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diff --git a/old/2982.txt b/old/2982.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..53d4649 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/2982.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9669 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 1, Part 1, +1835-1866, by Albert Bigelow Paine + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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 www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 1, Part 1, 1835-1866 + The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens + +Author: Albert Bigelow Paine + +Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #2982] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY, *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + + +MARK TWAIN A BIOGRAPHY + +THE PERSONAL AND LITERARY LIFE OF SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS + +BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + + +VOLUME I, Part 1: 1835-1866 + + + +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 + + + +AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT + +Dear William Dean Howells, Joseph Hopkins Twichell, Joseph T. Goodman, +and other old friends of Mark Twain: + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Albert Bigelow Paine. + + + + PREFATORY NOTE + +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. + +"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." + +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. + + + + MARK TWAIN + + A BIOGRAPHY +I + +ANCESTORS + +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: + +"I guess this is where our line starts." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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: + +"It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed the field of my +personal experience in a long lifetime." + + + + +II + +THE FORTUNES OF JOHN AND JANE CLEMENS + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +III + +A HUMBLE BIRTHPLACE + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Come!--rush!--hurry!--don't wait for anything!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"He always seemed to me like some great being from another planet--never +quite of this race or kind." + +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. + +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,--[This honor has been claimed also +for Mrs. Millie Upton and a Mrs. Damrell. Probably all were present and +assisted.]--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. + +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.--[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."] + + + + +IV + +BEGINNING A LONG JOURNEY + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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: + +"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?" + +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: + +"YOU'VE got it!' and she tore him all to pieces!" + +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. + +"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." + +"How big was it, Uncle Ned?" + +"Oh, 'bout as big as your head, and I 'spect it's likely to come down dis +yere chimney 'most any time." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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. + +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: + +"You--if I have to hunt you again after dark, I will make you smell like +a burnt horn!" + +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. + + + + +V + +THE WAY OF FORTUNE + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +But John Quarles, who was present, laughed: + +"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." + +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.--[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.] + +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. + + + + +VI + +A NEW HOME + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +"We will struggle along somehow, Jane," he would say. "We will not throw +away the children's fortune." + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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!'" + +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. + +--[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.] + + + + +VII + +THE LITTLE TOWN OF HANNIBAL + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.--[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.]--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. + +"You gave me more uneasiness than any child I had," she said to him once, +in her old age. + +"I suppose you were afraid I wouldn't live," he suggested, in his +tranquil fashion. + +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. + +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. + +"Why," said the judge, aghast, "I never once thought of him after I left +him asleep." + +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. + + + + +VIII + +THE FARM + +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,--[Tabitha Quarles, now Mrs. Greening, of +Palmyra, Missouri, has supplied most of the material for this chapter.] +--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. + +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. + +Jane Clemens was not heavily concerned. + +"Sammy will pull through," she said; "he wasn't born to die that way." + +It is the slender constitution that bears the strain. "Sammy" did pull +through, and in a brief time was ready for fresh adventure. + +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. + +His tendency to mischief grew with this wide liberty, improved health, +and the encouragement of John Quarles's good-natured, fun-loving slaves. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +IX + +SCHOOL-DAYS + +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. + +"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." + +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." + +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. + +"You don't believe anything that child says, I hope." + +"Oh yes, I know his average. I discount him ninety per cent. The rest +is pure gold." At another time she said: "Sammy is a well of truth, but +you can't bring it all up in one bucket." + +This, however, is digression; the incidents may have happened somewhat +later. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Perhaps Miss Horr's sense of humor prompted forgiveness, but discipline +must be maintained. + +"Samuel Langhorne Clemens," she said (he had never heard it all strung +together in that ominous way), "I am ashamed of you! Jimmy Dunlap, go +and bring a switch for Sammy." And 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. + +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: + + MISS PAMELA CLEMENS + + Has won the love of her teacher and schoolmates by her amiable + deportment and faithful application to her various studies. + E. Horr, Teacher. + +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. + +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. + +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 balker'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. + +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: + +"What's the matter, Sammy; are you sick?" + +"No," he said, "but I don't believe in saying prayers any more, and I'm +never going to do it again." + +"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. + +"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." + +And so passed and ended Little Sam's first school-days. + + + + +X + +EARLY VICISSITUDE AND SORROW + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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: + +"Ma--[that was the Southern term]--make Sandy stop singing all the time. +It's awful." + +Tears suddenly came into his mother's eyes. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + +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 Sehns, 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. + +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. + +"I am not able to dig in the streets," he added, and Orion, who records +this, adds: + +"I can see yet the hopeless expression of his face." + +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. + +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. + +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."--['This house, in 1911, was bought by Mr. +and Mrs. George A. Mahan, and presented to Hannibal for a memorial +museum.]--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: + +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. + +"I command the peace!" he shouted, as he came up to them. + +No one paid the least attention. + +"I command the peace!" he shouted again, still louder, but with no +result. + +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. + +"I command the peace!" he said, for the third time, and struck a +considerably smarter blow. + +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. + + + + +XI + +DAYS OF EDUCATION + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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 warren 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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"Do you use terbacker?" the big girl had asked, meaning did he chew it. + +"No," he said, abashed at the confession. + +"Haw!" she cried to the other scholars; "here's a boy that can't chaw +terbacker." + +Degraded and ashamed, he tried to correct his fault, but it only made him +very ill; and he did not try again. + +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. + +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: + +"Yes, no matter what it is, I am always the one to get punished"; and his +mother would answer: + +"Well, Sam, if you didn't deserve it for that, you did for something +else." + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XII + +TOM SAWYER'S BAND + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Look out, boys, she's coming!" + +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. + +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. Selins'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, Selins's clerk, said: + +"Look here, Selms, there is something wrong about this. That boy has +been selling us coonskins all the afternoon." + +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. + +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: + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.--[Much of the detail in this chapter was furnished +to the writer by John Briggs shortly before his death in 1907.]--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. + +This is the real story: + +A slave ran off from Monroe County, Missouri, and got across the river +into Illinois. Ben used to fish and hunt over there in the swamps, and +one day found him. It was considered a most worthy act in those days to +return a runaway slave; in fact, it was a crime not to do it. Besides, +there was for this one a reward of fifty dollars, a fortune to ragged +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XIII + +THE GENTLER SIDE + +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. + +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. + +"I believe I was as miserable as a grown man could be," he said once, +remembering. + +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. + +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 +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.]--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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + + Cross by name and cross by nature + Cross jumped over an Irish potato. + +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. + +"Oh, pshaw!" said John. "I wouldn't be afraid to do it. + +"I dare you to do it," said Sam. + +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. + +"Did you do that?" he asked, ominously. + +It was a time for truth. + +"Yes, sir," said John. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XIV + +THE PASSING OF JOHN CLEMENS + +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. + +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: + +"I believe if I had stayed in Tennessee I might have been worth twenty +thousand dollars to-day." + +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. + +"Cling to the land," he whispered. "Cling to the land, and wait. Let +nothing beguile it away from you." + +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. + +"Let me die," he said. + +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. + + + + +XV + +A YOUNG BEN FRANKLIN + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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----" + +He turned, his eyes streaming with tears, and flung himself into her +arms. + +"I will promise anything," he sobbed, "if you won't make me go to school! +Anything!" + +His mother held him for a moment, thinking, then she said: + +"No, Sammy; you need not go to school any more. Only promise me to be a +better boy. Promise not to break my heart." + +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. + +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: + +"Sam!" she said. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + + If your memory extends so far back, you will recall a little sandy- + haired boy--[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.]--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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XVI + +THE TURNING-POINT + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"De hain eet flee whoop in de hayer." + +"Dere!" he said, triumphantly; "you know dose vord?" + +The students looked at each other helplessly. + +The teacher repeated the sentence, and again they were helpless when he +asked if they recognized it. + +Then in despair he showed them the book. It was an English primer, and +the sentence was: + +"The hen, it flies up in the air." + +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: + +"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. + +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: + +"You mustn't cheat that boy." And the cheating stopped. When it didn't, +there was a combat, with consequences. + + + + +XVII + +THE HANNIBAL "JOURNAL" + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +Orion was a gentle, accommodating soul, but he lacked force and +independence. + +"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." + +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: + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"For two cents I'd get out there and knock their heads off." + +"You wouldn't dare to do it," Sam said, purringly. + +This was wormwood to Jim. He was really a brave spirit. + +"I would too," he said, "and I will if you say that again." + +"Why, Jim, of course you wouldn't dare to go out there. You might catch +cold." + +"You wait and see," said Jim Wolfe. + +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. + +"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?" + +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. + +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. + + + + +XVIII + +THE BEGINNING OF A LITERARY LIFE + +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. + +"I was walking backward," he said, "not seeing where I stepped." + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"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. + +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.--[In Mark Twain's sketch "My +First Literary Venture" he has set down with characteristic embroideries +some account of this early authorship.] + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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: + +"I want you to take hold of the other end of this, Sam," she said, "and +make me a promise." + +If one might have a true picture of that scene: the shin, 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. + +"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." + +He repeated the oath after her, and she kissed him. + +"Remember that, Sam, and write to us," she said. + +"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." + + + + +XIX + +IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FRANKLIN + +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. + +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. + + From the gallery (second floor) you have a glorious sight--the flags + of the different countries represented, the lofty dome, glittering + jewelry, gaudy tapestry, etc., with the busy crowd passing to and + fro 'tis a perfect fairy palace--beautiful beyond description. + + The machinery department is on the main floor, but I cannot + enumerate any of it on account of the lateness of the hour (past 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. + + 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! + + 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 .... + + (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. + + Truly your brother, SAM + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + + 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 . . . . + + 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.". . . + + 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. + +"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. + +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. + +"My efforts were not received with approval," was all he ever said of it +afterward. + +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: + +"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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +There is a flavor of the 'Innocents' about it; then a little further +along: + + 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 . . . . + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + + How do you like "free soil"?