He was already a notable figure of forceful +eloquence and tousled, unkempt hair. Simmons, Clagget, and Clemens were easily +the three conspicuous figures of the session. +</p> + +<p> +It must have been gratifying to the former prospector and miner to come back to +Carson City a person of consequence, where less than a year before he had been +regarded as no more than an amusing indolent fellow, a figure to smile at, but +unimportant. There is a photograph extant of Clemens and his friends Clagget +and Simmons in a group, and we gather from it that he now arrayed himself in a +long broadcloth cloak, a starched shirt, and polished boots. Once more he had +become the glass of fashion that he had been on the river. He made his +residence with Orion, whose wife and little daughter Jennie had by this time +come out from the States. “Sister Mollie,” as wife of the acting +governor, was presently social leader of the little capital; her brilliant +brother-in-law its chief ornament. His merriment and songs and good nature made +him a favorite guest. His lines had fallen in pleasant places; he could afford +to smile at the hard Esmeralda days. +</p> + +<p> +He was not altogether satisfied. His letters, copied and quoted all along the +Coast, were unsigned. They were easily identified with one another, but not +with a personality. He realized that to build a reputation it was necessary to +fasten it to an individuality, a name. +</p> + +<p> +He gave the matter a good deal of thought. He did not consider the use of his +own name; the ‘nom de plume’ was the fashion of the time. He wanted +something brief, crisp, definite, unforgettable. He tried over a good many +combinations in his mind, but none seemed convincing. Just then—this was +early in 1863—news came to him that the old pilot he had wounded by his +satire, Isaiah Sellers, was dead. At once the pen-name of Captain Sellers +recurred to him. That was it; that was the sort of name he wanted. It was not +trivial; it had all the qualities—Sellers would never need it again. +Clemens decided he would give it a new meaning and new association in this +far-away land. He went up to Virginia City. +</p> + +<p> +“Joe,” he said, to Goodman, “I want to sign my articles. I +want to be identified to a wider audience.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right, Sam. What name do you want to use ‘Josh’?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I want to sign them ‘Mark Twain.’ It is an old river +term, a leads-man’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 water.” +</p> + +<p> +He did not then mention that Captain Isaiah Sellers had used and dropped the +name. He was ashamed of his part in that episode, and the offense was still too +recent for confession. Goodman considered a moment: +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, Sam,” he said, “that sounds like a good +name.” +</p> + +<p> +It was indeed a good name. In all the nomenclature of the world no more +forceful combination of words could have been selected to express the man for +whom they stood. The name Mark Twain is as infinite, as fundamental as that of +John Smith, without the latter’s wasting distribution of strength. If all +the prestige in the name of John Smith were combined in a single individual, +its dynamic energy might give it the carrying power of Mark Twain. Let this be +as it may, it has proven the greatest ‘nom de plume’ ever +chosen—a name exactly in accord with the man, his work, and his career. +</p> + +<p> +It is not surprising that Goodman did not recognize this at the moment. We +should not guess the force that lies in a twelve-inch shell if we had never +seen one before or heard of its seismic destruction. We should have to wait and +see it fired, and take account of the result. +</p> + +<p> +It was first signed to a Carson letter bearing date of February 2, 1863, and +from that time was attached to all Samuel Clemens’s work. The work was +neither better nor worse than before, but it had suddenly acquired +identification and special interest. Members of the legislature and friends in +Virginia and Carson immediately began to address him as “Mark.” The +papers of the Coast took it up, and within a period to be measured by weeks he +was no longer “Sam” or “Clemens” or “that bright +chap on the Enterprise,” but “Mark”—“Mark +Twain.” No ‘nom de plume’ was ever so quickly and generally +accepted as that. De Quille, returning from the East after an absence of +several months, found his room and deskmate with the distinction of a new name +and fame. +</p> + +<p> +It is curious that in the letters to the home folks preserved from that period +there is no mention of his new title and its success. In fact, the writer +rarely speaks of his work at all, and is more inclined to tell of the mining +shares he has accumulated, their present and prospective values. However, many +of the letters are undoubtedly missing. Such as have been preserved are rather +airy epistles full of his abounding joy of life and good nature. Also they bear +evidence of the renewal of his old river habit of sending money +home—twenty dollars in each letter, with intervals of a week or so +between. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLI<br/> +THE CREAM OF COMSTOCK HUMOR</h2> + +<p> +With the adjournment of the legislature, Samuel Clemens returned to Virginia +City distinctly a notability—Mark Twain. He was regarded as leading man +on the Enterprise—which in itself was high distinction on the +Comstock—while his improved dress and increased prosperity commanded +additional respect. When visitors of note came along—well-known actors, +lecturers, politicians—he was introduced as one of the Comstock features +which it was proper to see, along with the Ophir and Gould and Curry mines, and +the new hundred-stamp quartz-mill. +</p> + +<p> +He was rather grieved and hurt, therefore, when, after several collections had +been taken up in the Enterprise office to present various members of the staff +with meerschaum pipes, none had come to him. He mentioned this apparent slight +to Steve Gillis: +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody ever gives me a meerschaum pipe,” he said, plaintively. +“Don’t I deserve one yet?” +</p> + +<p> +Unhappy day! To that remorseless creature, Steve Gillis, this was a golden +opportunity for deviltry of a kind that delighted his soul. This is the story, +precisely as Gillis himself told it to the writer of these annals more than a +generation later: +</p> + +<p> +“There was a German kept a cigar store in Virginia City and always had a +fine assortment of meerschaum pipes. These pipes usually cost anywhere from +forty to seventy-five dollars. +</p> + +<p> +“One day Denis McCarthy and I were walking by the old German’s +place, and stopped to look in at the display in the window. Among other things +there was one large imitation meerschaum with a high bowl and a long stem, +marked a dollar and a half. +</p> + +<p> +“I decided that that would be just the pipe for Sam. We went in and +bought it, also a very much longer stem. I think the stem alone cost three +dollars. Then we had a little German-silver plate engraved with Mark’s +name on it and by whom presented, and made preparations for the presentation. +Charlie Pope—[afterward proprietor of Pope’s Theater, St. +Louis]—was playing at the Opera House at the time, and we engaged him to +make the presentation speech. +</p> + +<p> +“Then we let in Dan de Quille, Mark’s closest friend, to act the +part of Judas—to tell Mark privately that he, was going to be presented +with a fine pipe, so that he could have a speech prepared in reply to +Pope’s. It was awful low-down in Dan. We arranged to have the affair come +off in the saloon beneath the Opera House after the play was over. +</p> + +<p> +“Everything went off handsomely; but it was a pretty remorseful occasion, +and some of us had a hang-dog look; for Sam took it in such sincerity, and had +prepared one of the most beautiful speeches I ever heard him make. Pope’s +presentation, too, was beautifully done. He told Sam how his friends all loved +him, and that this pipe, purchased at so great an expense, was but a small +token of their affection. But Sam’s reply, which was supposed to be +impromptu, actually brought the tears to the eyes of some of us, and he was +interrupted every other minute with applause. I never felt so sorry for +anybody. +</p> + +<p> +“Still, we were bent on seeing the thing through. After Sam’s +speech was finished, he ordered expensive wines—champagne and sparkling +Moselle. Then we went out to do the town, and kept things going until morning +to drown our sorrow. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, next day, of course, he started in to color the pipe. It +wouldn’t color any more than a piece of chalk, which was about all it +was. Sam would smoke and smoke, and complain that it didn’t seem to taste +right, and that it wouldn’t color. Finally Denis said to him one day: +</p> + +<p> +“‘Oh, Sam, don’t you know that’s just a damned old +egg-shell, and that the boys bought it for a dollar and a half and presented +you with it for a joke?’ +</p> + +<p> +“Then Sam was furious, and we laid the whole thing on Dan de Quille. He +had a thunder-cloud on his face when he started up for the Local Room, where +Dan was. He went in and closed the door behind him, and locked it, and put the +key in his pocket—an awful sign. Dan was there alone, writing at his +table. +</p> + +<p> +“Sam said, ‘Dan, did you know, when you invited me to make that +speech, that those fellows were going to give me a bogus pipe?’ +</p> + +<p> +“There was no way for Dan to escape, and he confessed. Sam walked up and +down the floor, as if trying to decide which way to slay Dan. Finally he said: +</p> + +<p> +“‘Oh, Dan, to think that you, my dearest friend, who knew how +little money I had, and how hard I would work to prepare a speech that would +show my gratitude to my friends, should be the traitor, the Judas, to betray me +with a kiss! Dan, I never want to look on your face again. You knew I would +spend every dollar I had on those pirates when I couldn’t afford to spend +anything; and yet you let me do it; you aided and abetted their diabolical +plan, and you even got me to get up that damned speech to make the thing still +more ridiculous.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Of course Dan felt terribly, and tried to defend himself by saying that +they were really going to present him with a fine pipe—a genuine one, +this time. But Sam at first refused to be comforted; and when, a few days +later, I went in with the pipe and said, ‘Sam, here’s the pipe the +boys meant to give you all the time,’ and tried to apologize, he looked +around a little coldly, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“‘Is that another of those bogus old pipes?’ +</p> + +<p> +“He accepted it, though, and general peace was restored. One day, soon +after, he said to me: +</p> + +<p> +“‘Steve, do you know that I think that that bogus pipe smokes about +as well as the good one?’” +</p> + +<p> +Many years later (this was in his home at Hartford, and Joe Goodman was +present) Mark Twain one day came upon the old imitation pipe. +</p> + +<p> +“Joe,” he said, “that was a cruel, cruel trick the boys +played on me; but, for the feeling I had during the moment when they presented +me with that pipe and when Charlie Pope was making his speech and I was making +my reply to it—for the memory of that feeling, now, that pipe is more +precious to me than any pipe in the world!” +</p> + +<p> +Eighteen hundred and sixty-three was flood-tide on the Comstock. Every mine was +working full blast. Every mill was roaring and crunching, turning out streams +of silver and gold. A little while ago an old resident wrote: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +When I close my eyes I hear again the respirations of hoisting-engines and the +roar of stamps; I can see the “camels” after midnight packing in +salt; I can see again the jam of teams on C Street and hear the anathemas of +the drivers—all the mighty work that went on in order to lure the +treasures from the deep chambers of the great lode and to bring enlightenment +to the desert. +</p> + +<p> +Those were lively times. In the midst of one of his letters home Mark Twain +interrupts himself to say: “I have just heard five pistol-shots down the +street—as such things are in my line, I will go and see about it,” +and in a postscript added a few hours later: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +5 A.M. The pistol-shot did its 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. +</p> + +<p> +“Mark and I had our hands full,” says De Quille, “and no +grass grew under our feet.” In answer to some stray criticism of their +policy, they printed a sort of editorial manifesto: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Our duty is to keep the universe thoroughly posted concerning murders and +street fights, and balls, and theaters, and pack-trains, and churches, and +lectures, and school-houses, and city military affairs, and highway robberies, +and Bible societies, and hay-wagons, and the thousand other things which it is +in the province of local reporters to keep track of and magnify into undue +importance for the instruction of the readers of a great daily newspaper. +</p> + +<p> +It is easy to recognize Mark Twain’s hand in that compendium of labor, +which, in spite of its amusing apposition, was literally true, and so intended, +probably with no special thought of humor in its construction. It may be said, +as well here as anywhere, that it was not Mark Twain’s habit to strive +for humor. He saw facts at curious angles and phrased them accordingly. In +Virginia City he mingled with the turmoil of the Comstock and set down what he +saw and thought, in his native speech. The Comstock, ready to laugh, found +delight in his expression and discovered a vast humor in his most earnest +statements. +</p> + +<p> +On the other hand, there were times when the humor was intended and missed its +purpose. We have already recalled the instance of the “Petrified +Man” hoax, which was taken seriously; but the “Empire City +Massacre” burlesque found an acceptance that even its author considered +serious for a time. It is remembered to-day in Virginia City as the chief +incident of Mark Twain’s Comstock career. +</p> + +<p> +This literary bomb really had two objects, one of which was to punish the San +Francisco Bulletin for its persistent attacks on Washoe interests; the other, +though this was merely incidental, to direct an unpleasant attention to a +certain Carson saloon, the Magnolia, which was supposed to dispense whisky of +the “forty rod” brand—that is, a liquor warranted to kill at +that range. It was the Bulletin that was to be made especially. ridiculous. +This paper had been particularly disagreeable concerning the +“dividend-cooking” system of certain of the Comstock mines, at the +same time calling invidious attention to safer investments in California +stocks. Samuel Clemens, with “half a trunkful” of Comstock shares, +had cultivated a distaste for California things in general: In a letter of that +time he says: +</p> + +<p> +“How I hate everything that looks or tastes or smells like +California!” With his customary fickleness of soul, he was glorifying +California less than a year later, but for the moment he could see no good in +that Nazareth. To his great satisfaction, one of the leading California +corporations, the Spring Valley Water Company, “cooked” a dividend +of its own about this time, resulting in disaster to a number of guileless +investors who were on the wrong side of the subsequent crash. This afforded an +inviting