--I would like amazingly to see a good + old-fashioned negro. My love to all. + + Truly your brother, SAM + +In the letter to Pamela he is clearly homesick. + +"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." + +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: + + "An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"You, Sam! You, Sam!" cried Jane Clemens. "Behave yourself," for she +was wary of a gun. + +Then he had had his joke and gave himself into his mother's arms. + + + + +XX + +KEOKUK DAYS + +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. + +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: + + MY DEAR BURROUGH,--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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +Isbell now adopted new tactics. He came up very pleasantly and said: + +"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." + +Sam Clemens regarded him with mild surprise. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"What will you have, Sam?" he asked. + +"Come in, Ed; Henry's asleep, and I am in trouble. I want somebody to +light my pipe." + +"Why don't you get up and light it yourself?" Brownell asked. + +"I would, only I knew you'd be along in a few minutes and would do it for +me." + +Brownell scratched the necessary match, stooped down, and applied it. + +"What are you reading, Sam?" he asked. + +"Oh, nothing much--a so-called funny book--one of these days I'll write a +funnier book than that, myself." + +Brownell laughed. + +"No, you won't, Sam," he said. "You are too lazy ever to write a book." + +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." + +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. + +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. + +Orion Clemens records how his brother undertook to teach the German +apprentice music. + +"There was an old guitar in the office and Sam taught Fritz a song +beginning: + + "Grasshopper sitting on a sweet-potato vine, + Turkey came along and yanked him from behind." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + 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, + --[Orion printed two editions of the directory. This was probably + the second one.]--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 . . . + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXI + +SCOTCHMAN NAMED MACFARLANE + +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 along 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.--[Supplied by Thomas Rees, of +the Springfield (Illinois) Register, son of George Rees named.] + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXII + +THE OLD CALL OF THE RIVER + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Horace Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones, then a man of thirty-two, still +living (1910) and at the wheel,--[The writer of this memoir interviewed +Mr. Bixby personally, and has followed his phrasing throughout.]--was +looking out over the bow at the head of Island No. 35 when he heard a +slow, pleasant voice say: + +"Good morning." + +Bixby was a clean-cut, direct, courteous man. + +"Good morning, sir," he said, briskly, without looking around. + +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. + +"How would you like a young man to learn the river?" he said. + +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. + +"I wouldn't like it. Cub pilots are more trouble than they're worth. A +great deal more trouble than profit." + +The applicant was not discouraged. + +"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." + +Bixby kept his eye on the river; but a note of interest crept into his +voice. + +"What makes you pull your words that way?" ("pulling" being the river +term for drawling), he asked. + +The young man had taken a seat on the visitors' bench. + +"You'll have to ask my mother," he said, more slowly than ever. "She +pulls hers, too." + +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. + +"Do you know the Bowen boys?" he asked--"pilots in the St. Louis and New +Orleans trade?" + +"I know them well--all three of them. William Bowen did his first +steering for me; a mighty good boy, 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." + +"Old schoolmates of mine in Hannibal. Sam and Will especially were my +chums." + +"Come over and stand by the side of me," he said. "What is your name?" + +The applicant told him, and the two stood looking at the sunlit water. + +"Do you drink?" + +"No." + +"Do you gamble?" + +"No, Sir." + +"Do you swear?" + +"Not for amusement; only under pressure." + +"Do you chew?" + +"No, sir, never; but I must smoke." + +"Did you ever do any steering?" was Bixby's next question. + +"I have steered everything on the river but a steamboat, I guess." + +"Very well; take the wheel and see what you can do with a steamboat. Keep +her as she is--toward that lower cottonwood, snag." + +Bixby had a sore foot and was glad of a little relief. He sat down on +the bench and kept a careful eye on the course. By and by he said: + +"There is just one way that I would take a young man to learn the river: +that is, for money." + +"What do you charge?" + +"Five hundred dollars, and I to be at no expense whatever." + +In those days pilots were allowed to carry a learner, or "cub," board +free. Mr. Bixby meant that he was to be at no expense in port, or for +incidentals. His terms looked rather discouraging. + +"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." + +Bixby dissented. + +"No; I don't want any unimproved real estate. I have too much already." + +Sam reflected upon the amount he could probably borrow from Pamela's +husband without straining his credit. + +"Well, then, I'll give you one hundred dollars cash and the rest when I +earn it." + +Something about this young man had won Horace Bixby's heart. His slow, +pleasant speech; his unhurried, quiet manner 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. + +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. + + + + +XXIII + +THE SUPREME SCIENCE + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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: + + MERIWEATHER'S BEND + + 1/4 less 3--[Depth of water. One-quarter less than three + fathoms.]----run shape of upper bar and go into the low place in + willows about 200(ft.) lower down than last year. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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: + + One day he turned on me suddenly with this settler: + + "What is the shape of Walnut Bend?" + + He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of + protoplasm. I 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: + + "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." + + "How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?" + + "How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know the + shape of it. You can't see it." + + "Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling + variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well + as I know the shape of the front hall at home?" + + "On my honor, you've got to know them better than any man ever did + know the shapes of the halls in his own house." + + "I wish I was dead!" + + "Now, I don't want to discourage you, but----" + + "Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time." + + "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----" + + "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." + + "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." + + "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?" + + Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W. came in to take the watch, and + he said: + + "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." + + 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. + + 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! + + 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: + + "How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-The- + Wall, trip before last?" + + I considered this an outrage. I said: + + "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?" + + "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." + + When I came to myself again, I said: + + "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." + + "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." + +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. + + + + +XXIV + +THE RIVER CURRICULUM + +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. + +He acquired a vast knowledge of human character. He says: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem, + A long time ago. + +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. + +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. + +"Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?" + +"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. + + 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. + +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." + +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. + +"Here," he would shout, "where are you going now? Pull her down! Pull +her down! Don't you hear me? Dod-derned mud-cat!" + +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. + +"Here, where are you heading for now?" he yelled. "What in nation are +you steerin' at, anyway? Deyned numskull!" + +"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." + +"Get away from that wheel! and get outen this pilothouse!" yelled Brown. +"You ain't fit to become no pilot!" + +Which was what Sam wanted. Any temporary relief from the carping tyranny +of Brown was welcome. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + + + + +XXV + +LOVE-MAKING AND ADVENTURE + +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. + +"I was not four inches from that girl's elbow during our waking hours for +the next three days." + +Then came a sudden interruption: Zeb Leavenworth came flying aft +shouting: + +"The Pennsylvania is backing out." + +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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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: + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Didn't Henry tell you to land here?" + +"No, sir." + +Captain. Klinefelter turned to Sam: + +"Didn't you hear him?" + +"Yes, sir." + +Brown said: "Shut your mouth! You never heard anything of the kind." + +By and by Henry came into the pilot-house, unaware of any trouble. Brown +set upon him in his ugliest manner. + +"Here, why didn't you tell me we had got to land at that plantation?" he +demanded. + +Henry was always polite, always gentle. + +"I did tell you, Mr. Brown." + +"It's a lie." + +Sam Clemens could stand Brown's abuse of himself, but not of Henry. He +said: "You lie yourself. He did tell you." + +Brown was dazed for a moment and then he shouted: + +"I'll attend to your case in half a minute!" and ordered Henry out of the +pilot-house. + +The boy had started, when Brown suddenly seized him by the collar and +struck him in the face.--[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: +"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."]--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. + +"Get out of this here pilot-house," he raged. + +But his subordinate was not afraid of him now. + +"You should leave out the 'here,'" he drawled, critically. "It is +understood, and not considered good English form." + +"Don't you give me none of your airs," yelled Brown. "I ain't going to +stand nothing more from you." + +"You should say, 'Don't give me any of your airs,'" Sam said, sweetly, +"and the last half of your sentence almost defies correction." + +A group of passengers and white-aproned servants, assembled on the deck +forward, applauded the victor. + +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: + + "Did you strike him first?" Captain Klinefelter asked. + + "Yes, sir." + + "What with?" + + "A stool, sir." + + "Hard?" + + "Middling, sir." + + "Did it knock him down?" + + "He--he fell, sir." + + "Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?" + + "Yes, sir." + + "What did you do?" + + "Pounded him, sir." + + "Pounded him?" + + "Yes, sir." + + "Did you pound him much--that is, severely?" + + "One might call it that, sir, maybe." + + "I am 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."--["Life on + the Mississippi."] + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"In case of accident, whatever you do, don't lose your head--the +passengers will do that. Rush for the hurricane deck and to the +life-boat, and obey the mate's orders. When the boat is launched, help +the women and children into it. Don't get in yourself. The river is +only a mile wide. You can swim ashore easily enough." + +It was good manly advice, but it yielded a long harvest of sorrow. + + + + +XXVI + +THE TRAGEDY OF THE "PENNSYLVANIA" + +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: + +"The Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis, at Ship Island! One +hundred and fifty lives lost!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + MEMPHIS, TENN., Friday, June 18, 1858. + + DEAR SISTER MOLLIE,--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. + + 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. + + Pray for me, Mollie, and pray for my poor sinless brother. + Your unfortunate brother, + + SAML. L. CLEMENS. + + P. S.--I got here two days after Henry. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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: + +"I have no way of measuring. I don't know how much an eighth of a grain +would be." + +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. + +"If you have studied drugs," he said, "you ought to be able to judge an +eighth of a grain of morphine." + +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. + +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. + +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.--[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.] + +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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXVII + +THE PILOT + +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.--[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]--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. + +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. + +"Not only was he a pilot, but a good one." These are Horace Bixby's +words, and he added: + +"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." + +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: + + 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! + + 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. + +Orion and his wife had returned to Keokuk by this time, waiting for +something in the way of a business opportunity. + +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. + + 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?" + + 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. + +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. + +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. + + 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. + +Another riverman of those days has recalled a story he heard Sam Clemens +tell: + + We were speaking of presence of mind in accidents--we were always + talking of such things; then he said: + + "Boys, I had great presence of mind once. It was at a fire. An old + man leaned out of a four-story building calling for help. Everybody + in the crowd below looked up, but nobody did anything. The ladders + weren't long enough. Nobody had any presence of mind--nobody but + me. I came to the rescue. I yelled for a rope. When it came I + threw the old man the end of it. He caught it and I told him to tie + it around his waist. He did so, and I pulled him down." + +This was 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." + +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. + +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. + +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.--[See Appendix B, +at the end of the last volume.] + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXVIII + +PILOTING AND PROPHECY + +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. + +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. + +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. + + 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.... + + Night--didn't run either 77 or 76 towheads--8 ft. bank on main shore + Ozark Chute.... + +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." + +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: + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"'Sam,' he said, 'let me take the wheel. Maybe I have been over this +place since you have.' + +"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." + +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. + +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: + + HOW TO TAKE LIFE.--Take it just as though it was--as it is--an + earnest, vital, and important affair. Take it as though you were + born to the task of performing a merry part in it--as though the + world had awaited for your coming. Take it as though it was a grand + opportunity to do and achieve, to carry forward great and good + schemes; to help and cheer a suffering, weary, it may be + heartbroken, brother. Now and then a man stands aside from the + crowd, labors earnestly, steadfastly, confidently, and straightway + becomes famous for wisdom, intellect, skill, greatness of some sort. + The world wonders, admires, idolizes, and it only illustrates what + others may do if they take hold of life with a purpose. The + miracle, or the power that elevates the few, is to be found in their + industry, application, and perseverance under the promptings of a + brave, determined spirit. + +The old note-book contains no record of disasters. Horace Bixby, who +should know, has declared: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + + 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'. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + + 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: + + '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. + + 'S. L. C.' Which proves nothing. + + '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. + + 'S. L. C.' You flatter well, Madame. + + '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. + + 'S. L. C.' Which was? + + '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.... + + 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. + + 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? + + 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. + SAM. + +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. + + + + +XXIX + +THE END OF PILOTING + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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." + +He went up the river as a passenger on a steamer named the Uncle Sam. 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 basely escaped the blockade. +At Cairo, Illinois, they saw soldiers drilling--troops later commanded by +Grant. The Uncle Sam 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. + +"Good Lord Almighty! Sam;" he said, "what do they mean by that?" + +Clemens stepped to the wheel and brought the boat around. "I guess they +want us to wait a minute, Zeb," he said. + +They were examined and passed. It was the last steamboat to make the +trip from New Orleans to St. Louis. Mark Twain's pilot-days were over. +He would have grieved had he known this fact. + +"I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since," he +long afterward declared, "and I took a measureless pride in it." + +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. + + + + +XXX + +THE SOLDIER + +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. + +--[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.] + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +That settled it. Most of them knew Tom Harris, and they regarded his +neglect of them as perfidy. They broke camp without further ceremony. + +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. + +"Ah," said Clemens, as he mopped his face, "do you know that little devil +waded all the way across?" + +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: + +"You're secesh, ain't you?" + +They acknowledged that they were defenders of the cause and that they +wanted to buy provisions. The request seemed to inflame her. + +"Provisions!" she screamed. "Provisions for secesh, and my husband a +colonel in the Union Army. You get out of here!" + +She reached for a hickory hoop-pole 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +--[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.] + + + + +XXXI + +OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY + +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. + +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. + + 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.'--['Roughing It'.]-- + +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." + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +XXXII + +THE PIONEER + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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." + + 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. + + 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." + +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. + +The Clemens brothers took lodging with a genial Irishwoman, Mrs. Murphy, +a New York retainer of Governor Nye, who boarded the camp-followers. +--[The Mrs. O'Flannigan of 'Roughing It'.]--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. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"It never occurred to us, for one thing; and, besides, it was built to +hold the ground, and that was enough. We did not wish to strain it." + +They 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. + + 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!" + +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: + + 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. + +Further along in the same letter his own overflowing Seller's optimism +develops. + + 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. + +This letter bears date of October 25th, and from it we gather that a +certain interest in mining claims had by this time developed. + + 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. + + 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. + +He refers to Pamela's two little children, his niece Annie and Baby Sam, +--[Samuel E. Moffett, in later life a well-known journalist and editor.] +--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. + + + + +XXXIII + +THE PROSPECTOR + +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. + +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. + + 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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + + 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.--[S. L. C. to his mother. Published in + the Keokuk (Iowa) Gate city.]-- + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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."--['The Innocents Abroad.'] + +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. + +In the letter which Samuel Clemens wrote home he tells of what they found +in Unionville. + + "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. + +"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. + +"One week of this satisfied me. I resigned." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXXIV + +TERRITORIAL CHARACTERISTICS + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +He pauses at this point for a paragraph of self-analysis--characteristic +and crystal-clear. + + 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? + + But-but + In the bright lexicon of youth, + There is no such word as Fail-- + and I'll prove it! + +Whereupon, he lets himself go again, full-tilt: + + 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. + +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. + +He closes at last with a bit of pleasantry for his mother. + + 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? + + + + +XXXV + +THE MINER + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + +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: + + 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.... + + Man named Gebhart shot here yesterday while trying to defend a claim + on Last Chance Hill. Expect he will die. + + These mills here are not worth a d--n--except Clayton's--and it is + not in full working trim yet. + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + + 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.... + + 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 . . . . + +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: + + 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.... + + 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. + + 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. + + What the devil does a man want with any more feet when he owns in + the invincible bomb-proof "Monitor"? + +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. + +"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. + +"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." + +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?" + +This is midsummer, and snow still interferes with the work. One feels +the dreary uselessness of the quest. + +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. + +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." + +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. + + + + +XXXVI + +LAST MINING DAYS + +It was late in July when he wrote: + + 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. + +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--[Ella +Sterling Cummins, author of The Story of the Files, etc]--declares: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + +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. + +"That is the sort of thing we want," he said. "Write to him, Barstow, +and ask him if he wants to come up here." + +Barstow wrote, offering twenty-five dollars a week, a tempting sum. This +was at the end of July, 1862. + +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 +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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? + + + + +XXXVII + +THE NEW ESTATE + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +It was the master of the world's widest estate come to claim his kingdom: + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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--[Named for its discoverer, Henry T. P. +Comstock, a half-crazy miner, who realized very little from his +stupendous find.]--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.--[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.]--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. + +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. + +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.--[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"]--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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXXVIII + +ONE OF THE "STAFF" + +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.--["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.]--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. + +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 jolt 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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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: + +"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate +circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer." + +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. + +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. + +Now, amoung 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: + +"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." + +The little clergyman caught his breath. + +"Maybe I should, Mr. Clemens," he replied, "but I should try to say, +'Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.'" + +"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." + +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. + +"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?" + +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." + + + + +XXXIX + +PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY + +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: + +"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." + +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. + + By Nebo's lonely mountain, + On this side Jordan's wave, + In a vale in the land of Moab, + There lies a lonely grave. + + And no man knows that sepulchre, + And no man saw it e'er, + For the angels of God, upturned the sod, + And laid the dead man there. + +Another stanza that he cared for almost as much was the one beginning: + + And had he not high honor + --The hill-side for a pall, + To lie in state while angels wait + With stars for tapers tall, + And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes, + Over his bier to wave, + And God's own hand in that lonely land, + To lay him in the grave? + +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: + +"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." + +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." + +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. + + + + +XL + +"MARK TWAIN" + +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 Mask 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Rice and Clemens, it should be said, though rivals, were the best of +friends, and there was never any real animosity between them. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Joe," he said, to Goodman, "I want to sign my articles. I want to be +identified to a wider audience." + +"All right, Sam. What name do you want to use 'Josh'?" + +"No, I want to sign them 'Mark Twain.' It is an old river term, a +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." + +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: + +"Very well, Sam," he said, "that sounds like a good name." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XLI + +THE CREAM OF COMSTOCK HUMOR + +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. + +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: + +"Nobody ever gives me a meerschaum pipe," he said, plaintively. "Don't I +deserve one yet?" + +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: + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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: + +"'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?' + +"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. + +"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?' + +"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: + +"'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.' + +"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: + +"'Is that another of those bogus old pipes?' + +"He accepted it, though, and general peace was restored. One day, soon +after, he said to me: + +"'Steve, do you know that I think that that bogus pipe smokes about as +well as the good one?'" + +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. + +"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!" + +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: + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + +"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: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"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." + +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." + +"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." + +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. + +--[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.]-- + + + + +XLII +REPORTORIAL DAYS. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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." + +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: + + 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. + +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: + +"Put in my washing, and it costs me one hundred dollars a month to live." + +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. + + 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]--. + +The diatribe closed with a really graceful poem, and the whole was no +doubt highly regarded by the Enterprise readers. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +This was Mark's opportunity. He gave an account of Dan's disaster; then, +commenting, he said: + + 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. + +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: + +"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!" + +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.' + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +Such things came out of the Comstock; such things spring out of every +turbulent frontier. + + + + +XLIII + +ARTEMUS WARD + +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. + + [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.] + +A portion of a playful letter to his mother, written from the springs, +still exists. + + 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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Slave, slave," said Artemus. "Come out and let me banish care from +you." + +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: + +"I give you Upper Canada." + +The company rose, drank the toast in serious silence; then Goodman said: + +"Of course, Artemus, it's all right, but why did you give us Upper +Canada?" + +"Because I don't want it myself," said Ward, gravely. + +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: + +"I'm preparing a joke, Artemus, but I'm keeping it for the present." + +It was near daybreak when Ward at last called for the bill. It was two +hundred and thirty-seven dollars. + +"What"' exclaimed Artemus. + +"That's my joke." said Goodman. + +"But I was only exclaiming because it was not twice as much," returned +Ward. + +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: + +"I feel glorious. I feel like walking on the roofs." + +Virginia was built on the steep hillside, and the eaves of some of the +houses almost touched the ground behind them. + +"There is your chance, Artemus," Goodman said, pointing to a row of these +houses all about of a height. + +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: + +"Wait a minute. What are you going to do?" + +"I'm going to shoot those burglars," he said. + +"Don't for your life. Those are not burglars. That's Mark Twain and +Artemus Ward." + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, as +all others must or rather cannot be, as it were." + +Then reflectively he adds: + +"Some of the finest intellects in the world have been blunted by liquor." + +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. + + + + +XLIV + +GOVERNOR OF THE "THIRD HOUSE" + +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. + +"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." + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + +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. + +The two Houses of the last territorial legislature of Nevada assembled +January 12, 1864.--[Nevada became a State October 31, 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." + +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: + + CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864. + + GOV. MARK TWAIN, 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,--[ There had been + no former message. This was regarded as a great joke.]--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. + S. PIXLEY, + G. A. SEARS, + Trustees. + + CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864. + + GENTLEMEN,--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. + Respectfully, + MARK TWAIN. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Well," he sand, "why am I like the Pacific Ocean?" + +Several guesses were made, but none satisfied him. Finally all gave it +up. + +"Tell us, Mark, why are you like the Pacific Ocean?" + +"I don't know," he drawled. "I was just asking for information." + +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: + +"For God's sake go to-night." + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +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. + +I took it over to show to Miss Menken the actress, Orpheus C. Ken's wife. +She is a literary cuss herself. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + + + + +XLV + +A COMSTOCK DUEL + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + + 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. + + 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: + + "What's that, Steve?" + + "Why," I said, "that's Laud. His seconds are practising him over + there." + + 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. + + "Mark," I said, "let me have that pistol. I'll show you how to + shoot." + + 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. + + "Who did that?" asked Laird's second. + + "Sam," I said. + + "How far off was it?" + + "Oh, about thirty yards." + + "Can he do it again?" + + "Of course," I said; "every time. He could do it twice that far." + + Laud's second turned to his principal. + + "Laird," he said, "you don't want to fight that man. It's just like + suicide. You'd better settle this thing, now." + + 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. + + "Fight! H--l, no! I am not going to be murdered by that d--d + desperado." + + 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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XLVI + +GETTING SETTLED IN SAN FRANCISCO + +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'. + +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. + +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,"--[L. P. Ward; well known as an athlete in +San Francisco. He lost his mind and fatally shot himself in 1903.] +--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."--[S. L. C., 1906.]--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. + +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: + +"What in the nation is that noise" + +Gillis's pretended sleep and the ticking would continue. + +Clemens would sit up in bed, fling aside his book, and swear violently. + +"Steve, what is that d--d noise?" he would say. + +Steve would pretend to rouse sleepily. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +At a place on Minna Street they lived with a private family. At first +Clemens was delighted. + +"Just look at it, Steve," he said. "What a nice, quiet place. Not a +thing to disturb us." + +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. + +"Came here, Steve," he said. "Come here and kill him. I'm so chilled +through I can't get a bead on him." + +"Sam," said Steve, "don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily +kill him at that range with your profanity." + +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. + +We gather that they moved, on an average, about once a month. A home +letter of September 25, 1864, says: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +XLVII + +BOHEMIAN DAYS + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + + It was fearful drudgery-soulless drudgery--and almost destitute of + interest. It was an awful slavery for a lazy man. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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,--[The +Golden Era, California's first literary publication, was founded by +Rollin M. Daggett and J. McDonough Foard in 1852.]--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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XLVIII + +THE REFUGE OF THE HILLS + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"You can never afford to publish that," the foreman said to, Goodman. + +"Let it all go in, every word," Goodman answered. "If Mark can stand it, +I can!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +"It wasn't my fault," he ventured at last; "it was Billy Gillis's fault." + +"No such thing. You know better. Mr. Gillis has been here often. It +was you." + +"But do you realize, ma'am, how tired and hungry we are? Haven't you got +a bite for us to eat?" + +"No, sir, not a bite--for such as you." + +The offender's eyes, wandering about the room, spied something in a +corner. + +"Isn't that a guitar over there?" he asked. + +"Yes, sir, it is; what of it?" + +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. + +"I suppose you are just like all young folks," she said. "I was young +myself once. While you sing I'll get some supper." + +She left the door to the kitchen open so that she could hear, and cooked +whatever she could find for the belated party. + + + + +XLIX + +THE JUMPING FROG + +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 lunax +rainbow is one of the things people seldom see. He thought it an omen of +good-fortune. + +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. + + January 27. Same old diet--same old weather--went out to the + pocket-claim--had to rush back. + +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,--[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.]--a solemn, fat-witted person, who dozed by the +stove, or old 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: + +"I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other +frog," and perhaps the other would answer: + +"I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog I'd bet you." + +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. + +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: + +"Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work is too disagreeable." + +Gillis had just taken out a panful of dirt. + +"Bring one more pail, Sam," he pleaded. + +"Oh, hell, Jim, I won't do it; I'm freezing!" + +"Just one more pail, Sam," he pleaded. + +"No, sir, not a drop, not if I knew there were a million dollars in that +pan." + +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. + +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." + +In Mark Twain's old note-book occurs a memorandum of the frog story--a +mere casual entry of its main features: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +L + +BACK TO THE TUMULT + +FROM the note-book: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + Gone, gone, gone + --Gone to his endeavor; + Gone, gone, gone, + Forever and forever. + +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.'" + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + + Tom Maguire, + Roused to ire, + Lighted on McDougal; + Tore his coat, + Clutched his throat, + And split him in the bugle. + + For shame! oh, fie! + Maguire, why + Will you thus skyugle? + Why curse and swear, + And rip and tear + The innocent McDougal? + + Of bones bereft, + Almost, you've left + Vestvali, gentle Jew gal; + And now you've smashed + And almost hashed + The form of poor McDougall + +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'. + + + + +LI + +THE CORNER-STONE + +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. + +"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."--[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.]--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. + +"Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog"--[This was the original title.] +--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. + +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: + + I do not know what to write; my life is so uneventful. I wish I was + back there piloting up and down the river again. Verily, all is + vanity and little worth--save piloting. + + To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused + for thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out + a villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on! "Jim Smiley and + His Jumping Frog"--a squib which would never have been written but + to please Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too late to + appear in his book. + + 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. + +This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco +Alta: + + "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." + + 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. + +It is difficult to judge the jumping Frog story to-day. It has the +intrinsic fundamental value of one of AEsop's Fables.--[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.]--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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +LII + +A COMMISSION TO THE SANDWICH ISLANDS + +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. + +If the Ajax 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. + +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: + +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. + +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." + +So it is: man proposes, while fate, undisturbed, spins serenely on. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + Oh, islands there are on the face of the deep + Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep, + +he quotes in his note-book, and adds: + + 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! + +And in another place: + + They live 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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." + +'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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +LIII + +ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE "HORNET" DISASTER + +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. + +The Ajax 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, +--[Edward L. Burlingame, now for many years editor of Scribner's +Magazine.]--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. + +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: + +"California is proud of Mark Twain, and some day the American people will +be, too, no doubt." + +There has seldom been a more accurate prophecy. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +Clemens never forgot that advice. He did not always observe it, but he +rarely failed to realize its gospel. Burlingame urged him to travel. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"But there is a Scriptural command for you to go." + +"If you can quote one I'll obey it," said Clemens. + +"Very well. The Bible says, 'If any man require thee to walk a mile, go +with him, Twain.'" + +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. + +Under date of July 4 (1866), Mark Twain's Sandwich Island note-book says: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco, and the note-book entry +of that day says: + + 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! + +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. + +"How much do you think it ought to be, Mark?" James Anthony asked. + +"Oh, I'm a modest man; I don't want the whole Union office. Call it $100 +a column." + +There was a general laugh. The bill was made out at that figure, and he +took it to the business office for payment. + +"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."--["My Debut +as a Literary Person."--Collected works.]--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: + + The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, + + The turf with their bayonets turning, + And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold, + And our lanterns dimly burning. + +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. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 1, Part +1, 1835-1866, by Albert Bigelow Paine + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY, *** + +***** This file should be named 2982.txt or 2982.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/8/2982/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions 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. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by David Widger, <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY + +By Albert Bigelow Paine + + + + +VOLUME I, Part 1: 1835-1866 + + + + + + MARK TWAIN + A BIOGRAPHY + THE PERSONAL AND LITERARY LIFE OF + SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS + BY + ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + + + + + 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 + + + + + + + AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT + +Dear William Dean Howells, Joseph Hopkins Twichell, Joseph T. Goodman, +and other old friends of Mark Twain: + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Albert Bigelow Paine. + + + + + + + PREFATORY NOTE + +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. + +"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." + +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, accountbooks, 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. + + + + + + MARK TWAIN + + A BIOGRAPHY + + +I + +ANCESTORS + +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: + +"I guess this is where our line starts." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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: + +"It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed the field of my +personal experience in a long lifetime." + + + + +II + +THE FORTUNES OF JOHN AND JANE CLEMENS + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +III + +A HUMBLE BIRTHPLACE + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Come!