opportunity for reprisal. With Goodman’s consent he planned for +the California papers, and the Bulletin in particular, a punishment which he +determined to make sufficiently severe. He believed the papers of that State +had forgotten his earlier offenses, and the result would show he was not +mistaken. +</p> + +<p> +There was a point on the Carson River, four miles from Carson City, known as +“Dutch Nick’s,” and also as Empire City, the two being +identical. There was no forest there of any sort nothing but sage-brush. In the +one cabin there lived a bachelor with no household. Everybody in Virginia and +Carson, of course, knew these things. +</p> + +<p> +Mark Twain now prepared a most lurid and graphic account of how one Phillip +Hopkins, living “just at the edge of the great pine forest which lies +between Empire City and ‘Dutch Nick’s’,” had suddenly +gone insane and murderously assaulted his entire family consisting of his wife +and their nine children, ranging in ages from one to nineteen years. The wife +had been slain outright, also seven of the children; the other two might +recover. The murder had been committed in the most brutal and ghastly fashion, +after which Hopkins had scalped his wife, leaped on a horse, cut his own throat +from ear to ear, and ridden four miles into Carson City, dropping dead at last +in front of the Magnolia saloon, the red-haired scalp of his wife still +clutched in his gory hand. The article further stated that the cause of Mr. +Hopkins’s insanity was pecuniary loss, he having withdrawn his savings +from safe Comstock investments and, through the advice of a relative, one of +the editors of the San Francisco Bulletin, invested them in the Spring Valley +Water Company. This absurd tale with startling head-lines appeared in the +Enterprise, in its issue of October 28, 1863. +</p> + +<p> +It was not expected that any one in Virginia City or Carson City would for a +moment take any stock in the wild invention, yet so graphic was it that nine +out of ten on first reading never stopped to consider the entire impossibility +of the locality and circumstance. Even when these things were pointed out many +readers at first refused to confess themselves sold. As for the Bulletin and +other California papers, they were taken-in completely, and were furious. Many +of them wrote and demanded the immediate discharge of its author, announcing +that they would never copy another line from the Enterprise, or exchange with +it, or have further relations with a paper that had Mark Twain on its staff. +Citizens were mad, too, and cut off their subscriptions. The joker was in +despair. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Joe,” he said, “I have ruined your business, and the +only reparation I can make is to resign. You can never recover from this blow +while I am on the paper.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense,” replied Goodman. “We can furnish the people with +news, but we can’t supply them with sense. Only time can do that. The +flurry will pass. You just go ahead. We’ll win out in the long +run.” +</p> + +<p> +But the offender was in torture; he could not sleep. “Dan, Dan,” he +said, “I am being burned alive on both sides of the mountains.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mark,” said Dan. “It will all blow over. This item of yours +will be remembered and talked about when the rest of your Enterprise work is +forgotten.” +</p> + +<p> +Both Goodman and De Quille were right. In a month papers and people had +forgotten their humiliation and laughed. “The Dutch Nick Massacre” +gave to its perpetrator and to the Enterprise an added vogue.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* For full text of the “Dutch Nick” hoax see Appendix C, at the end +of last volume: also, for an anecdote concerning a reporting excursion made by +Alf. Doten and Mark Twain. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLII<br/> +REPORTORIAL DAYS.</h2> + +<p> +Reference has already been made to the fashion among Virginia City papers of +permitting reporters to use the editorial columns for ridicule of one another. +This custom was especially in vogue during the period when Dan de Quille and +Mark Twain and The Unreliable were the shining journalistic lights of the +Comstock. Scarcely a week went by that some apparently venomous squib or fling +or long burlesque assault did not appear either in the Union or the Enterprise, +with one of those jokers as its author and another as its target. In one of his +“home” letters of that year Mark Twain says: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I have just finished writing up my report for the morning paper and giving The +Unreliable a column of advice about how to conduct himself in church. +</p> + +<p> +The advice was such as to call for a reprisal, but it apparently made no +difference in personal relations, for a few weeks later he is with The +Unreliable in San Francisco, seeing life in the metropolis, fairly swimming in +its delights, unable to resist reporting them to his mother. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +We fag ourselves completely out every day and go to sleep without rocking every +night. When I go down Montgomery Street shaking hands with Tom, Dick, and +Harry, it is just like being on Main Street in Hannibal and meeting the old +familiar faces. I do hate to go back to Washoe. We take trips across the bay to +Oakland, and down to San Leandro and Alameda, and we go out to the Willows and +Hayes Park and Fort Point, and up to Benicia; and yesterday we were invited out +on a yachting excursion, and had a sail in the fastest yacht on the Pacific +coast. Rice says: “Oh no—we are not having any fun, Mark —oh +no—I reckon it’s somebody else—it’s probably the +gentleman in the wagon” (popular slang phrase), and when I invite Rice to +the Lick House to dinner the proprietor sends us champagne and claret, and then +we do put on the most disgusting airs. The Unreliable says our caliber is too +light—we can’t stand it to be noticed. +</p> + +<p> +Three days later he adds that he is going sorrowfully “to the snows and +the deserts of Washoe,” but that he has “lived like a lord to make +up for two years of privation.” +</p> + +<p> +Twenty dollars is inclosed in each of these letters, probably as a bribe to +Jane Clemens to be lenient with his prodigalities, which in his youthful love +of display he could not bring himself to conceal. But apparently the salve was +futile, for in another letter, a month later, he complains that his mother is +“slinging insinuations” at him again, such as “where did you +get that money” and “the company I kept in San Francisco.” He +explains: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Why, I sold Wild Cat mining ground that was given me, and my credit was always +good at the bank for $2,000 or $3,000, and I never gamble in any shape or +manner, and never drink anything stronger than claret and lager beer, which +conduct is regarded as miraculously temperate in this place. As for company, I +went in the very best company to be found in San Francisco. I always move in +the best society in Virginia and have a reputation to preserve. +</p> + +<p> +He closes by assuring her that he will be more careful in future and that she +need never fear but that he will keep her expenses paid. Then he cannot refrain +from adding one more item of his lavish life: +</p> + +<p> +“Put in my washing, and it costs me one hundred dollars a month to +live.” +</p> + +<p> +De Quille had not missed the opportunity of his comrade’s absence to +payoff some old scores. At the end of the editorial column of the Enterprise on +the day following his departure he denounced the absent one and his +“protege,” The Unreliable, after the intemperate fashion of the +day. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +It is to be regretted that such scrubs are ever permitted to visit the bay, as +the inevitable effect will be to destroy that exalted opinion of the manners +and morality of our people which was inspired by the conduct of our senior +editor—[which is to say, Dan himself]—. +</p> + +<p> +The diatribe closed with a really graceful poem, and the whole was no doubt +highly regarded by the Enterprise readers. +</p> + +<p> +What revenge Mark Twain took on his return has not been recorded, but it was +probably prompt and adequate; or he may have left it to The Unreliable. It was +clearly a mistake, however, to leave his own local work in the hands of that +properly named person a little later. Clemens was laid up with a cold, and Rice +assured him on his sacred honor that he would attend faithfully to the +Enterprise locals, along with his own Union items. He did this, but he had been +nursing old injuries too long. What was Mark Twain’s amazement on looking +over the Enterprise next morning to find under the heading +“Apologetic” a statement over his own nom de plume, purporting to +be an apology for all the sins of ridicule to the various injured ones. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +To Mayor Arick, Hon. Wm. Stewart, Marshal Perry, Hon. J. B. Winters, Mr. Olin, +and Samuel Wetherill, besides a host of others whom we have ridiculed from +behind the shelter of our reportorial position, we say to these gentlemen we +acknowledge our faults, and, in all weakness and humility upon our bended +marrow bones, we ask their forgiveness, promising that in future we will give +them no cause for anything but the best of feeling toward us. To “Young +Wilson” and The Unreliable (as we have wickedly termed them), we feel +that no apology we can make begins to atone for the many insults we have given +them. Toward these gentlemen we have been as mean as a man could be—and +we have always prided ourselves on this base quality. We feel that we are the +least of all humanity, as it were. We will now go in sack-cloth and ashes for +the next forty days. +</p> + +<p> +This in his own paper over his own signature was a body blow; but it had the +effect of curing his cold. He was back in the office forthwith, and in the next +morning’s issue denounced his betrayer. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +We are to blame for giving The Unreliable an opportunity to misrepresent us, +and therefore refrain from repining to any great extent at the result. We +simply claim the right to deny the truth of every statement made by him in +yesterday’s paper, to annul all apologies he coined as coming from us, +and to hold him up to public commiseration as a reptile endowed with no more +intellect, no more cultivation, no more Christian principle than animates and +adorns the sportive jackass-rabbit of the Sierras. We have done. +</p> + +<p> +These were the things that enlivened Comstock journalism. Once in a boxing bout +Mark Twain got a blow on the nose which caused it to swell to an unusual size +and shape. He went out of town for a few days, during which De Quille published +an extravagant account of his misfortune, describing the nose and dwelling on +the absurdity of Mark Twain’s ever supposing himself to be a boxer. +</p> + +<p> +De Quille scored heavily with this item but his own doom was written. Soon +afterward he was out riding and was thrown from his horse and bruised +considerably. +</p> + +<p> +This was Mark’s opportunity. He gave an account of Dan’s disaster; +then, commenting, he said: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +The idea of a plebeian like Dan supposing he could ever ride a horse! He! why, +even the cats and the chickens laughed when they saw him go by. Of course, he +would be thrown off. Of course, any well-bred horse wouldn’t let a +common, underbred person like Dan stay on his back! When they gathered him up +he was just a bag of scraps, but they put him together, and you’ll find +him at his old place in the Enterprise office next week, still laboring under +the delusion that he’s a newspaper man. +</p> + +<p> +The author of ‘Roughing It’ tells of a literary periodical called +the Occidental, started in Virginia City by a Mr. F. This was the +silver-tongued Tom Fitch, of the Union, an able speaker and writer, vastly +popular on the Coast. Fitch came to Clemens one day and said he was thinking of +starting such a periodical and asked him what he thought of the venture. +Clemens said: +</p> + +<p> +“You would succeed if any one could, but start a flower-garden on the +desert of Sahara; set up hoisting-works on Mount Vesuvius for mining sulphur; +start a literary paper in Virginia City; h—l!” +</p> + +<p> +Which was a correct estimate of the situation, and the paper perished with the +third issue. It was of no consequence except that it contained what was +probably the first attempt at that modern literary abortion, the composite +novel. Also, it died too soon to publish Mark Twain’s first verses of any +pretension, though still of modest merit—“The Aged Pilot +Man”—which were thereby saved for ‘Roughing It.’ +</p> + +<p> +Visiting Virginia now, it seems curious that any of these things could have +happened there. The Comstock has become little more than a memory; Virginia and +Gold Hill are so quiet, so voiceless, as to constitute scarcely an echo of the +past. The International Hotel, that once so splendid edifice, through whose +portals the tide of opulent life then ebbed and flowed, is all but deserted +now. One may wander at will through its dingy corridors and among its faded +fripperies, seeking in vain for attendance or hospitality, the lavish welcome +of a vanished day. Those things were not lacking once, and the stream of wealth +tossed up and down the stair and billowed up C Street, an ebullient tide of +metals and men from which millionaires would be struck out, and individuals +known in national affairs. William M. Stewart who would one day become a United +States Senator, was there, an unnoticed unit; and John Mackay and James G. +Fair, one a senator by and by, and both millionaires, but poor enough +then—Fair with a pick on his shoulder and Mackay, too, at first, though +he presently became a mine superintendent. Once in those days Mark Twain +banteringly offered to trade businesses with Mackay. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Neither of those men could dream that within ten years their names would be +international property; that in due course Nevada would propose statues to +their memory. +</p> + +<p> +Such things came out of the Comstock; such things spring out of every turbulent +frontier. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLIII<br/> +ARTEMUS WARD</h2> + +<p> +Madame Caprell’s warning concerning Mark Twain’s health at +twenty-eight would seem to have been justified. High-strung and neurotic, the +strain of newspaper work and the tumult of the Comstock had told on him. As in +later life, he was subject to bronchial colds, and more than once that year he +found it necessary to drop all work and rest for a time at Steamboat Springs, a +place near Virginia City, where there were boiling springs and steaming +fissures in the mountain-side, and a comfortable hotel. He contributed from +there sketches somewhat more literary in form than any of his previous work. +“Curing a Cold” is a more or less exaggerated account of his ills.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Included in Sketches New and Old. “Information for the Million,” +and “Advice to Good Little Girls,” included in the “Jumping +Frog” Collection, 1867, but omitted from the Sketches, are also believed +to belong to this period. +</p> + +<p> +A portion of a playful letter to his mother, written from the springs, still +exists. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +You have given my vanity a deadly thrust. Behold, I am prone to boast of having +the widest reputation as a local editor of any man on the Pacific coast, and +you gravely come forward and tell me “if I work hard and attend closely +to my business, I may aspire to a place on a big San Francisco daily some +day.” There’s a comment on human vanity for you! Why, blast it, I +was under the impression that I could get such a situation as that any time I +asked for it. But I don’t want it. No paper in the United States can +afford to pay me what my place on the Enterprise is worth. If I were not +naturally a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay me +$20,000 a year. But I don’t suppose I shall ever be any account. I lead +an easy life, though, and I don’t care a cent whether school keeps or +not. Everybody knows me, and I fare like a prince wherever I go, be it on this +side of the mountain or the other. And I am proud to say I am the most +conceited ass in the Territory.<br/> + You think that picture looks old? Well, I can’t help it—in +reality I’m not as old as I was when I was eighteen. +</p> + +<p> +Which was a true statement, so far as his general attitude was concerned. At +eighteen, in New York and Philadelphia, his letters had been grave, reflective, +advisory. Now they were mostly banter and froth, lightly indifferent to the +serious side of things, though perhaps only pretendedly so, for the picture did +look old. From the shock and circumstance of his brother’s death +he—had never recovered. He was barely twenty-eight. From the picture he +might have been a man of forty. +</p> + +<p> +It was that year that Artemus Ward (Charles F. Browne) came to Virginia City. +There was a fine opera-house in Virginia, and any attraction that billed San +Francisco did not fail to play to the Comstock. Ward intended staying only a +few days to deliver his lectures, but the whirl of the Comstock caught him like +a maelstrom, and he remained three weeks. +</p> + +<p> +He made the Enterprise office his headquarters, and fairly reveled in the +company he found there. He and Mark Twain became boon companions. Each +recognized in the other a kindred spirit. With Goodman, De Quille, and +McCarthy, also E. E. Hingston—Ward’s agent, a companionable +fellow—they usually dined at Chaumond’s, Virginia’s +high-toned French restaurant. +</p> + +<p> +Those were three memorable weeks in Mark Twain’s life. Artemus Ward was +in the height of his fame, and he encouraged his new-found brother-humorist and +prophesied great things of him. Clemens, on his side, measured himself by this +man who had achieved fame, and perhaps with good reason concluded that +Ward’s estimate was correct, that he too could win fame and honor, once +he got a start. If he had lacked ambition before Ward’s visit, the +latter’s unqualified approval inspired him with that priceless article of +equipment. He put his soul into entertaining the visitor during those three +weeks; and it was apparent to their associates that he was at least +Ward’s equal in mental stature and originality. Goodman and the others +began to realize that for Mark Twain the rewards of the future were to be +measured only by his resolution and ability to hold out. On Christmas Eve +Artemus lectured in Silver City and afterward came to the Enterprise office to +give the boys a farewell dinner. The Enterprise always published a Christmas +carol, and Goodman sat at his desk writing it. He was just finishing as Ward +came in: +</p> + +<p> +“Slave, slave,” said Artemus. “Come out and let me banish +care from you.” +</p> + +<p> +They got the boys and all went over to Chaumond’s, where Ward commanded +Goodman to order the dinner. When the cocktails came on, Artemus lifted his +glass and said: +</p> + +<p> +“I give you Upper Canada.” +</p> + +<p> +The company rose, drank the toast in serious silence; then Goodman said: +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, Artemus, it’s all right, but why did you give us Upper +Canada?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I don’t want it myself,” said Ward, gravely. +</p> + +<p> +Then began a rising tide of humor that could hardly be matched in the world +to-day. Mark Twain had awakened to a fuller power; Artemus Ward was in his +prime. They were giants of a race that became extinct when Mark Twain died. The +youth, the wine, the whirl of lights and life, the tumult of the shouting +street-it was as if an electric stream of inspiration poured into those two +human dynamos and sent them into a dazzling, scintillating whirl. All +gone—as evanescent, as forgotten, as the lightnings of that vanished +time; out of that vast feasting and entertainment only a trifling morsel +remains. Ward now and then asked Goodman why he did not join in the banter. +Goodman said: +</p> + +<p> +“I’m preparing a joke, Artemus, but I’m keeping it for the +present.” +</p> + +<p> +It was near daybreak when Ward at last called for the bill. It was two hundred +and thirty-seven dollars. +</p> + +<p> +“What”’ exclaimed Artemus. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s my joke.” said Goodman. +</p> + +<p> +“But I was only exclaiming because it was not twice as much,” +returned Ward. +</p> + +<p> +He paid it amid laughter, and they went out into the early morning air. It was +fresh and fine outside, not yet light enough to see clearly. Artemus threw his +face up to the sky and said: +</p> + +<p> +“I feel glorious. I feel like walking on the roofs.” +</p> + +<p> +Virginia was built on the steep hillside, and the eaves of some of the houses +almost touched the ground behind them. +</p> + +<p> +“There is your chance, Artemus,” Goodman said, pointing to a row of +these houses all about of a height. +</p> + +<p> +Artemus grabbed Mark Twain, and they stepped out upon the long string of roofs +and walked their full length, arm in arm. Presently the others noticed a lonely +policeman cocking his revolver and getting ready to aim in their direction. +Goodman called to him: +</p> + +<p> +“Wait a minute. What are you going to do?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going to shoot those burglars,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t for your life. Those are not burglars. That’s Mark +Twain and Artemus Ward.” +</p> + +<p> +The roof-walkers returned, and the party went down the street to a corner +across from the International Hotel. A saloon was there with a barrel lying in +front, used, perhaps for a sort of sign. Artemus climbed astride the barrel, +and somebody brought a beer-glass and put it in his hand. Virginia City looks +out over the Eastward Desert. Morning was just breaking upon the distant +range-the scene as beautiful as when the sunrise beams across the plain of +Memnon. The city was not yet awake. The only living creatures in sight were the +group of belated diners, with Artemus Ward, as King Gambrinus, pouring a +libation to the sunrise. +</p> + +<p> +That was the beginning of a week of glory. The farewell dinner became a series. +At the close of one convivial session Artemus went to a concert-hall, the +“Melodeon,” blacked his face, and delivered a speech. He got away +from Virginia about the close of the year. +</p> + +<p> +A day or two later he wrote from Austin, Nevada, to his new-found comrade as +“My dearest Love,” recalling the happiness of his stay: +</p> + +<p> +“I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, as +all others must or rather cannot be, as it were.” +</p> + +<p> +Then reflectively he adds: +</p> + +<p> +“Some of the finest intellects in the world have been blunted by +liquor.” +</p> + +<p> +Rare Artemus Ward and rare Mark Twain! If there lies somewhere a place of +meeting and remembrance, they have not failed to recall there those closing +days of ’63. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLIV<br/> +GOVERNOR OF THE “THIRD HOUSE”</h2> + +<p> +With Artemus Ward’s encouragement, Clemens began to think of extending +his audience eastward. The New York Sunday Mercury published literary matter. +Ward had urged him to try this market, and promised to write a special letter +to the editors, introducing Mark Twain and his work. Clemens prepared a sketch +of the Comstock variety, scarcely refined in character and full of personal +allusion, a humor not suited to the present-day reader. Its general subject was +children; it contained some absurd remedies, supposedly sent to his old pilot +friend Zeb Leavenworth, and was written as much for a joke on that good-natured +soul as for profit or reputation. +</p> + +<p> +“I wrote it especially for Beck Jolly’s use,” the author +declares, in a letter to his mother, “so he could pester Zeb with +it.” +</p> + +<p> +We cannot know to-day whether Zeb was pestered or not. A faded clipping is all +that remains of the incident. As literature the article, properly enough, is +lost to the world at large. It is only worth remembering as his metropolitan +beginning. Yet he must have thought rather highly of it (his estimation of his +own work was always unsafe), for in the letter above quoted he adds: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +I cannot write regularly for the Mercury, of course, I sha’n’t have +time. But sometimes I throw off a pearl (there is no self-conceit about that, I +beg you to observe) which ought for the eternal welfare of my race to have a +more extensive circulation than is afforded by a local daily paper. +</p> + +<p> +And if Fitzhugh Ludlow (author of the ‘Hasheesh Eater’) comes your +way, treat him well. He published a high encomium upon Mark Twain (the same +being eminently just and truthful, I beseech you to believe) in a San Francisco +paper. Artemus Ward said that when my gorgeous talents were publicly +acknowledged by such high authority I ought to appreciate them myself, leave +sage-brush obscurity, and journey to New York with him, as he wanted me to do. +But I preferred not to burst upon the New York public too suddenly and +brilliantly, so I concluded to remain here. +</p> + +<p> +He was in Carson City when this was written, preparing for the opening of the +next legislature. He was beyond question now the most conspicuous figure of the +capital; also the most wholesomely respected, for his influence had become very +large. It was said that he could control more votes than any legislative +member, and with his friends, Simmons and Clagget, could pass or defeat any +bill offered. The Enterprise was a powerful organ—to be courted and +dreaded—and Mark Twain had become its chief tribune. That he was +fearless, merciless, and incorruptible, without doubt had a salutary influence +on that legislative session. He reveled in his power; but it is not recorded +that he ever abused it. He got a bill passed, largely increasing Orion’s +official fees, but this was a crying need and was so recognized. He made no +secret promises, none at all that he did not intend to fulfill. +“Sam’s word was as fixed as fate,” Orion records, and it may +be added that he was morally as fearless. +</p> + +<p> +The two Houses of the last territorial legislature of Nevada assembled January +12, 1864.* A few days later a “Third House” was organized—an +institution quite in keeping with the happy atmosphere of that day and +locality, for it was a burlesque organization, and Mark Twain was selected as +its “Governor.” +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Nevada became a State October 31, 1864. +</p> + +<p> +The new House prepared to make a public occasion of this first session, and its +Governor was required to furnish a message. Then it was decided to make it a +church benefit. The letters exchanged concerning this proposition still exist; +they explain themselves: +</p> + +<p class="right"> +C<small>ARSON</small> C<small>ITY</small>, January 23, 1864. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +G<small>OV</small>. M<small>ARK</small> T<small>WAIN</small>, Understanding +from certain members of the Third House of the territorial Legislature that +that body will have effected a permanent organization within a day or two, and +be ready for the reception of your Third Annual Message,* we desire to ask +your permission, and that of the Third House, to turn the affair to the benefit +of the Church by charging toll-roads, franchises, and other persons a dollar +apiece for the privilege of listening to your communication. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +S. P<small>IXLEY</small>,<br/> +G. A. S<small>EARS</small>,<br/> +Trustees. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* There had been no former message. This was regarded as a great joke. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +C<small>ARSON</small> C<small>ITY</small>, January 23, 1864. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +G<small>ENTLEMEN</small>,—Certainly. If the public can find anything in a +grave state paper worth paying a dollar for, I am willing they should pay that +amount, or any other; and although I am not a very dusty Christian myself, I +take an absorbing interest in religious affairs, and would willingly inflict my +annual message upon the Church itself if it might derive benefit thereby. You +can charge what you please; I promise the public no amusement, but I do promise +a reasonable amount of instruction. I am responsible to the Third House only, +and I hope to be permitted to make it exceedingly warm for that body, without +caring whether the sympathies of the public and the Church be enlisted in their +favor, and against myself, or not. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Respectfully,<br/> +M<small>ARK</small> T<small>WAIN</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Mark Twain’s reply is closely related to his later style in phrase and +thought. It might have been written by him at almost any subsequent period. +Perhaps his association with Artemus Ward had awakened a new perception of the +humorous idea—a humor of repression, of understatement. He forgot this +often enough, then and afterward, and gave his riotous fancy free rein; but on +the whole the simpler, less florid form seemingly began to attract him more and +more. +</p> + +<p> +His address as Governor of the Third House has not been preserved, but those +who attended always afterward referred to it as the “greatest effort of +his life.” Perhaps for that audience and that time this verdict was +justified. +</p> + +<p> +It was his first great public opportunity. On the stage about him sat the +membership of the Third House; the building itself was packed, the aisles full. +He knew he could let himself go in burlesque and satire, and he did. He was +unsparing in his ridicule of the Governor, the officials in general, the +legislative members, and of individual citizens. From the beginning to the end +of his address the audience was in a storm of laughter and applause. With the +exception of the dinner speech made to the printers in Keokuk, it was his first +public utterance —the beginning of a lifelong series of triumphs. +</p> + +<p> +Only one thing marred his success. Little Carrie Pixley, daughter of one of the +“trustees,” had promised to be present and sit in a box next the +stage. It was like him to be fond of the child, and he had promised to send a +carriage for her. Often during his address he glanced toward the box; but it +remained empty. When the affair was ended, he drove home with her father to +inquire the reason. They found the little girl, in all her finery, weeping on +the bed. Then he remembered he had forgotten to send the carriage; and that was +like him, too. +</p> + +<p> +For his Third House address Judge A. W. (Sandy) Baldwin and Theodore Winters +presented him with a gold watch inscribed to “Governor Mark Twain.” +He was more in demand now than ever; no social occasion was regarded as +complete without him. His doings were related daily and his sayings repeated on +the streets. Most of these things have passed away now, but a few are still +recalled with smiles. Once, when conundrums were being asked at a party, he was +urged to make one. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “why am I like the Pacific Ocean?” +</p> + +<p> +Several guesses were made, but none satisfied him. Finally all gave it up. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell us, Mark, why are you like the Pacific Ocean?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” he drawled. “I was just asking for +information.” +</p> + +<p> +At another time, when a young man insisted on singing a song of eternal length, +the chorus of which was, “I’m going home, I’m going home, +I’m going home tomorrow,” Mark Twain put his head in the window and +said, pleadingly: +</p> + +<p> +“For God’s sake go to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +But he was also fond of quieter society. Sometimes, after the turmoil of a +legislative morning, he would drop in to Miss Keziah Clapp’s school and +listen to the exercises, or would call on Colonel Curry—“old Curry, +old Abe Curry”—and if the colonel happened to be away, he would +talk with Mrs. Curry, a motherly soul (still alive at ninety-three, in 1910), +and tell her of his Hannibal boyhood or his river and his mining adventures, +and keep her laughing until the tears ran. +</p> + +<p> +He was a great pedestrian in those days. Sometimes he walked from Virginia to +Carson, stopping at Colonel Curry’s as he came in for rest and +refreshment. +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Curry,” he said once, “I have seen tireder men than I +am, and lazier men, but they were dead men.” He liked the home feeling +there —the peace and motherly interest. Deep down, he was lonely and +homesick; he was always so away from his own kindred. +</p> + +<p> +Clemens returned now to Virginia City, and, like all other men who ever met +her, became briefly fascinated by the charms of Adah Isaacs Menken, who was +playing Mazeppa at the Virginia Opera House. All men—kings, poets, +priests, prize-fighters—fell under Menken’s spell. Dan de Quille +and Mark Twain entered into a daily contest as to who could lavish the most +fervid praise on her in the Enterprise. The latter carried her his literary +work to criticize. He confesses this in one of his home letters, perhaps with a +sort of pride. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +I took it over to show to Miss Menken the actress, Orpheus C. Ken’s wife. +She is a literary cuss herself. +</p> + +<p> +She has a beautiful white hand, but her handwriting is infamous; she writes +fast and her chirography is of the door-plate order—her letters are +immense. I gave her a conundrum, thus: +</p> + +<p> +“My dear madam, why ought your hand to retain its present grace and +beauty always? Because you fool away devilish little of it on your +manuscript.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +But Menken was gone presently, and when he saw her again, somewhat later, in +San Francisco, his “madness” would have seemed to have been +allayed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLV<br/> +A COMSTOCK DUEL</h2> + +<p> +The success—such as it was—of his occasional contributions to the +New York Sunday Mercury stirred Mark Twain’s ambition for a wider field +of labor. Circumstance, always ready to meet his wishes, offered assistance, +though in an unexpected form. +</p> + +<p> +Goodman, temporarily absent, had left Clemens in editorial charge. As in that +earlier day, when Orion had visited Tennessee and returned to find his paper in +a hot personal warfare with certain injured citizens, so the Enterprise, under +the same management, had stirred up trouble. It was just at the time of the +“Flour Sack Sanitary Fund,” the story of which is related at length +in ‘Roughing It’. In the general hilarity of this occasion, certain +Enterprise paragraphs of criticism or ridicule had incurred the displeasure of +various individuals whose cause naturally enough had been espoused by a rival +paper, the Chronicle. Very soon the original grievance, whatever it was, was +lost sight of in the fireworks and vitriol-throwing of personal recrimination +between Mark Twain and the Chronicle editor, then a Mr. Laird. +</p> + +<p> +A point had been reached at length when only a call for bloodshed—a +challenge—could satisfy either the staff or the readers of the two +papers. Men were killed every week for milder things than the editors had +spoken each of the other. Joe Goodman himself, not so long before, had fought a +duel with a Union editor—Tom Fitch—and shot him in the leg, so +making of him a friend, and a lame man, for life. In Joe’s absence the +prestige of the paper must be maintained. +</p> + +<p> +Mark Twain himself has told in burlesque the story of his duel, keeping +somewhat nearer to the fact than was his custom in such writing, as may be seen +by comparing it with the account of his abettor and second—of course, +Steve Gillis. The account is from Mr. Gillis’s own hand: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +When Joe went away, he left Sam in editorial charge of the paper. That was a +dangerous thing to do. Nobody could ever tell what Sam was going to write. +Something he said stirred up Mr. Laird, of the Chronicle, who wrote a reply of +a very severe kind. He said some things that we told Mark could only be wiped +out with blood. Those were the days when almost every man in Virginia City had +fought with pistols either impromptu or premeditated duels. I had been in +several, but then mine didn’t count. Most of them were of the impromptu +kind. Mark hadn’t had any yet, and we thought it about time that his +baptism took place. +</p> + +<p> +He was not eager for it; he was averse to violence, but we finally prevailed +upon him to send Laird a challenge, and when Laird did not send a reply at once +we insisted on Mark sending him another challenge, by which time he had made +himself believe that he really wanted to fight, as much as we wanted him to do. +Laird concluded to fight, at last. I helped Mark get up some of the letters, +and a man who would not fight after such letters did not belong in Virginia +City—in those days. +</p> + +<p> +Laird’s acceptance of Mark’s challenge came along about midnight, I +think, after the papers had gone to press. The meeting was to take place next +morning at sunrise. +</p> + +<p> +Of course I was selected as Mark’s second, and at daybreak I had him up +and out for some lessons in pistol practice before meeting Laird. I +didn’t have to wake him. He had not been asleep. We had been talking +since midnight over the duel that was coming. I had been telling him of the +different duels in which I had taken part, either as principal or second, and +how many men I had helped to kill and bury, and how it was a good plan to make +a will, even if one had not much to leave. It always looked well, I told him, +and seemed to be a proper thing to do before going into a duel. So Mark made a +will with a sort of gloomy satisfaction, and as soon as it was light enough to +see, we went out to a little ravine near the meeting-place, and I set up a +board for him to shoot at. He would step out, raise that big pistol, and when I +would count three he would shut his eyes and pull the trigger. Of course he +didn’t hit anything; he did not come anywhere near hitting anything. Just +then we heard somebody shooting over in the next ravine. Sam said: +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that, Steve?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” I said, “that’s Laud. His seconds are practising +him over there.” +</p> + +<p> +It didn’t make my principal any more cheerful to hear that pistol go off +every few seconds over there. Just then I saw a little mud-hen light on some +sage-brush about thirty yards away. +</p> + +<p> +“Mark,” I said, “let me have that pistol. I’ll show you +how to shoot.” +</p> + +<p> +He handed it to me, and I let go at the bird and shot its head off, clean. +About that time Laird and his second came over the ridge to meet us. I saw them +coming and handed Mark back the pistol. We were looking at the bird when they +came up. +</p> + +<p> +“Who did that?” asked Laird’s second. +</p> + +<p> +“Sam,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“How far off was it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, about thirty yards.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can he do it again?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” I said; “every time. He could do it twice that +far.” +</p> + +<p> +Laud’s second turned to his principal. +</p> + +<p> +“Laird,” he said, “you don’t want to fight that man. +It’s just like suicide. You’d better settle this thing, now.” +</p> + +<p> +So there was a settlement. Laird took back all he had said; Mark said he really +had nothing against Laird—the discussion had been purely journalistic and +did not need to be settled in blood. He said that both he and Laird were +probably the victims of their friends. I remember one of the things Laird said +when his second told him he had better not fight. +</p> + +<p> +“Fight! H—l, no! I am not going to be murdered by that d—d +desperado.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam had sent another challenge to a man named Cutler, who had been somehow +mixed up with the muss and had written Sam an insulting letter; but Cutler was +out of town at the time, and before he got back we had received word from Jerry +Driscoll, foreman of the Grand jury, that the law just passed, making a duel a +penitentiary offense for both principal and second, was to be strictly +enforced, and unless we got out of town in a limited number of hours we would +be the first examples to test the new law. +</p> + +<p> +We concluded to go, and when the stage left next morning for San Francisco we +were on the outside seat. Joe Goodman had returned by this time and agreed to +accompany us as far as Henness Pass. We were all in good spirits and glad we +were alive, so Joe did not stop when he got to Henness Pass, but kept on. Now +and then he would say, “Well, I had better be going back pretty +soon,” but he didn’t go, and in the end he did not go back at all, +but went with us clear to San Francisco, and we had a royal good time all the +way. I never knew any series of duels to close so happily. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +So ended Mark Twain’s career on the Comstock. He had come to it a weary +pilgrim, discouraged and unknown; he was leaving it with a new name and +fame—elate, triumphant, even if a fugitive. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLVI<br/> +GETTING SETTLED IN SAN FRANCISCO</h2> + +<p> +This was near the end of May, 1864. The intention of both Gillis and Clemens +was to return to the States; but once in San Francisco both presently accepted +places, Clemens as reporter and Gillis as compositor, on the ‘Morning +Call’. +</p> + +<p> +From ‘Roughing It’ the reader gathers that Mark Twain now entered +into a life of butterfly idleness on the strength of prospective riches to be +derived from the “half a trunkful of mining stocks,” and that +presently, when the mining bubble exploded, he was a pauper. But a good many +liberties have been taken with the history of this period. Undoubtedly he +expected opulent returns from his mining stocks, and was disappointed, +particularly in an investment in Hale and Norcross shares, held too long for +the large profit which could have been made by selling at the proper time. +</p> + +<p> +The fact is, he spent not more than a few days—a fortnight at +most—in “butterfly idleness,” at the Lick House before he was +hard at work on the ‘Call’, living modestly with Steve Gillis in +the quietest place they could find, never quiet enough, but as far as possible +from dogs and cats and chickens and pianos, which seemed determined to make the +mornings hideous, when a weary night reporter and compositor wanted to rest. +They went out socially, on occasion, arrayed in considerable elegance; but +their recreations were more likely to consist of private midnight orgies, after +the paper had gone to press—mild dissipations in whatever they could find +to eat at that hour, with a few glasses of beer, and perhaps a game of +billiards or pool in some all-night resort. A printer by the name of +Ward—“Little Ward,”* they called him—often went with +them for these refreshments. Ward and Gillis were both bantam game-cocks, and +sometimes would stir up trouble for the very joy of combat. Clemens never cared +for that sort of thing and discouraged it, but Ward and Gillis were for war. +“They never assisted each other. If one had offered to assist the other +against some overgrown person, it would have been an affront, and a battle +would have followed between that pair of little friends.”** Steve Gillis +in particular, was fond of incidental encounters, a characteristic which would +prove an important factor somewhat later in shaping Mark Twain’s career. +Of course, the more strenuous nights were not frequent. Their home-going was +usually tame enough and they were glad enough to get there. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* L. P. Ward; well known as an athlete in San Francisco. He lost his mind and +fatally shot himself in 1903. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +** S. L. C., 1906. +</p> + +<p> +Clemens, however, was never quite ready for sleep. Then, as ever, he would prop +himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose himself in English or French +history until sleep conquered. His room-mate did not approve of this habit; it +interfered with his own rest, and with his fiendish tendency to mischief he +found reprisal in his own fashion. Knowing his companion’s highly +organized nervous system he devised means of torture which would induce him to +put out the light. Once he tied a nail to a string; an arrangement which he +kept on the floor behind the bed. Pretending to be asleep, he would hold the +end of the string, and lift it gently up and down, making a slight ticking +sound on the floor, maddening to a nervous man. Clemens would listen a moment +and say: +</p> + +<p> +“What in the nation is that noise” +</p> + +<p> +Gillis’s pretended sleep and the ticking would continue. +</p> + +<p> +Clemens would sit up in bed, fling aside his book, and swear violently. +</p> + +<p> +“Steve, what is that d—d noise?” he would say. +</p> + +<p> +Steve would pretend to rouse sleepily. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter, Sam? What noise? Oh, I guess that is one of +those death-ticks; they don’t like the light. Maybe it will stop in a +minute.” +</p> + +<p> +It usually did stop about that time, and the reading would be apt to continue. +But no sooner was there stillness than it began again—tick, tick, tick. +With a wild explosion of blasphemy, the book would go across the floor and the +light would disappear. Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, he would dress +and walk out in the street for an hour, while the cruel Steve slept like the +criminal that he was. +</p> + +<p> +At last, one night, he overdid the thing and was caught. His tortured room-mate +at first reviled him, then threatened to kill him, finally put him to shame. It +was curious, but they always loved each other, those two; there was never +anything resembling an estrangement, and to his last days Mark Twain never +could speak of Steve Gillis without tenderness. +</p> + +<p> +They moved a great many times in San Francisco. Their most satisfactory +residence was on a bluff on California Street. Their windows looked down on a +lot of Chinese houses—“tin-can houses,” they were +called—small wooden shanties covered with beaten-out cans. Steve and Mark +would look down on these houses, waiting until all the Chinamen were inside; +then one of them would grab an empty beer-bottle, throw it down on those tin +can roofs, and dodge behind the blinds. The Chinamen would swarm out and look +up at the row of houses on the edge of the bluff, shake their fists, and pour +out Chinese vituperation. By and by, when they had retired and everything was +quiet again, their tormentors would throw another bottle. This was their Sunday +amusement. +</p> + +<p> +At a place on Minna Street they lived with a private family. At first Clemens +was delighted. +</p> + +<p> +“Just look at it, Steve,” he said. “What a nice, quiet place. +Not a thing to disturb us.” +</p> + +<p> +But next morning a dog began to howl. Gillis woke this time, to find his +room-mate standing in the door that opened out into a back garden, holding a +big revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“Came here, Steve,” he said. “Come here and kill him. +I’m so chilled through I can’t get a bead on him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sam,” said Steve, “don’t shoot him. Just swear at him. +You can easily kill him at that range with your profanity.” +</p> + +<p> +Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain then let go such a scorching, singeing +blast that the brute’s owner sold him next day for a Mexican hairless +dog. +</p> + +<p> +We gather that they moved, on an average, about once a month. A home letter of +September 25, 1864, says: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +We have been here only four months, yet we have changed our lodging five times. +We are very comfortably fixed where we are now and have no fault to find with +the rooms or the people. We are the only lodgers-in a well-to-do private family +. . . . But I need change and must move again. +</p> + +<p> +This was the Minna Street place—the place of the dog. In the same letter +he mentions having made a new arrangement with the Call, by which he is to +receive twenty-five dollars a week, with no more night-work; he says further +that he has closed with the Californian for weekly articles at twelve dollars +each. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLVII<br/> +BOHEMIAN DAYS</h2> + +<p> +Mark Twain’s position on the ‘Call’ was uncongenial from the +start. San Francisco was a larger city than Virginia; the work there was +necessarily more impersonal, more a routine of news-gathering and drudgery. He +once set down his own memories of it: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +At nine in the morning I had to be at the police court for an hour and make a +brief history of the squabbles of the night before. They were usually between +Irishmen and Irishmen, and Chinamen and Chinamen, with now and then a squabble +between the two races, for a change. +</p> + +<p> +During the rest of the day we raked the town from end to end, gathering such +material as we might, wherewith to fill our required columns; and if there were +no fires to report, we started some. At night we visited the six theaters, one +after the other, seven nights in the week. We remained in each of those places +five minutes, got the merest passing glimpse of play and opera, and with that +for a text we “wrote up” those plays and operas, as the phrase +goes, torturing our souls every night in the effort to find something to say +about those performances which we had not said a couple of hundred times +before. +</p> + +<p> +It was fearful drudgery-soulless drudgery—and almost destitute of +interest. It was an awful slavery for a lazy man. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +On the Enterprise he had been free, with a liberty that amounted to license. He +could write what he wished, and was personally responsible to the readers. On +the Call he was simply a part of a news-machine; restricted by a policy, the +whole a part of a still greater machine —politics. Once he saw some +butchers set their dogs on an unoffending Chinaman, a policeman looking on with +amused interest. He wrote an indignant article criticizing the city government +and raking the police. In Virginia City this would have been a welcome delight; +in San Francisco it did not appear. +</p> + +<p> +At another time 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. It would be wasted effort to make an item of this +incident; but he could publish it in his own fashion. He stood there fanning +the sleeping official until a large crowd collected. When he thought it was +large enough he went away. Next day the joke was all over the city. +</p> + +<p> +Only one of the several severe articles he wrote criticizing officials and +institutions seems to have appeared—an attack on an undertaker whose +establishment formed a branch of the coroner’s office. The management of +this place one day refused information to a Call reporter, and the next morning +its proprietor was terrified by a scathing denunciation of his firm. It began, +“Those body-snatchers” and continued through half a column of such +scorching strictures as only Mark Twain could devise. The Call’s policy +of suppression evidently did not include criticisms of deputy coroners. +</p> + +<p> +Such liberty, however, was too rare for Mark Twain, and he lost interest. He +confessed afterward that he became indifferent and lazy, and that George E. +Barnes, one of the publishers of the Call, at last allowed him an assistant. He +selected from the counting-room a big, hulking youth by the name of McGlooral, +with the acquired prefix of “Smiggy.” Clemens had taken a fancy to +Smiggy McGlooral—on account of his name and size perhaps—and +Smiggy, devoted to his patron, worked like a slave gathering news +nights—daytimes, too, if necessary—all of which was demoralizing to +a man who had small appetite for his place anyway. It was only a question of +time when Smiggy alone would be sufficient for the job. +</p> + +<p> +There were other and pleasanter things in San Francisco. The personal and +literary associations were worth while. At his right hand in the Call office +sat Frank Soule—a gentle spirit—a graceful versifier who believed +himself a poet. Mark Twain deferred to Frank Soule in those days. He thought +his verses exquisite in their workmanship; a word of praise from Soule gave him +happiness. In a luxurious office up-stairs was another congenial spirit—a +gifted, handsome fellow of twenty-four, who was secretary of the Mint, and who +presently became editor of a new literary weekly, the Californian, which +Charles Henry Webb had founded. This young man’s name was Francis Bret +Harte, originally from Albany, later a miner and school-teacher on the +Stanislaus, still later a compositor, finally a contributor, on the Golden Era. +His fame scarcely reached beyond San Francisco as yet; but among the little +coterie of writing folk that clustered about the Era office his rank was high. +Mark Twain fraternized with Bret Harte and the Era group generally. He felt +that he had reached the land—or at least the borderland—of Bohemia, +that Ultima Thule of every young literary dream. +</p> + +<p> +San Francisco did, in fact, have a very definite literary atmosphere and a +literature of its own. Its coterie of writers had drifted from here and there, +but they had merged themselves into a California body-poetic, quite as +individual as that of Cambridge, even if less famous, less fortunate in +emoluments than the Boston group. Joseph E. Lawrence, familiarly known as +“Joe” Lawrence, was editor of the Golden Era,* and his kindness and +hospitality were accounted sufficient rewards even when his pecuniary +acknowledgments were modest enough. He had a handsome office, and the literati, +local and visiting, used to gather there. Names that would be well known later +were included in that little band. Joaquin Miller recalls from an old diary, +kept by him then, having seen Adah Isaacs Menken, Prentice Mulford, Bret Harte, +Charles Warren Stoddard, Fitzhugh Ludlow, Mark Twain, Orpheus C. Kerr, Artemus +Ward, Gilbert Densmore, W. S. Kendall, and Mrs. Hitchcock assembled there at +one time. The Era office would seem to have been a sort of Mount Olympus, or +Parnassus, perhaps; for these were mainly poets, who had scarcely yet attained +to the dignity of gods. Miller was hardly more than a youth then, and this +grand assemblage impressed him, as did the imposing appointments of the place. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* The Golden Era, California’s first literary publication, was founded by +Rollin M. Daggett and J. McDonough Foard in 1852. +</p> + +<p> +The Era rooms were elegant—[he says]—the most grandly carpeted and +most gorgeously furnished that I have ever seen. Even now in my memory they +seem to have been simply palatial. I have seen the world well since +then—all of its splendors worth seeing—yet those carpeted parlors, +with Joe Lawrence and his brilliant satellites, outshine all things else, as I +turn to look back. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +More than any other city west of the Alleghanies, San Francisco has always been +a literary center; and certainly that was a remarkable group to be out there +under the sunset, dropped down there behind the Sierras, which the +transcontinental railway would not climb yet, for several years. They were a +happy-hearted, aspiring lot, and they got as much as five dollars sometimes for +an Era article, and were as proud of it as if it had been a great deal more. +They felt that they were creating literature, as they were, in fact; a new +school of American letters mustered there. +</p> + +<p> +Mark Twain and Bret Harte were distinctive features of this group. They were +already recognized by their associates as belonging in a class by themselves, +though as yet neither had done any of the work for which he would be remembered +later. They were a good deal together, and it was when Harte was made editor of +the Californian that Mark Twain was put on the weekly staff at the then +unexampled twelve-dollar rate. The Californian made larger pretensions than the +Era, and perhaps had a heavier financial backing. With Mark Twain on the staff +and Bret Harte in the chair, himself a frequent contributor, it easily ranked +as first of San Francisco periodicals. A number of the sketches collected by +Webb later, in Mark Twain’s first little volume, the Celebrated Jumping +Frog, Etc., appeared in the Era or Californian in 1864 and 1865. They were +smart, bright, direct, not always refined, but probably the best humor of the +day. Some of them are still preserved in this volume of sketches. They are +interesting in what they promise, rather than in what they present, though some +of them are still delightful enough. “The Killing of Julius Caesar +Localized” is an excellent forerunner of his burlesque report of a +gladiatorial combat in The Innocents Abroad. The Answers to Correspondents, +with his vigorous admonition of the statistical moralist, could hardly have +been better done at any later period. The Jumping Frog itself was not +originally of this harvest. It has a history of its own, as we shall see a +little further along. +</p> + +<p> +The reportorial arrangement was of brief duration. Even the great San Francisco +earthquake of that day did not awaken in Mark Twain any permanent enthusiasm +for the drudgery of the ‘Call’. He had lost interest, and when Mark +Twain lost interest in a subject or an undertaking that subject or that +undertaking were better dead, so far as he was concerned. His conclusion of +service with the Call was certain, and he wondered daily why it was delayed so +long. The connection had become equally unsatisfactory to proprietor and +employee. They had a heart-to-heart talk presently, with the result that Mark +Twain was free. He used to claim, in after-years, with his usual tendency to +confess the worst of himself, that he was discharged, and the incident has been +variously told. George Barnes himself has declared that Clemens resigned with +great willingness. It is very likely that the paragraph at the end of Chapter +LVIII in ‘Roughing It’ presents the situation with fair accuracy, +though, as always, the author makes it as unpleasant for himself as possible: +</p> + +<p> +“At last one of the proprietors took me aside, with a charity I still +remember with considerable respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign my +berth, and so save myself the disgrace of a dismissal.” +</p> + +<p> +As an extreme contrast with the supposititious “butterfly idleness” +of his beginning in San Francisco, and for no other discoverable reason, he +doubtless thought it necessary, in the next chapter of that book, to depict +himself as having reached the depths of hard luck, debt, and poverty. +</p> + +<p> +“I became an adept at slinking,” he says. “I slunk from back +street to back street…. I slunk to my bed. I had pawned everything but the +clothes I had on.” +</p> + +<p> +This is pure fiction. That he occasionally found himself short of funds is +likely enough—a literary life invites that sort of thing—but that +he ever clung to a single “silver ten-cent piece,” as he tells us, +and became the familiar of mendicancy, was a condition supplied altogether by +his later imagination to satisfy what he must have regarded as an artistic +need. Almost immediately following his separation from the ‘Call’ +he arranged with Goodman to write a daily letter for the Enterprise, reporting +San Francisco matters after his own notion with a free hand. His payment for +this work was thirty dollars a week, and he had an additional return from his +literary sketches. The arrangement was an improvement both as to labor and +income. +</p> + +<p> +Real affluence appeared on the horizon just then, in the form of a liberal +offer for the Tennessee land. But alas! it was from a wine-grower who wished to +turn the tract into great vineyards, and Orion had a prohibition seizure at the +moment, so the trade was not made. Orion further argued that the prospective +purchaser would necessarily be obliged to import horticultural labor from +Europe, and that those people might be homesick, badly treated, and +consequently unhappy in those far eastern Tennessee mountains. Such was +Orion’s way. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLVIII<br/> +THE REFUGE OF THE HILLS</h2> + +<p> +Those who remember Mark Twain’s Enterprise letters (they are no longer +obtainable)—[Many of these are indeed now obtainable by a simple Web +search. D.W.]—declare them to have been the greatest series of daily +philippics ever written. However this may be, it is certain that they made a +stir. Goodman permitted him to say absolutely what he pleased upon any subject. +San Francisco was fairly weltering in corruption, official and private. He +assailed whatever came first to hand with all the fierceness of a flaming +indignation long restrained. +</p> + +<p> +Quite naturally he attacked the police, and with such ferocity and penetration +that as soon as copies of the Enterprise came from Virginia the City Hall began +to boil and smoke and threaten trouble. Martin G. Burke, then chief of police, +entered libel suit against the Enterprise, prodigiously advertising that paper, +copies of which were snatched as soon as the stage brought them. +</p> + +<p> +Mark Twain really let himself go then. He wrote a letter that on the outside +was marked, “Be sure and let Joe see this before it goes in.” He +even doubted himself whether Goodman would dare to print it, after reading. It +was a letter describing the city’s corrupt morals under the existing +police government. It began, “The air is full of lechery, and rumors of +lechery,” and continued in a strain which made even the Enterprise +printers aghast. +</p> + +<p> +“You can never afford to publish that,” the foreman said to, +Goodman. +</p> + +<p> +“Let it all go in, every word,” Goodman answered. “If Mark +can stand it, I can!” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed unfortunate (at the time) that Steve Gillis should select this +particular moment to stir up trouble that would involve both himself and +Clemens with the very officials which the latter had undertaken to punish. +Passing a saloon one night alone, Gillis heard an altercation going on inside, +and very naturally stepped in to enjoy it. Including the barkeeper, there were +three against two. Steve ranged himself on the weaker side, and selected the +barkeeper, a big bruiser, who, when the fight was over, was ready for the +hospital. It turned out that he was one of Chief Burke’s minions, and +Gillis was presently indicted on a charge of assault with intent to kill. He +knew some of the officials in a friendly way, and was advised to give a straw +bond and go into temporary retirement. Clemens, of course, went his bail, and +Steve set out for Virginia City, until the storm blew over. +</p> + +<p> +This was Burke’s opportunity. When the case was called and Gillis did not +appear, Burke promptly instituted an action against his bondsman, with an +execution against his loose property. The watch that had been given him as +Governor of the Third House came near being thus sacrificed in the cause of +friendship, and was only saved by skilful manipulation. +</p> + +<p> +Now, it was down in the chain of circumstances that Steve Gillis’s +brother, James N. Gillis, a gentle-hearted hermit, a pocket-miner of the +halcyon Tuolumne district—the Truthful James of Bret Harte—happened +to be in San Francisco at this time, and invited Clemens to return with him to +the far seclusion of his cabin on Jackass Hill. In that peaceful retreat were +always rest and refreshment for the wayfarer, and more than one weary writer +besides Bret Harte had found shelter there. James Gillis himself had fine +literary instincts, but he remained a pocket-miner because he loved that quiet +pursuit of gold, the Arcadian life, the companionship of his books, the +occasional Bohemian pilgrim who found refuge in his retreat. It is said that +the sick were made well, and the well made better, in Jim Gillis’s cabin +on the hilltop, where the air was nectar and the stillness like enchantment. +One could mine there if he wished to do so; Jim would always furnish him a +promising claim, and teach him the art of following the little fan-like drift +of gold specks to the nested deposit of nuggets somewhere up the hillside. He +regularly shared his cabin with one Dick Stoker (Dick Baker, of ‘Roughing +It’), another genial soul who long ago had retired from the world to this +forgotten land, also with Dick’s cat, Tom Quartz; but there was always +room for guests. +</p> + +<p> +In ‘Roughing It’, and in a later story, “The +Californian’s Tale,” Mark Twain has made us acquainted with the +verdant solitude of the Tuolumne hills, that dreamy, delicious paradise where +once a vast population had gathered when placer-mining had been in its bloom, a +dozen years before. The human swarm had scattered when the washings failed to +pay, leaving only a quiet emptiness and the few pocket-miners along the +Stanislaus and among the hills. Vast areas of that section present a strange +appearance to-day. Long stretches there are, crowded and jammed and drifted +with ghostly white stones that stand up like fossils of a prehistoric life +—the earth deposit which once covered them entirely washed away, every +particle of it removed by the greedy hordes, leaving only this vast bleaching +drift, literally the “picked bones of the land.” At one place +stands Columbia, regarded once as a rival to Sacramento, a possible State +capital—a few tumbling shanties now—and a ruined church. +</p> + +<p> +It was the 4th of December, 1864, when Mark Twain arrived at Jim Gillis’s +cabin. He found it a humble habitation made of logs and slabs, partly sheltered +by a great live-oak tree, surrounded by a stretch of grass. It had not much in +the way of pretentious furniture, but there was a large fireplace, and a +library which included the standard authors. A younger Gillis boy, William, was +there at this time, so that the family numbered five in all, including Tom +Quartz, the cat. On rainy days they would gather about the big, open fire and +Jim Gillis, with his back to the warmth, would relate diverting yarns, +creations of his own, turned out hot from the anvil, forged as he went along. +He had a startling imagination, and he had fostered it in that secluded place. +His stories usually consisted of wonderful adventures of his companion, Dick +Stoker, portrayed with humor and that serene and vagrant fancy which builds as +it goes, careless as to whither it is proceeding and whether the story shall +end well or ill, soon or late, if ever. He always pretended that these +extravagant tales of Stoker were strictly true; and +Stoker—“forty-six and gray as a rat”—earnest, +thoughtful, and tranquilly serene, would smoke and look into the fire and +listen to those astonishing things of himself, smiling a little now and then +but saying never a word. What did it matter to him? He had no world outside of +the cabin and the hills, no affairs; he would live and die there; his affairs +all had ended long ago. A number of the stories used in Mark Twain’s +books were first told by Jim Gillis, standing with his hands crossed behind +him, back to the fire, in the cabin on jackass Hill. The story of Dick +Baker’s cat was one of these; the jaybird and Acorn story of ‘A +Tramp Abroad’ was another; also the story of the “Burning +Shame,” and there are others. Mark Twain had little to add to these +stories; in fact, he never could get them to sound as well, he said, as when +Jim Gillis had told them. +</p> + +<p> +James Gillis’s imagination sometimes led him into difficulties. Once a +feeble old squaw came along selling some fruit that looked like green plums. +Stoker, who knew the fruit well enough, carelessly ventured the remark that it +might be all right, but he had never heard of anybody eating it, which set +Gillis off into eloquent praises of its delights, all of which he knew to be +purely imaginary; whereupon Stoker told him if he liked the fruit so well, to +buy some of it. There was no escape after that; Jim had to buy some of those +plums, whose acid was of the hair-lifting aqua-fortis variety, and all the rest +of the day he stewed them, adding sugar, trying to make them palatable, tasting +them now and then, boasting meanwhile of their nectar-like deliciousness. He +gave the others a taste by and by—a withering, corroding sup—and +they derided him and rode him down. But Jim never weakened. He ate that fearful +brew, and though for days his mouth was like fire he still referred to the +luscious health-giving joys of the “Californian plums.” +</p> + +<p> +Jackass Hill was not altogether a solitude; here and there were neighbors. +Another pocket-miner; named Carrington, had a cabin not far away, and a mile or +two distant lived an old couple with a pair of pretty daughters, so plump and +trim and innocent, that they were called the “Chapparal Quails.” +Young men from far and near paid court to them, and on Sunday afternoons so +many horses would be tied to their front fence as to suggest an afternoon +service there. Young “Billy” Gillis knew them, and one Sunday +morning took his brother’s friend, Sam Clemens, over for a call. They +went early, with forethought, and promptly took the girls for a walk. They took +a long walk, and went wandering over the hills, toward Sandy Bar and the +Stanislaus—through that reposeful land which Bret Harte would one day +light with idyllic romance—and toward evening found themselves a long way +from home. They must return by the nearest way to arrive before dark. One of +the young ladies suggested a short cut through the Chemisal, and they started. +But they were lost, presently, and it was late, very late, when at last they +reached the ranch. The mother of the “Quails” was sitting up for +them, and she had something to say. She let go a perfect storm of general +denunciation, then narrowed the attack to Samuel Clemens as the oldest of the +party. He remained mildly serene. +</p> + +<p> +“It wasn’t my fault,” he ventured at last; “it was +Billy Gillis’s fault.” +</p> + +<p> +“No such thing. You know better. Mr. Gillis has been here often. It was +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“But do you realize, ma’am, how tired and hungry we are? +Haven’t you got a bite for us to eat?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir, not a bite—for such as you.” +</p> + +<p> +The offender’s eyes, wandering about the room, spied something in a +corner. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t that a guitar over there?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir, it is; what of it?” +</p> + +<p> +The culprit walked over, and taking it up, tuned the strings a little and +struck the chords. Then he began to sing. He began very softly and sang +“Fly Away, Pretty Moth,” then “Araby’s Daughter.” +He could sing very well in those days, following with the simpler chords. +Perhaps the mother “Quail” had known those songs herself back in +the States, for her manner grew kindlier, almost with the first notes. When he +had finished she was the first to ask him to go on. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you are just like all young folks,” she said. “I +was young myself once. While you sing I’ll get some supper.” +</p> + +<p> +She left the door to the kitchen open so that she could hear, and cooked +whatever she could find for the belated party. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLIX<br/> +THE JUMPING FROG</h2> + +<p> +It was the rainy season, the winter of 1864 and 1865, but there were many +pleasant days, when they could go pocket-hunting, and Samuel Clemens soon added +a knowledge of this fascinating science to his other acquirements. Sometimes he +worked with Dick Stoker, sometimes with one of the Gillis boys. He did not make +his fortune at pocket-mining; he only laid its corner-stone. In the old +note-book he kept of that sojourn we find that, with Jim Gillis, he made a trip +over into Calaveras County soon after Christmas and remained there until after +New Year’s, probably prospecting; and he records that on New Year’s +night, at Vallecito, he saw a magnificent lunar rainbow in a very light, +drizzling rain. A lunar rainbow is one of the things people seldom see. He +thought it an omen of good-fortune. +</p> + +<p> +They returned to the cabin on the hill; but later in the month, on the they +crossed over into Calaveras again, and began pocket-hunting not far from +Angel’s Camp. The note-book records that the bill of fare at the Camp +hotel consisted wholly of beans and something which bore the name of coffee; +also that the rains were frequent and heavy. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +January 27. Same old diet—same old weather—went out to the +pocket-claim—had to rush back. +</p> + +<p> +They had what they believed to be a good claim. Jim Gillis declared the +indications promising, and if they could only have good weather to work it, +they were sure of rich returns. For himself, he would have been willing to +work, rain or shine. Clemens, however, had different views on the subject. His +part was carrying water for washing out the pans of dirt, and carrying pails of +water through the cold rain and mud was not very fascinating work. Dick Stoker +came over before long to help. Things went a little better then; but most of +their days were spent in the bar-room of the dilapidated tavern at +Angel’s Camp, enjoying the company of a former Illinois River pilot, Ben +Coon,* a solemn, fat-witted person, who dozed by the stove, or told slow, +endless stories, without point or application. Listeners were a boon to him, +for few came and not many would stay. To Mark Twain and Jim Gillis, however, +Ben Coon was a delight. It was soothing and comfortable to listen to his +endless narratives, told in that solemn way, with no suspicion of humor. Even +when his yarns had point, he did not recognize it. One dreary afternoon, in his +slow, monotonous fashion, he told them about a frog—a frog that had +belonged to a man named Coleman, who trained it to jump, but that failed to win +a wager because the owner of a rival frog had surreptitiously loaded the +trained jumper with shot. The story had circulated among the camps, and a +well-known journalist, named Samuel Seabough, had already made a squib of it, +but neither Clemens nor Gillis had ever happened to hear it before. They +thought the tale in itself amusing, and the “spectacle of a man drifting +serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling was exquisitely +absurd.” When Coon had talked himself out, his hearers played billiards +on the frowsy table, and now and then one would remark to the other: +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any +better’n any other frog,” and perhaps the other would answer: +</p> + +<p> +“I ain’t got no frog, but if I had a frog I’d bet you.” +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* This name has been variously given as “Ros Coon,” “Coon +Drayton,” etc. It is given here as set down in Mark Twain’s notes, +made on the spot. Coon was not (as has been stated) the proprietor of the hotel +(which was kept by a Frenchman), but a frequenter of +it. +</p> + +<p> +Out on the claim, between pails of water, Clemens, as he watched Jim Gillis or +Dick Stoker “washing,” would be apt to say, “I don’t +see no p’ints about that pan o’ dirt that’s any +better’n any other pan o’ dirt,” and so they kept it up. +</p> + +<p> +Then the rain would come again and interfere with their work. One afternoon, +when Clemens and Gillis were following certain tiny-sprayed specks of gold that +were leading them to pocket—somewhere up the long slope, the chill +downpour set in. Gillis, as usual, was washing, and Clemens carrying water. The +“color” was getting better with every pan, and Jim Gillis believed +that now, after their long waiting, they were to be rewarded. Possessed with +the miner’s passion, he would have gone on washing and climbing toward +the precious pocket, regardless of everything. Clemens, however, shivering and +disgusted, swore that each pail of water was his last. His teeth were +chattering and he was wet through. Finally he said, in his deliberate way: +</p> + +<p> +“Jim, I won’t carry any more water. This work is too +disagreeable.” +</p> + +<p> +Gillis had just taken out a panful of dirt. +</p> + +<p> +“Bring one more pail, Sam,” he pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, hell, Jim, I won’t do it; I’m freezing!” +</p> + +<p> +“Just one more pail, Sam,” he pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir, not a drop, not if I knew there were a million dollars in that +pan.” +</p> + +<p> +Gillis tore a page out of his note-book, and hastily posted a thirty-day claim +notice by the pan of dirt, and they set out for Angel’s Camp. It kept on +raining and storming, and they did not go back. A few days later a letter from +Steve Gillis made Clemens decide to return to San Francisco. With Jim Gillis +and Dick Stoker he left Angel’s and walked across the mountains to +Jackass Hill in the snow-storm—“the first I ever saw in +California,” he says in his notes. +</p> + +<p> +In the mean time the rain had washed away the top of the pan of earth they had +left standing on the hillside, and exposed a handful of nuggets-pure gold. Two +strangers, Austrians, had come along and, observing it, had sat down to wait +until the thirty-day claim notice posted by Jim Gillis should expire. They did +not mind the rain—not with all that gold in sight—and the minute +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. Mark Twain missed it by one pail of water. Still, it is just +as well, perhaps, when one remembers that vaster nugget of Angel’s +Camp—the Jumping Frog. Jim Gillis always declared, “If Sam had got +that pocket he would have remained a pocket-miner to the end of his days, like +me.” +</p> + +<p> +In Mark Twain’s old note-book occurs a memorandum of the frog +story—a mere casual entry of its main features: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Coleman with his jumping frog—bet stranger $50—stranger had no +frog, and C. got him one:—in the mean time stranger filled C.’s +frog full of shot and he couldn’t jump. The stranger’s frog won. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed unimportant enough, no doubt, at the time; but it was the nucleus +around which was built a surpassing fame. The hills along the Stanislaus have +turned out some wonderful nuggets in their time, but no other of such size as +that. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>L<br/> +BACK TO THE TUMULT</h2> + +<p> +F<small>ROM</small> the note-book: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +February 25. Arrived in Stockton 5 p.m. Home again home again at the Occidental +Hotel, San Francisco—find letters from Artemus Ward asking me to write a +sketch for his new book of Nevada Territory Travels which is soon to come out. +Too late—ought to have got the letters three months ago. They are dated +early in November. +</p> + +<p> +He was sorry not to oblige Ward, sorry also not to have representation in his +book. He wrote explaining the circumstance, and telling the story of his +absence. Steve Gillis, meantime, had returned to San Francisco, and settled his +difficulties there. The friends again took up residence together. +</p> + +<p> +Mark Twain resumed his daily letters to the Enterprise, without further +annoyance from official sources. Perhaps there was a temporary truce in that +direction, though he continued to attack various abuses—civic, private, +and artistic—becoming a sort of general censor, establishing for himself +the title of the “Moralist of the Main.” The letters were reprinted +in San Francisco and widely read. Now and then some one had the temerity to +answer them, but most of his victims maintained a discreet silence. In one of +these letters he told of the Mexican oyster, a rather tough, unsatisfactory +article of diet, which could not stand criticism, and presently disappeared +from the market. It was a mistake, however, for him to attack an Alta +journalist by the name of Evans. Evans was a poet, and once composed an elegy +with a refrain which ended: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Gone, gone, gone<br/> + —Gone to his endeavor;<br/> +Gone, gone, gone,<br/> + Forever and forever. +</p> + +<p> +In the Enterprise letter following its publication Mark Twain referred to this +poem. He parodied the refrain and added, “If there is any criticism to +make on it I should say there is a little too much ‘gone’ and not +enough ‘forever.’” +</p> + +<p> +It was a more or less pointless witticism, but it had a humorous quotable +flavor, and it made Evans mad. In a squib in the Alta he retaliated: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Mark Twain has killed the Mexican oyster. We only regret that the act was not +inspired by a worthier motive. Mark Twain’s sole reason for attacking the +Mexican oyster was because the restaurant that sold them refused him credit. +</p> + +<p> +A deadly thrust like that could not be parried in print. To deny or recriminate +would be to appear ridiculous. One could only sweat and breathe vengeance. +</p> + +<p> +“Joe,” he said to Goodman, who had come over for a visit, “my +one object in life now is to make enough money to stand trial and then go and +murder Evans.” +</p> + +<p> +He wrote verses himself sometimes, and lightened his Enterprise letters with +jingles. One of these concerned Tom Maguire, the autocrat manager of San +Francisco theaters. It details Maguire’s assault on one of his actors. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + Tom Maguire,<br/> + Roused to ire,<br/> +Lighted on McDougal;<br/> + Tore his coat,<br/> + Clutched his throat,<br/> +And split him in the bugle.<br/> +<br/> + For shame! oh, fie!<br/> + Maguire, why<br/> +Will you thus skyugle?<br/> + Why curse and swear,<br/> + And rip and tear<br/> +The innocent McDougal?<br/> +<br/> + Of bones bereft,<br/> + Almost, you’ve left<br/> +Vestvali, gentle Jew gal;<br/> + And now you’ve smashed<br/> + And almost hashed<br/> +The form of poor McDougal! +</p> + +<p> +Goodman remembers that Clemens and Gillis were together again on California +Street at this time, and of hearing them sing, “The Doleful Ballad of the +Rejected Lover,” another of Mark Twain’s compositions. It was a +wild, blasphemous outburst, and the furious fervor with which Mark and Steve +delivered it, standing side by side and waving their fists, did not render it +less objectionable. Such memories as these are set down here, for they exhibit +a phase of that robust personality, built of the same primeval material from +which the world was created—built of every variety of material, in fact, +ever incorporated in a human being—equally capable of writing unprintable +coarseness and that rarest and most tender of all characterizations, the +‘Recollections of JOAN of ARC’. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LI<br/> +THE CORNER-STONE</h2> + +<p> +Along with his Enterprise work, Clemens continued to write occasionally for the +Californian, but for some reason he did not offer the story of the jumping +frog. For one thing, he did not regard it highly as literary material. He knew +that he had enjoyed it himself, but the humor and fashion of its telling seemed +to him of too simple and mild a variety in that day of boisterous incident and +exaggerated form. By and by Artemus Ward turned up in San Francisco, and one +night Mark Twain told him his experiences with Jim Gillis, and in Angel’s +Camp; also of Ben Coon and his tale of the Calaveras frog. Ward was delighted. +</p> + +<p> +“Write it,” he said. “There is still time to get it into my +volume of sketches. Send it to Carleton, my publisher in New +York.”* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* This is in accordance with Mr. Clemens’s recollection of the matter. +The author can find no positive evidence that Ward was on the Pacific coast +again in 1865. It seems likely, therefore, that the telling of the frog story +and his approval of it were accomplished by exchange of letters. +</p> + +<p> +Clemens promised to do this, but delayed fulfilment somewhat, and by the time +the sketch reached Carleton, Ward’s book was about ready for the press. +It did not seem worth while to Carleton to make any change of plans that would +include the frog story. The publisher handed it over to Henry Clapp, editor of +the Saturday Press, a perishing sheet, saying: “Here, Clapp, here’s +something you can use in your paper.” Clapp took it thankfully enough, we +may believe. +</p> + +<p> +“Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”* appeared in the Saturday Press +of November 18, 1865, and was immediately copied and quoted far and near. It +brought the name of Mark Twain across the mountains, bore it up and down the +Atlantic coast, and out over the prairies of the Middle West. Away from the +Pacific slope only a reader here and there had known the name before. Now every +one who took a newspaper was treated to the tale of the wonderful Calaveras +frog, and received a mental impress of the author’s signature. The name +Mark Twain became hardly an institution, as yet, but it made a strong bid for +national acceptance. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* This was the original title. +</p> + +<p> +As for its owner, he had no suspicion of these momentous happenings for a +considerable time. The telegraph did not carry such news in those days, and it +took a good while for the echo of his victory to travel to the Coast. When at +last a lagging word of it did arrive, it would seem to have brought +disappointment, rather than exaltation, to the author. Even Artemus +Ward’s opinion of the story had not increased Mark Twain’s regard +for it as literature. That it had struck the popular note meant, as he +believed, failure for his more highly regarded work. In a letter written +January 20, 1866, he says these things for himself: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, and then it reached New York too late to appear in his book. +</p> + +<p> +But no matter. His book was a wretchedly poor one, generally speaking, and it +could be no credit to either of us to appear between its covers. +</p> + +<p> +This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco Alta: +</p> + +<p> +“Mark Twain’s story in the Saturday Press of November 18th, called +‘Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,’ has set all New York in a roar, +and he may be said to have made his mark. I have been asked fifty times about +it and its author, and the papers are copying it far and near. It is voted the +best thing of the day. Cannot the ‘Californian’ afford to keep Mark +all to itself? It should not let him scintillate so widely without first being +filtered through the California press.” +</p> + +<p> +The New York publishing house of Carleton & Co. gave the sketch to the +Saturday Press when they found it was too late for the book. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +It is difficult to judge the jumping Frog story to-day. It has the intrinsic +fundamental value of one of Æsop’s Fables.* It contains a basic idea +which is essentially ludicrous, and the quaint simplicity of its telling is +convincing and full of charm. It appeared in print at a time when American +humor was chaotic, the public taste unformed. We had a vast appreciation for +what was comic, with no great number of opportunities for showing it. We were +so ready to laugh that when a real opportunity came along we improved it and +kept on laughing and repeating the cause of our merriment, directing the +attention of our friends to it. Whether the story of “Jim Smiley’s +Frog,” offered for the first time today, would capture the public, and +become the initial block of a towering fame, is another matter. That the author +himself underrated it is certain. That the public, receiving it at what we now +term the psychological moment, may have overrated it is by no means impossible. +In any case, it does not matter now. The stone rejected by the builder was made +the corner-stone of his literary edifice. As such it is immortal. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* The resemblance of the frog story to the early Greek tales must have been +noted by Prof. Henry Sidgwick, who synopsized it in Greek form and phrase for +his book, Greek Prose Composition. Through this originated the impression that +the story was of Athenian root. Mark Twain himself was deceived, until in 1899, +when he met Professor Sidgwick, who explained that the Greek version was the +translation and Mark Twain’s the original; that he had thought it +unnecessary to give credit for a story so well known. See The Jumping Frog, +Harper & Bros., 1903, p. 64. +</p> + +<p> +In the letter already quoted, Clemens speaks of both Bret Harte and himself as +having quit the ‘Californian’ in future expecting to write for +Eastern papers. He adds: +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers in this part +of the country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte, I think, though he +denies it, along with the rest. He wants me to club a lot of old sketches +together with a lot of his, and publish a book. I wouldn’t do it, only he +agrees to take all the trouble. But I want to know whether we are going to make +anything out of it, first. However, he has written to a New York publisher, and +if we are offered a bargain that will pay for a month’s labor we will go +to work and prepare the volume for the press. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Nothing came of the proposed volume, or of other joint literary schemes these +two had then in mind. Neither of them would seem to have been optimistic as to +their future place in American literature; certainly in their most exalted +moments they could hardly have dreamed that within half a dozen years they +would be the head and front of a new school of letters—the two most +talked-of men in America. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LII<br/> +A COMMISSION TO THE SANDWICH ISLANDS</h2> + +<p> +Whatever his first emotions concerning the success of “Jim Smiley’s +Frog” may have been, the sudden astonishing leap of that batrachian into +American literature gave the author an added prestige at home as well as in +distant parts. Those about him were inclined to regard him, in some degree at +least, as a national literary figure and to pay tribute accordingly. Special +honors began to be shown to him. A fine new steamer, the Ajax, built for the +Sandwich Island trade, carried on its initial trip a select party of guests of +which he was invited to make one. He did not go, and reproached himself +sorrowfully afterward. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +If the <i>Ajax</i> were back I would go quick, and throw up my correspondence. +She had fifty-two invited guests aboard—the cream of the +town—gentlemen and ladies, and a splendid brass band. I could not accept +because there would be no one to write my correspondence while I was gone. +</p> + +<p> +In fact, the daily letter had grown monotonous. He was restless, and the Ajax +excursion, which he had been obliged to forego, made him still more +dissatisfied. An idea occurred to him: the sugar industry of the islands was a +matter of great commercial interest to California, while the life and scenery +there, picturesquely treated, would appeal to the general reader. He was on +excellent terms with James Anthony and Paul Morrill, of the Sacramento Union; +he proposed to them that they send him as their special correspondent to report +to their readers, in a series of letters, life, trade, agriculture, and general +aspect of the islands. To his vast delight, they gave him the commission. He +wrote home joyously now: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I am to remain there a month and ransack the islands, the cataracts and +volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters, for which they pay as +much money as I would get if I stayed at home. +</p> + +<p> +He adds that on his return he expects to start straight across the continent by +way of the Columbia River, the Pend Oreille Lakes, through Montana and down the +Missouri River. “Only two hundred miles of land travel from San Francisco +to New Orleans.” +</p> + +<p> +So it is: man proposes, while fate, undisturbed, spins serenely on. +</p> + +<p> +He sailed by the Ajax on her next trip, March 7 (1866), beginning his first sea +voyage—a brand-new experience, during which he acquired the names of the +sails and parts of the ship, with considerable knowledge of navigation, and of +the islands he was to visit—whatever information passengers and sailors +could furnish. It was a happy, stormy voyage altogether. In ‘Roughing +It’ he has given us some account of it. +</p> + +<p> +It was the 18th of March when he arrived at Honolulu, and his first impression +of that tranquil harbor remained with him always. In fact, his whole visit +there became one of those memory-pictures, full of golden sunlight and peace, +to be found somewhere in every human past. +</p> + +<p> +The letters of introduction he had brought, and the reputation which had +preceded him, guaranteed him welcome and hospitality. Officials and private +citizens were alike ready to show him their pleasant land, and he fairly +reveled in its delicious air, its summer warmth, its soft repose. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Oh, islands there are on the face of the deep<br/> +Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep, +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +he quotes in his note-book, and adds: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Went with Mr. Damon to his cool, vine-shaded home; no careworn or eager, +anxious faces in this land of happy contentment. God, what a contrast with +California and the Washoe! +</p> + +<p> +And in another place: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +They <i>live</i> in the S. I.—no rush, no worry—merchant goes down +to his store like a gentleman at nine—goes home at four and thinks no +more of business till next day. D—n San F. style of wearing out life. +</p> + +<p> +He fitted in with the languorous island existence, but he had come for +business, and he lost not much time. He found there a number of friends from +Washoe, including the Rev. Mr. Rising, whose health had failed from overwork. +By their direction, and under official guidance, he set out on Oahu, one of the +several curious horses he has immortalized in print, and, accompanied by a +pleasant party of ladies and gentlemen, encircled the island of that name, +crossed it and recrossed it, visited its various battle-fields, returning to +Honolulu, lame, sore, sunburnt, but triumphant. His letters home, better even +than his Union correspondence, reveal his personal interest and enthusiasms. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +I have got a lot of human bones which I took from one of these battle-fields. I +guess I will bring you some of them. I went with the American Minister and took +dinner this evening with the King’s Grand Chamberlain, who is related to +the royal family, and though darker than a mulatto he has an excellent English +education, and in manners is an accomplished gentleman. He is to call for me in +the morning; we will visit the King in the palace, After dinner they called in +the “singing girls,” and we had some beautiful music, sung in the +native tongue. +</p> + +<p> +It was his first association with royalty, and it was human that he should air +it a little. In the same letter he states: “I will sail in a day or two +on a tour of the other islands, to be gone two months.” +</p> + +<p> +‘In Roughing It’ he has given us a picture of his visits to the +islands, their plantations, their volcanoes, their natural and historic +wonders. He was an insatiable sight-seer then, and a persevering one. The very +name of a new point of interest filled him with an eager enthusiasm to be off. +No discomfort or risk or distance discouraged him. With a single daring +companion—a man who said he could find the way—he crossed the +burning floor of the mighty crater of Kilauea (then in almost constant +eruption), racing across the burning lava floor, jumping wide and bottomless +crevices, when a misstep would have meant death. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +By and by Marlette shouted “Stop!” I never stopped quicker in my +life. I asked what the matter was. He said we were out of the path. He said we +must not try to go on until we found it again, for we were surrounded with beds +of rotten lava, through which we could easily break and plunge down 1,000 feet. +I thought Boo would answer for me, and was about to say so, when Marlette +partly proved his statement, crushing through and disappearing to his arm-pits. +</p> + +<p> +They made their way across at last, and stood the rest of the night gazing down +upon a spectacle of a crater in quivering action, a veritable lake of fire. +They had risked their lives for that scene, but it seemed worth while. +</p> + +<p> +His open-air life on the river, and the mining camps, had prepared Samuel +Clemens for adventurous hardships. He was thirty years old, with his full +account of mental and physical capital. His growth had been slow, but he was +entering now upon his golden age; he was fitted for conquest of whatever sort, +and he was beginning to realize his power. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LIII<br/> +ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE “HORNET” DISASTER</h2> + +<p> +It was near the end of June when he returned to Honolulu from a tour of all the +islands, fairly worn out and prostrated with saddle boils. He expected only to +rest and be quiet for a season, but all unknown to him startling and historic +things were taking place in which he was to have a part—events that would +mark another forward stride in his career. +</p> + +<p> +The <i>Ajax</i> had just come in, bringing his Excellency Anson Burlingame, +then returning to his post as minister to China; also General Van Valkenburg, +minister to Japan; Colonel Rumsey and Minister Burlingame’s son, Edward,* +then a lively boy of eighteen. Young Burlingame had read “The Jumping +Frog,” and was enthusiastic about Mark Twain and his work. Learning that +he was in Honolulu, laid up at his hotel, the party sent word that they would +call on him next morning. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* Edward L. Burlingame, now for many years editor of Scribner’s Magazine. +</p> + +<p> +Clemens felt that he must not accept this honor, sick or well. He crawled out +of bed, dressed and shaved himself as quickly as possible, and drove to the +American minister’s, where the party was staying. They had a hilariously +good time. When he returned to his hotel he sent them, by request, whatever he +had on hand of his work. General Van Valkenburg had said to him: +</p> + +<p> +“California is proud of Mark Twain, and some day the American people will +be, too, no doubt.” +</p> + +<p> +There has seldom been a more accurate prophecy. +</p> + +<p> +But a still greater event was imminent. On that very day (June 21, 1866) there +came word of the arrival at Sanpahoe, on the island of Hawaii, of an open boat +containing fifteen starving wretches, who on short, ten-day rations had been +buffeting a stormy sea for forty-three days! A vessel, the Hornet, from New +York, had taken fire and burned “on the line,” and since early in +May, on that meager sustenance, they had been battling with hundreds of leagues +of adverse billows, seeking for land. +</p> + +<p> +A few days following the first report, eleven of the rescued men were brought +to Honolulu and placed in the hospital. Mark Twain recognized the great news +importance of the event. It would be a splendid beat if he could interview the +castaways and be the first to get their story to his paper. There was no cable +in those days; a vessel for San Francisco would sail next morning. It was the +opportunity of a lifetime, and he must not miss it. Bedridden as he was, the +undertaking seemed beyond his strength. +</p> + +<p> +But just at this time the Burlingame party descended on him, and almost before +he knew it he was on the way to the hospital on a cot, escorted by the heads of +the joint legations of China and Japan. Once there, Anson Burlingame, with his +splendid human sympathy and handsome, courtly presence, drew from those +enfeebled castaways all the story of their long privation and struggle, that +had stretched across forty-three distempered days and four thousand miles of +sea. All that Mark Twain had to do was to listen and make the notes. +</p> + +<p> +He put in the night-writing against time. Next morning, just as the vessel for +the States was drifting away from her dock, a strong hand flung his bulky +envelope of manuscript aboard, and if the vessel arrived his great beat was +sure. It did arrive, and the three-column story on the front page of the +Sacramento Union, in its issue of July 19th, gave the public the first detailed +history of the terrible Hornet disaster and the rescue of those starving men. +Such a story occupied a wider place in the public interest than it would in +these crowded days. The telegraph carried it everywhere, and it was featured as +a sensation. +</p> + +<p> +Mark Twain always adored the name and memory of Anson Burlingame. In his letter +home he tells of Burlingame’s magnanimity in “throwing away an +invitation to dine with princes and foreign dignitaries” to help him. +“You know I appreciate that kind of thing,” he says; which was a +true statement, and in future years he never missed an opportunity of paying an +instalment on his debt of gratitude. It was proper that he should do so, for +the obligation was a far greater one than that contracted in obtaining the tale +of the Hornet disaster. It was the debt which one owes to a man who, from the +deep measure of his understanding, gives encouragement and exactly needed and +convincing advice. Anson Burlingame said to Samuel Clemens: +</p> + +<p> +“You have great ability; I believe you have genius. What you need now is +the refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of superior +intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate with +inferiors; always climb.” +</p> + +<p> +Clemens never forgot that advice. He did not always observe it, but he rarely +failed to realize its gospel. Burlingame urged him to travel. +</p> + +<p> +“Come to Pekin next winter,” he said, “and visit me. Make my +house your home. I will give you letters and introduce you. You will have +facilities for acquiring information about China.” +</p> + +<p> +It is not surprising then that Mark Twain never felt his debt to Anson +Burlingame entirely paid. Burlingame came more than once to the hotel, for +Clemens was really ill now, and they discussed plans for his future betterment. +</p> + +<p> +He promised, of course, to visit China, and when he was alone put in a good +deal of time planning a trip around the world which would include the great +capitals. When not otherwise employed he read; though there was only one book +in the hotel, a “blue and gold” edition of Dr. Holmes’s Songs +in Many Keys, and this he soon knew almost by heart, from title-page to finis. +</p> + +<p> +He was soon up and about. No one could remain ill long in those happy islands. +Young Burlingame came, and suggested walks. Once, when Clemens hesitated, the +young man said: +</p> + +<p> +“But there is a Scriptural command for you to go.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you can quote one I’ll obey it,” said Clemens. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well. The Bible says, ‘If any man require thee to walk a +mile, go with him, Twain.’” +</p> + +<p> +The command was regarded as sufficient. Clemens quoted the witticism later (in +his first lecture), and it was often repeated in after-years, ascribed to +Warner, Ward, and a dozen others. Its origin was as here set down. +</p> + +<p> +Under date of July 4 (1866), Mark Twain’s Sandwich Island note-book says: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Went to a ball 8.30 P.M.—danced till 12.30; stopped at General Van +Valkenburg’s room and talked with him and Mr. Burlingame and Ed +Burlingame until 3 A.M. +</p> + +<p> +From which we may conclude that he had altogether recovered. A few days later +the legation party had sailed for China and Japan, and on the 19th Clemens +himself set out by a slow sailing-vessel to San Francisco. They were becalmed +and were twenty-five days making the voyage. Captain Mitchell and others of the +wrecked Hornet were aboard, and he put in a good deal of time copying their +diaries and preparing a magazine article which, he believed, would prove his +real entrance to the literary world. +</p> + +<p> +The vessel lay almost perfectly still, day after day, and became a regular +playground at sea. Sundays they had services and Mark Twain led the choir. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope they will have a better opinion of our music in heaven than I +have down here,” he says in his notes. “If they don’t, a +thunderbolt will knock this vessel endways.” It is perhaps worthy of +mention that on the night of the 27th of July he records having seen another +“splendidly colored, lunar rainbow.” That he regarded this as an +indication of future good-fortune is not surprising, considering the events of +the previous year. +</p> + +<p> +It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco, and the note-book entry of +that day says: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Home again. No—not home again—in prison again, end all the wild +sense of freedom gone. The city seems so cramped and so dreary with toil and +care and business anxiety. God help me, I wish I were at sea again! +</p> + +<p> +There were compensations, however. He went over to Sacramento, and was +abundantly welcomed. It was agreed that, in addition to the twenty dollars +allowed for each letter, a special bill should be made for the Hornet report. +</p> + +<p> +“How much do you think it ought to be, Mark?” James Anthony asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I’m a modest man; I don’t want the whole Union office. +Call it $100 a column.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a general laugh. The bill was made out at that figure, and he took it +to the business office for payment. +</p> + +<p> +“The cashier didn’t faint,” he wrote, many years later, +“but he came rather near it. He sent for the proprietors, and they only +laughed in their jolly fashion, and said it was a robbery, but ‘no +matter, pay it. It’s all right.’ The best men that ever owned a +newspaper.”* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* “My Début as a Literary Person.”—Collected works. +</p> + +<p> +Though inferior to the descriptive writing which a year later would give him a +world-wide fame, the Sandwich Island letters added greatly to his prestige on +the Pacific coast. They were convincing, informing; tersely—even +eloquently—descriptive, with a vein of humor adapted to their audience. +Yet to read them now, in the fine nonpareil type in which they were set, is +such a wearying task that one can only marvel at their popularity. They were +not brilliant literature, by our standards to-day. Their humor is usually of a +muscular kind, varied with grotesque exaggerations; the literary quality is +pretty attenuated. Here and there are attempts at verse. He had a fashion in +those days of combining two or more poems with distracting, sometimes amusing, +effect. Examples of these dislocations occur in the Union letters; a single +stanza will present the general idea: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,<br/> + The turf with their bayonets turning,<br/> +And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold,<br/> + And our lanterns dimly burning. +</p> + +<p> +Only a trifling portion of the letters found their way into his Sandwich Island +chapters of ‘Roughing It’, five years later. They do, however, +reveal a sort of transition stage between the riotous florescence of the +Comstock and the mellowness of his later style. He was learning to see things +with better eyes, from a better point of view. It is not difficult to believe +that this literary change of heart was in no small measure due to the influence +of Anson Burlingame. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. 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