--rush!--hurry!--don't wait for anything!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"He always seemed to me like some great being from another planet--never +quite of this race or kind." + +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. + +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, --[This honor has been claimed also +for Mrs. Millie Upton and a Mrs. Damrell. Probably all were present and +assisted.]--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. + +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. --[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."] + + + + +IV + +BEGINNING A LONG JOURNEY + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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: + +"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?" + +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: + +"YOU'VE got it!' and she tore him all to pieces!" + +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. + +"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." + +"How big was it, Uncle Ned?" + +"Oh, 'bout as big as your head, and I 'spect it's likely to come down dis +yere chimney 'most any time." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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. + +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: + +"You--if I have to hunt you again after dark, I will make you smell like +a burnt horn!" + +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. + + + + +V + +THE WAY OF FORTUNE + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +But John Quarles, who was present, laughed: + +"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." + +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. --[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.] + +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. + + + + +VI + +A NEW HOME + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +"We will struggle along somehow, Jane," he would say. "We will not throw +away the children's fortune." + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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!'" + +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. + +--[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.] + + + + +VII + +THE LITTLE TOWN OF HANNIBAL + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. --[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.]-- + +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. + +"You gave me more uneasiness than any child I had," she said to him once, +in her old age. + +"I suppose you were afraid I wouldn't live," he suggested, in his +tranquil fashion. + +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. + +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. + +"Why," said the judge, aghast, "I never once thought of him after I left +him asleep." + +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. + + + + +VIII + +THE FARM + +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, --[Tabitha Quarles, now Mrs. Greening, of +Palmyra, Missouri, has supplied most of the material for this chapter.]-- +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. + +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. + +Jane Clemens was not heavily concerned. + +"Sammy will pull through," she said; "he wasn't born to die that way." + +It is the slender constitution that bears the strain. "Sammy" did pull +through, and in a brief time was ready for fresh adventure. + +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. + +His tendency to mischief grew with this wide liberty, improved health, +and the encouragement of John Quarles's good-natured, fun-loving slaves. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +IX + +SCHOOL-DAYS + +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. + +"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." + +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." + +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. + +"You don't believe anything that child says, I hope." + +"Oh yes, I know his average. I discount him ninety per cent. The rest +is pure gold." At another time she said: " Sammy is a well of truth, but +you can't bring it all up in one bucket." + +This, however, is digression; the incidents may have happened somewhat +later. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Perhaps Miss Horr's sense of humor prompted forgiveness, but discipline +must be maintained. + +"Samuel Langhorne Clemens," she said (he had never heard it all strung +together in that ominous way), "I am ashamed of you! Jimmy Dunlap, go +and bring a switch for Sammy." And 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. + +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: + + MISS PAMELA CLEMENS + + Has won the love of her teacher and schoolmates by her amiable + deportment and faithful application to her various studies. + E. Horr, Teacher. + +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. + +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. + +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 balker'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. + +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: + +"What's the matter, Sammy; are you sick?" + +"No," he said, "but I don't believe in saying prayers any more, and I'm +never going to do it again." + +"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. + +"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." + +And so passed and ended Little Sam's first school-days. + + + + +X + +EARLY VICISSITUDE AND SORROW + +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: + +"Kind-hearted and compassionate as she was, I think she was not conscious +that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarranted ursurpation. 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." + +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. + +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: + +"Ma --[that was the Southern term]--, make Sandy stop singing all the +time. It's awful." + +Tears suddenly came into his mother's eyes. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + +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 Sehns, 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. + +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. + +"I am not able to dig in the streets," he added, and Orion, who records +this, adds: + +"I can see yet the hopeless expression of his face." + +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. + +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. + +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." --['This house, in 1911, was bought by +Mr. and Mrs. George A. Mahan, and presented to Hannibal for a memorial +museum.]-- 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: + +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. + +"I command the peace!" he shouted, as he came up to them. + +No one paid the least attention. + +"I command the peace!" he shouted again, still louder, but with no +result. + +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. + +"I command the peace!" he said, for the third time, and struck a +considerably smarter blow. + +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. + + + + +XI + +DAYS OF EDUCATION + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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 warren 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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"Do you use terbacker?" the big girl had asked, meaning did he chew it. + +"No," he said, abashed at the confession. + +"Haw!" she cried to the other scholars; "here's a boy that can't chaw +terbacker." + +Degraded and ashamed, he tried to correct his fault, but it only made him +very ill; and he did not try again. + +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. + +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: + +"Yes, no matter what it is, I am always the one to get punished"; and his +mother would answer: + +"Well, Sam, if you didn't deserve it for that, you did for something +else." + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XII + +TOM SAWYER'S BAND + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Look out, boys, she's coming!" + +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. + +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. Selins'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, Selins's clerk, said: + +"Look here, Selms, there is something wrong about this. That boy has +been selling us coonskins all the afternoon." + +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. + +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: + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. --[Much of the detail in this chapter was furnished +to the writer by John Briggs shortly before his death in 1907.]-- 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. + +This is the real story: + +A slave ran off from Monroe County, Missouri, and got across the river +into Illinois. Ben used to fish and hunt over there in the swamps, and +one day found him. It was considered a most worthy act in those days to +return a runaway slave; in fact, it was a crime not to do it. Besides, +there was for this one a reward of fifty dollars, a fortune to ragged +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XIII + +THE GENTLER SIDE + +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. + +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. + +"I believe I was as miserable as a grown man could be," he said once, +remembering. + +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. + +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 +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.]-- 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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + + Cross by name and cross by nature + Cross jumped over an Irish potato. + +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. + +"Oh, pshaw!" said John. "I wouldn't be afraid to do it. + +"I dare you to do it," said Sam. + +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. + +"Did you do that?" he asked, ominously. + +It was a time for truth. + +"Yes, sir," said John. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XIV + +THE PASSING OF JOHN CLEMENS + +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. + +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: + +"I believe if I had stayed in Tennessee I might have been worth twenty +thousand dollars to-day." + +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. + +"Cling to the land," he whispered. "Cling to the land, and wait. Let +nothing beguile it away from you." + +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. + +"Let me die," he said. + +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. + + + + +XV + +A YOUNG BEN FRANKLIN + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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----" + +He turned, his eyes streaming with tears, and flung himself into her +arms. + +"I will promise anything," he sobbed, "if you won't make me go to school! +Anything!" + +His mother held him for a moment, thinking, then she said: + +"No, Sammy; you need not go to school any more. Only promise me to be a +better boy. Promise not to break my heart." + +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. + +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: + +"Sam!" she said. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + + If your memory extends so far back, you will recall a little sandy- + haired boy --[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.]-- 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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XVI + +THE TURNING-POINT + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"De hain eet flee whoop in de hayer." + +"Dere!" he said, triumphantly; "you know dose vord?" + +The students looked at each other helplessly. + +The teacher repeated the sentence, and again they were helpless when he +asked if they recognized it. + +Then in despair he showed them the book. It was an English primer, and +the sentence was: + +"The hen, it flies up in the air." + +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: + +"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. + +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: + +"You mustn't cheat that boy." And the cheating stopped. When it didn't, +there was a combat, with consequences. + + + + +XVII + +THE HANNIBAL "JOURNAL" + + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +Orion was a gentle, accommodating soul, but he lacked force and +independence. + +"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." + +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: + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"For two cents I'd get out there and knock their heads off." + +"You wouldn't dare to do it," Sam said, purringly. + +This was wormwood to Jim. He was really a brave spirit. + +"I would too," he said,"and I will if you say that again." + +"Why, Jim, of course you wouldn't dare to go out there. You might catch +cold." + +"You wait and see," said Jim Wolfe. + +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. + +"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?" + +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. + +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. + + + + +XVIII + +THE BEGINNING OF A LITERARY LIFE + +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. + +"I was walking backward," he said, "not seeing where I stepped." + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"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. + +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. --[In Mark Twain's sketch "My +First Literary Venture" he has set down with characteristic embroideries +some account of this early authorship.] + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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: + +"I want you to take hold of the other end of this, Sam," she said, "and +make me a promise." + +If one might have a true picture of that scene: the shin, 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. + +"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."' + +He repeated the oath after her, and she kissed him. + +"Remember that, Sam, and write to us," she said. + +"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." + + + + + +XIX + +IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FRANKLIN + +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. + +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. + + From the gallery (second floor) you have a glorious sight--the flags + of the different countries represented, the lofty dome, glittering + jewelry, gaudy tapestry, etc., with the busy crowd passing to and + fro 'tis a perfect fairy palace--beautiful beyond description. + + The machinery department is on the main floor, but I cannot + enumerate any of it on account of the lateness of the hour (past 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. + + 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! + + 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 .... + + (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. + + Truly your brother, SAM + + 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. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + + 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 . . . . + + 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.". . . + + 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. + +"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. + +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. + +"My efforts were not received with approval," was all he ever said of it +afterward. + +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: + +"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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +There is a flavor of the 'Innocents' about it; then a little further +along: + + 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 . . . . + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + + How do you like "free soil"?--I would like amazingly to see a good + old-fashioned negro. My love to all. + + Truly your brother, SAM + +In the letter to Pamela he is clearly homesick. + +"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." + +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: + + "An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"You, Sam! You, Sam!" cried Jane Clemens. "Behave yourself," for she +was wary of a gun. + +Then he had had his joke and gave himself into his mother's arms. + + + + +XX + +KEOKUK DAYS + +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. + +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: + + MY DEAR BURROUGH,--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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +Isbell now adopted new tactics. He came up very pleasantly and said: + +"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." + +Sam Clemens regarded him with mild surprise. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"What will you have, Sam?" he asked. + +"Come in, Ed; Henry's asleep, and I am in trouble. I want somebody to +light my pipe." + +"Why don't you get up and light it yourself?" Brownell asked. + +"I would, only I knew you'd be along in a few minutes and would do it for +me." + +Brownell scratched the necessary match, stooped down, and applied it. + +"What are you reading, Sam?" he asked. + +"Oh, nothing much--a so-called funny book--one of these days I'll write a +funnier book than that, myself." + +Brownell laughed. + +"No, you won't, Sam," he said. "You are too lazy ever to write a book." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Orion Clemens records how his brother undertook to teach the German +apprentice music. + +"There was an old guitar in the office and Sam taught Fritz a song +beginning: + + Grasshopper sitting on a sweet-potato vine, + Turkey came along and yanked him from behind." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + 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, -- + [Orion printed two editions of the directory. This was probably the + second one.]-- 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 . . . + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXI + +SCOTCHMAN NAMED MACFARLANE + +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 along 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. --[Supplied by Thomas Rees, of +the Springfield (Illinois) Register, son of George Rees named.] + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +>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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + + +XXII + +THE OLD CALL OF THE RIVER + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Horace Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones, then a man of thirty-two, still +living (1910) and at the wheel, --[The writer of this memoir interviewed +Mr. Bixby personally, and has followed his phrasing throughout.]-- was +looking out over the bow at the head of Island No. 35 when he heard a +slow, pleasant voice say: + +"Good morning." + +Bixby was a clean-cut, direct, courteous man. + +"Good morning, sir," he said, briskly, without looking around. + +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. + +"How would you like a young man to learn the river?" he said. + +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. + +"I wouldn't like it. Cub pilots are more trouble than they're worth. +A great deal more trouble than profit." + +The applicant was not discouraged. + +"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." + +Bixby kept his eye on the river; but a note of interest crept into his +voice. + +"What makes you pull your words that way?" ("pulling" being the river +term for drawling), he asked. + +The young man had taken a seat on the visitors' bench. + +"You'll have to ask my mother," he said, more slowly than ever. "She +pulls hers, too." + +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. + +"Do you know the Bowen boys?" he asked--"pilots in the St. Louis and New +Orleans trade?" + +"I know them well--all three of them. William Bowen did his first +steering for me; a mighty good boy, 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." + +"Old schoolmates of mine in Hannibal. Sam and Will especially were my +chums." + +"Come over and stand by the side of me," he said. "What is your name?" + +The applicant told him, and the two stood looking at the sunlit water. + +"Do you drink?" + +"No." + +"Do you gamble?" + +"No, Sir." + +"Do you swear?" + +"Not for amusement; only under pressure." + +"Do you chew?" + +"No, sir, never; but I must smoke." + +"Did you ever do any steering?" was Bixby's next question. + +"I have steered everything on the river but a steamboat, I guess." + +"Very well; take the wheel and see what you can do with a steamboat. +Keep her as she is--toward that lower cottonwood, snag." + +Bixby had a sore foot and was glad of a little relief. He sat down on +the bench and kept a careful eye on the course. By and by he said: + +"There is just one way that I would take a young man to learn the river: +that is, for money." + +"What do you charge?" + +"Five hundred dollars, and I to be at no expense whatever." + +In those days pilots were allowed to carry a learner, or "cub," board +free. Mr. Bixby meant that he was to be at no expense in port, or for +incidentals. His terms looked rather discouraging. + +"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." + +Bixby dissented. + +"No; I don't want any unimproved real estate. I have too much already." + +Sam reflected upon the amount he could probably borrow from Pamela's +husband without straining his credit. + +"Well, then, I'll give you one hundred dollars cash and the rest when I +earn it." + +Something about this young man had won Horace Bixby's heart. His slow, +pleasant speech; his unhurried, quiet manner 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. + +>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. + + + + +XXIII + +THE SUPREME SCIENCE + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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: + + MERIWEATHER'S BEND + + 1/4 less 3 --[Depth of water. One-quarter less than three + fathoms.]----run shape of upper bar and go into the low place in + willows about 200(ft.) lower down than last year. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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: + + One day he turned on me suddenly with this settler: + + "What is the shape of Walnut Bend?" + + He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of + protoplasm. I 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: + + "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." + + "How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?" + + "How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know the + shape of it. You can't see it." + + "Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling + variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well + as I know the shape of the front hall at home?" + + "On my honor, you've got to know them better than any man ever did + know the shapes of the halls in his own house." + + "I wish I was dead!" + + "Now, I don't want to discourage you, but----" + + "Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time." + + "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----" + + "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." + + "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." + + "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?" + + Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W. came in to take the watch, and + he said: + + "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." + + 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. + + 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! + + 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: + + "How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-The- + Wall, trip before last?" + + I considered this an outrage. I said: + + "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?" + + "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." + + When I came to myself again, I said: + + "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." + + "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." + +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. + + + + +XXIV + +THE RIVER CURRICULUM + +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. + +He acquired a vast knowledge of human character. He says: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem, + A long time ago. + +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. + +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. + +"Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?" + +"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. + + 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. + +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." + +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. + +"Here," he would shout, "where are you going now? Pull her down! Pull +her down! Don't you hear me? Dod-derned mud-cat!" + +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. + +"Here, where are you heading for now?" he yelled. "What in nation are +you steerin' at, anyway? Deyned numskull!" + +"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." + +"Get away from that wheel! and get outen this pilothouse!" yelled Brown. +"You ain't fit to become no pilot!" + +Which was what Sam wanted. Any temporary relief from the carping tyranny +of Brown was welcome. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + + + + +XXV + +LOVE-MAKING AND ADVENTURE + +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. + +"I was not four inches from that girl's elbow during our waking hours for +the next three days." + +Then came a sudden interruption: Zeb Leavenworth came flying aft +shouting: + +"The Pennsylvania is backing out." + +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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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: + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Didn't Henry tell you to land here?" + +"No, sir." + +Captain. Klinefelter turned to Sam: + +"Didn't you hear him?" + +"Yes, sir." + +Brown said: "Shut your mouth! You never heard anything of the kind." + +By and by Henry came into the pilot-house, unaware of any trouble. Brown +set upon him in his ugliest manner. + +"Here, why didn't you tell me we had got to land at that plantation?" he +demanded. + +Henry was always polite, always gentle. + +"I did tell you, Mr. Brown." + +"It's a lie." + +Sam Clemens could stand Brown's abuse of himself, but not of Henry. He +said: "You lie yourself. He did tell you." + +Brown was dazed for a moment and then he shouted: + +"I'll attend to your case in half a minute!" and ordered Henry out of +the pilot-house. + +The boy had started, when Brown suddenly seized him by the collar and +struck him in the face. --[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: +"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."]-- 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. + +"Get out of this here pilot-house," he raged. + +But his subordinate was not afraid of him now. + +"You should leave out the 'here,'" he drawled, critically. "It is +understood, and not considered good English form." + +"Don't you give me none of your airs," yelled Brown. "I ain't going to +stand nothing more from you." + +"You should say, 'Don't give me any of your airs,'" Sam said, sweetly, +"and the last half of your sentence almost defies correction." + +A group of passengers and white-aproned servants, assembled on the deck +forward, applauded the victor. + +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: + + "Did you strike him first?" Captain Klinefelter asked. + + "Yes, sir." + + "What with?" + + "A stool, sir." + + "Hard?" + + "Middling, sir." + + "Did it knock him down?" + + "He--he fell, sir." + + "Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?" + + "Yes, sir." + + "What did you do?" + + "Pounded him, sir." + + "Pounded him?" + + "Yes, sir." + + "Did you pound him much--that is, severely?" + + "One might call it that, sir, maybe." + + "I am 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. --["Life on + the Mississippi."]-- + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"In case of accident, whatever you do, don't lose your head--the +passengers will do that. Rush for the hurricane deck and to the life- +boat, and obey the mate's orders. When the boat is launched, help the +women and children into it. Don't get in yourself. The river is only a +mile wide. You can swim ashore easily enough." + +It was good manly advice, but it yielded a long harvest of sorrow. + + + + +XXVI + +THE TRAGEDY OF THE "PENNSYLVANIA" + +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: + +"The Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis, at Ship Island! One +hundred and fifty lives lost!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + MEMPHIS, TENN., Friday, June 18, 1858. + + DEAR SISTER MOLLIE,--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. + + 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. + + Pray for me, Mollie, and pray for my poor sinless brother. + Your unfortunate brother, + + SAML. L. CLEMENS. + + P. S.--I got here two days after Henry. + + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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: + +"I have no way of measuring. I don't know how much an eighth of a grain +would be." + +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. + +"If you have studied drugs," he said, "you ought to be able to judge an +eighth of a grain of morphine." + +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. + +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. + +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. --[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.] + +>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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXVII + +THE PILOT + +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. --[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]-- 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. + +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. + +"Not only was he a pilot, but a good one." These are Horace Bixby's +words, and he added: + +"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." + +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: + + 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! + + 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. + +Orion and his wife had returned to Keokuk by this time, waiting for +something in the way of a business opportunity. + +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. + + 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?" + + 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. + +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. + +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. + + 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. + +Another riverman of those days has recalled a story he heard Sam Clemens +tell: + + We were speaking of presence of mind in accidents--we were always + talking of such things; then he said: + + "Boys, I had great presence of mind once. It was at a fire. An old + man leaned out of a four-story building calling for help. Everybody + in the crowd below looked up, but nobody did anything. The ladders + weren't long enough. Nobody had any presence of mind--nobody but + me. I came to the rescue. I yelled for a rope. When it came I + threw the old man the end of it. He caught it and I told him to tie + it around his waist. He did so, and I pulled him down." + +This was 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." + +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. + +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. + +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. --[See Appendix B, +at the end of the last volume.] + +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. + +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. + + + + + +XXVIII + +PILOTING AND PROPHECY + +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. + +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. + +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. + + 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.... + + Night--didn't run either 77 or 76 towheads--8 ft. bank on main shore + Ozark Chute.... + +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." + +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: + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"'Sam,' he said, "let me take the wheel. Maybe I have been over this +place since you have.' + +"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." + +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. + +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: + + HOW TO TAKE LIFE.--Take it just as though it was--as it is--an + earnest, vital, and important affair. Take it as though you were + born to the task of performing a merry part in it--as though the + world had awaited for your coming. Take it as though it was a grand + opportunity to do and achieve, to carry forward great and good + schemes; to help and cheer a suffering, weary, it may be + heartbroken, brother. Now and then a man stands aside from the + crowd, labors earnestly, steadfastly, confidently, and straightway + becomes famous for wisdom, intellect, skill, greatness of some sort. + The world wonders, admires, idolizes, and it only illustrates what + others may do if they take hold of life with a purpose. The + miracle, or the power that elevates the few, is to be found in their + industry, application, and perseverance under the promptings of a + brave, determined spirit. + +The old note-book contains no record of disasters. Horace Bixby, who +should know, has declared: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + + 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'. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + + 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: + + '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. + + 'S. L. C.' Which proves nothing. + + '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. + + 'S. L. C.' You flatter well, Madame. + + '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. + + 'S. L. C.' Which was? + + '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.... + + 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. + + 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? + + 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. + SAM. + +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. + + + + + +XXIX + +THE END OF PILOTING + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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." + +He went up the river as a passenger on a steamer named the Uncle Sam. +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 basely escaped the +blockade. At Cairo, Illinois, they saw soldiers drilling--troops later +commanded by Grant. The Uncle Sam 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. + +"Good Lord Almighty! Sam;" he said, "what do they mean by that?" + +Clemens stepped to the wheel and brought the boat around. "I guess they +want us to wait a minute, Zeb," he said. + +They were examined and passed. It was the last steamboat to make the +trip from New Orleans to St. Louis. Mark Twain's pilot-days were over. +He would have grieved had he known this fact. + +"I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since," he +long afterward declared, "and I took a measureless pride in it." + +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. + + + + +XXX + +THE SOLDIER + +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. + +--[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.] + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +That settled it. Most of them knew Tom Harris, and they regarded his +neglect of them as perfidy. They broke camp without further ceremony. + +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. + +"Ah," said Clemens, as he mopped his face, "do you know that little devil +waded all the way across?" + +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: + +"You're secesh, ain't you?" + +They acknowledged that they were defenders of the cause and that they +wanted to buy provisions. The request seemed to inflame her. + +"Provisions!" she screamed. "Provisions for secesh, and my husband a +colonel in the Union Army. You get out of here!" + +She reached for a hickory hoop-pole 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +--[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.] + + + + +XXXI + +OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY + +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. + +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. + + 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.' --['Roughing It'.]-- + +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." + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +XXXII + +THE PIONEER + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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." + + 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. + + 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." + +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. + +The Clemens brothers took lodging with a genial Irishwoman, Mrs. Murphy, +a New York retainer of Governor Nye, who boarded the camp-followers. -- +[The Mrs, O'Flannigan of 'Roughing It'.]-- 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. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"It never occurred to us, for one thing; and, besides, it was built to +hold the ground, and that was enough. We did not wish to strain it." + +They 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. + + 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!" + +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: + + 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. + +Further along in the same letter his own overflowing Seller's optimism +develops. + + 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. + +This letter bears date of October 25th, and from it we gather that a +certain interest in mining claims had by this time developed. + + 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. + + 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. + +He refers to Pamela's two little children, his niece Annie and Baby Sam, +--[Samuel E. Moffett, in later life a well-known journalist and editor.]- +- 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. + + + + + +XXXIII + +THE PROSPECTOR + +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. + +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. + + 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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + + 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. --[S. L. C. to his mother. Published in + the Keokuk (Iowa) Gate city.]-- + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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." --['The Innocents Abroad.']-- + +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. + +In the letter which Samuel Clemens wrote home he tells of what they found +in Unionville. + + "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. + +"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 + +"One week of this satisfied me. I resigned." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXXIV + +TERRITORIAL CHARACTERISTICS + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +He pauses at this point for a paragraph of self-analysis--characteristic +and crystal-clear. + + 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? + + But-but + In the bright lexicon of youth, + There is no such word as Fail-- + and I'll prove it! + +Whereupon, he lets himself go again, full-tilt: + + 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. + +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. + +He closes at last with a bit of pleasantry for his mother. + + 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? + + + + +XXXV + +THE MINER + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + +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: + + 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.... + + Man named Gebhart shot here yesterday while trying to defend a claim + on Last Chance Hill. Expect he will die. + + These mills here are not worth a d--n--except Clayton's--and it is + not in full working trim yet. + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + + 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.... + + 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 . . . . + +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: + + 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 io or 112 cents in gold and silver, besides the other half + of it which we spilt on the floor and didn't get.... + + 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. + + 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. + + What the devil does a man want with any more feet when he owns in + the invincible bomb-proof "Monitor"? + +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. + +"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. + +"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." + +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?" + +This is midsummer, and snow still interferes with the work. One feels +the dreary uselessness of the quest. + +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. + +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." + +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. + + + + +XXXVI + +LAST MINING DAYS + +It was late in July when he wrote: + + 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. + +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 --[Ella +Sterling Cummins, author of The Story of the Files, etc]-- declares: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + +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. + +"That is the sort of thing we want," he said. "Write to him, Barstow, +and ask him if he wants to come up here." + +Barstow wrote, offering twenty-five dollars a week, a tempting sum. This +was at the end of July, 1862. + +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 +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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? + + + + +XXXVII + +THE NEW ESTATE + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +It was the master of the world's widest estate come to claim his kingdom: + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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 --[Named for its discoverer, Henry T. P. +Comstock, a half-crazy miner, who realized very little from his +stupendous find.]-- 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. --[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.]-- + +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. + +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. + +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. --[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]-- 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXXVIII + +ONE OF THE "STAFF" + +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. --["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.]-- 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. + +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 jolt 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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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 comer, 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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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: + +"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate +circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer." + +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. + +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. + +Now, amoung 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: + +"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." + +The little clergyman caught his breath. + +"Maybe I should, Mr. Clemens," he replied, "but I should try to say, +'Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.'" + +"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." + +--[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. + +"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?" + +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." + + + + +XXXIX + +PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY + +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: + +"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." + +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. + + By Nebo's lonely mountain, + On this side Jordan's wave, + In a vale in the land of Moab, + There lies a lonely grave. + + And no man knows that sepulchre, + And no man saw it e'er, + For the angels of God, upturned the sod, + And laid the dead man there. + +Another stanza that he cared for almost as much was the one beginning: + + And had he not high honor-- + The hill-side for a pall, + To lie in state while angels wait + With stars for tapers tall, + And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes, + Over his bier to wave, + And God's own hand in that lonely land, + To lay him in the grave? + +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: + +"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." + +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." + +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. + + + + + +XL + +"MARK TWAIN" + +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 Mask 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Rice and Clemens, it should be said, though rivals, were the best of +friends, and there was never any real animosity between them. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Joe," he said, to Goodman, "I want to sign my articles. I want to be +identified to a wider audience." + +"All right, Sam. What name do you want to use 'Josh'?" + +"No, I want to sign them 'Mark Twain.' It is an old river term, a 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." + +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: + +"Very well, Sam," he said, "that sounds like a good name." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XLI + +THE CREAM OF COMSTOCK HUMOR + +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. + +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: + +"Nobody ever gives me a meerschaum pipe," he said, plaintively. "Don't I +deserve one yet?" + +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: + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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: + +"'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?' + +"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. + +"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?' + +"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: + +"'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.' + +"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: + +"'Is that another of those bogus old pipes?' + +"He accepted it, though, and general peace was restored. One day, soon +after, he said to me: + +"'Steve, do you know that I think that that bogus pipe smokes about as +well as the good one?'" + +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. + +"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!" + +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: + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + +"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: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"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." + +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." + +"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." + +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. + +--[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.]-- + + + + +XLII + +REPORTORIAL DAYS + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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." + +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: + + 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. + +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: + +"Put in my washing, and it costs me one hundred dollars a month to live." + +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. + + 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]--. + +The diatribe closed with a really graceful poem, and the whole was no +doubt highly regarded by the Enterprise readers. + +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. + + 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 acknowedge 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +This was Mark's opportunity. He gave an account of Dan's disaster; then, +commenting, he said: + + 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. + +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: + +"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!" + +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.' + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +Such things came out of the Comstock; such things spring out of every +turbulent frontier. + + + + +XLIII + +ARTEMUS WARD + +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. + + --[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.]-- + +A portion of a playful letter to his mother, written from the springs, +still exists. + + 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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Slave, slave," said Artemus. "Come out and let me banish care from +you." + +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: + +"I give you Upper Canada." + +The company rose, drank the toast in serious silence; then Goodman said: + +"Of course, Artemus, it's all right, but why did you give us Upper +Canada?" + +"Because I don't want it myself," said Ward, gravely. + +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: + +"I'm preparing a joke, Artemus, but I'm keeping it for the present." + +It was near daybreak when Ward at last called for the bill. It was two +hundred and thirty-seven dollars. + +"What"' exclaimed Artemus. + +"That's my joke." said Goodman. + +"But I was only exclaiming because it was not twice as much," returned +Ward. + +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: + +"I feel glorious. I feel like walking on the roofs." + +Virginia was built on the steep hillside, and the eaves of some of the +houses almost touched the ground behind them. + +"There is your chance, Artemus," Goodman said, pointing to a row of these +houses all about of a height. + +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: + +"Wait a minute. What are you going to do?" + +"I'm going to shoot those burglars," he said. + +"Don't for your life. Those are not burglars. That's Mark Twain and +Artemus Ward." + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, as +all others must or rather cannot be, as it were." + +Then reflectively he adds: + +"Some of the finest intellects in the world have been blunted by liquor." + +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. + + + + +XLIV + +GOVERNOR OF THE "THIRD HOUSE" + +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. + +"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." + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + +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. + +The two Houses of the last territorial legislature of Nevada assembled +January 12, 1864. --[Nevada became a State October 31, 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." + +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: + + CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864. + + GOV. MARK TWAIN, 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, --[ There had been + no former message. This was regarded as a great joke.]-- 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. + S. PIXLEY, + G. A. SEARS, + Trustees. + + + CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864. + + GENTLEMEN,--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. + Respectfully, + MARK TWAIN. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Well," he sand, "why am I like the Pacific Ocean?" + +Several guesses were made, but none satisfied him. Finally all gave it +up. + +"Tell us, Mark, why are you like the Pacific Ocean?" + +"I don't know," he drawled. "I was just asking for information." + +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: + +"For God's sake go to-night." + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +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. + +I took it over to show to Miss Menken the actress, Orpheus C. Ken's wife. +She is a literary cuss herself. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + + + + +XLV + +A COMSTOCK DUEL + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + + 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. + + 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: + + "What's that, Steve?" + + "Why," I said, "that's Laud. His seconds are practising him over + there." + + 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. + + "Mark," I said, "let me have that pistol. I'll show you how to + shoot." + + 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. + + "Who did that?" asked Laird's second. + + "Sam," I said. + + "How far off was it?" + + "Oh, about thirty yards." + + "Can he do it again?" + + "Of course," I said; "every time. He could do it twice that far." + + Laud's second turned to his principal. + + "Laird," he said, "you don't want to fight that man. It's just like + suicide. You'd better settle this thing, now." + + 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. + + "Fight! H--l, no! I am not going to be murdered by that d--d + desperado." + + 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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XLVI + +GETTING SETTLED IN SAN FRANCISCO + +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'. + +>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. + +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," --[L. P. Ward; well known as an athlete in +San Francisco. He lost his mind and fatally shot himself in 1903.]-- +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." --[S. L. C., 1906.]-- +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. + +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: + +"What in the nation is that noise" + +Gillis's pretended sleep and the ticking would continue. + +Clemens would sit up in bed, fling aside his book, and swear violently. + +"Steve, what is that d--d noise?" he would say. + +Steve would pretend to rouse sleepily. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +At a place on Minna Street they lived with a private family. At first +Clemens was delighted. + +"Just look at it, Steve," he said. "What a nice, quiet place. Not a +thing to disturb us." + +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. + +"Came here, Steve," he said. "Come here and kill him. I'm so chilled +through I can't get a bead on him." + +"Sam," said Steve, "don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily +kill him at that range with your profanity." + +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. + +We gather that they moved, on an average, about once a month. A home +letter of September 25, 1864, says: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +XLVII + +BOHEMIAN DAYS + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + + It was fearful drudgery-soulless drudgery--and almost destitute of + interest. It was an awful slavery for a lazy man. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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, --[The +Golden Era, California's first literary publication, was founded by +Rollin M. Daggett and J. McDonough Foard in 1852.]-- 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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XLVIII + +THE REFUGE OF THE HILLS + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"You can never afford to publish that," the foreman said to, Goodman. + +"Let it all go in, every word," Goodman answered. "If Mark can stand it, +I can! + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +"It wasn't my fault," he ventured at last; "it was Billy Gillis's fault." + +"No such thing. You know better. Mr. Gillis has been here often. It +was you." + +"But do you realize, ma'am, how tired and hungry we are? Haven't you got +a bite for us to eat?" + +"No, sir, not a bite--for such as you." + +The offender's eyes, wandering about the room, spied something in a +corner. + +"Isn't that a guitar over there?" he asked. + +"Yes, sir, it is; what of it?" + +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. + +"I suppose you are just like all young folks," she said. "I was young +myself once. While you sing I'll get some supper." + +She left the door to the kitchen open so that she could hear, and cooked +whatever she could find for the belated party. + + + + +XLIX + +THE JUMPING FROG + +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 lunax +rainbow is one of the things people seldom see. He thought it an omen of +good-fortune. + +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. + + January 27. Same old diet--same old weather--went out to the + pocket-claim--had to rush back. + +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, --[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.]-- a solemn, fat-witted person, who dozed by the +stove, or old 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: + +"I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other +frog," and perhaps the other would answer: + +"I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog I'd bet you." + +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. + +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: + +"Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work is too disagreeable." + +Gillis had just taken out a panful of dirt. + +"Bring one more pail, Sam," he pleaded. + +"Oh, hell, Jim, I won't do it; I'm freezing!" + +"Just one more pail, Sam," he pleaded. + +"No, sir, not a drop, not if I knew there were a million dollars in that +pan." + +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. + +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." + +In Mark Twain's old note-book occurs a memorandum of the frog story--a +mere casual entry of its main features: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +L + +BACK TO THE TUMULT + +FROM the note-book: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + Gone, gone, gone-- + Gone to his endeavor; + Gone, gone, gone, + Forever and forever. + +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.'" + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + + Tom Maguire, + Roused to ire, + Lighted on McDougal; + Tore his coat, + Clutched his throat, + And split him in the bugle. + + For shame! oh, fie! + Maguire, why + Will you thus skyugle? + Why curse and swear, + And rip and tear + The innocent McDougal? + + Of bones bereft, + Almost, you've left + Vestvali, gentle Jew gal; + And now you've smashed + And almost hashed + The form of poor McDougall + +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'. + + + + +LI + +THE CORNER-STONE + +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. + +"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." --[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.]-- + +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. + +"Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" --[This was the original title.]-- +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. + +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: + + I do not know what to write; my life is so uneventful. I wish I was + back there piloting up and down the river again. Verily, all is + vanity and little worth--save piloting. + + To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused + for thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out + a villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on! "Jim Smiley and + His Jumping Frog"--a squib which would never have been written but + to please Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too late to + appear in his book. + + 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. + +This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco +Alta: + + "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." + + 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. + +It is difficult to judge the jumping Frog story to-day. It has the +intrinsic fundamental value of one of AEsop's Fables. --[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.]-- 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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +LII + +A COMMISSION TO THE SANDWICH ISLANDS + +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. + +If the Ajax 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. + +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: + +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. + +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." + +So it is: man proposes, while fate, undisturbed, spins serenely on. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + Oh, islands there are on the face of the deep + Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep, + +he quotes in his note-book, and adds: + + 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! + +And in another place: + + They live 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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." + +'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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +LIII + +ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE "HORNET" DISASTER + +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. + +The Ajax 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, +--[Edward L. Burlingame, now for many years editor of Scribner's +Magazine.]-- 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. + +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: + +"California is proud of Mark Twain, and some day the American people will +be, too, no doubt." + +There has seldom been a more accurate prophecy. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +Clemens never forgot that advice. He did not always observe it, but he +rarely failed to realize its gospel. Burlingame urged him to travel. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"But there is a Scriptural command for you to go." + +"If you can quote one I'll obey it," said Clemens. + +"Very well. The Bible says, 'If any man require thee to walk a mile, go +with him, Twain.'" + +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. + +Under date of July 4 (1866), Mark Twain's Sandwich Island note-book says: + + 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. + +>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. + +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. + +"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. + +It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco, and the note-book entry +of that day says: + + 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! + +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. + +"How much do you think it ought to be, Mark?" James Anthony asked. + +"Oh, I'm a modest man; I don't want the whole Union office. Call it $100 +a column." + +There was a general laugh. The bill was made out at that figure, and he +took it to the business office for payment. + +"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." --["My Debut +as a Literary Person."--Collected works.]-- + +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: + + The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, + + The turf with their bayonets turning, + And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold, + And our lanterns dimly burning. + +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. + + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Volume I, Part 1 of MARK TWAIN, +A BIOGRAPHY, 1835-1866 by Albert Bigelow Paine + diff --git a/old/mt1bg10.zip b/old/mt1bg10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..51d01c9 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/mt1bg10.zip diff --git a/old/mt1bg11.txt b/old/mt1bg11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..215ffdf --- /dev/null +++ b/old/mt1bg11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9680 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Mark Twain, Biography, 1835-66, by Paine +#1 in our series by Albert Bigelow Paine + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before distributing this or any other +Project Gutenberg file. + +We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your +own disk, thereby keeping an electronic path open for future +readers. 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Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY + +By Albert Bigelow Paine + + + +VOLUME I, Part 1: 1835-1866 + + + + + MARK TWAIN + A BIOGRAPHY + THE PERSONAL AND LITERARY LIFE OF + SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS + BY + ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + + + 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 + + + + + AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT + +Dear William Dean Howells, Joseph Hopkins Twichell, Joseph T. Goodman, +and other old friends of Mark Twain: + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Albert Bigelow Paine. + + + + + + + PREFATORY NOTE + +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. + +"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." + +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, accountbooks, 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. + + + + + + MARK TWAIN + + A BIOGRAPHY + + +I + +ANCESTORS + +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: + +"I guess this is where our line starts." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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: + +"It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed the field of my +personal experience in a long lifetime." + + + + +II + +THE FORTUNES OF JOHN AND JANE CLEMENS + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +III + +A HUMBLE BIRTHPLACE + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Come!--rush!--hurry!--don't wait for anything!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"He always seemed to me like some great being from another planet--never +quite of this race or kind." + +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. + +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,--[This honor has been claimed also +for Mrs. Millie Upton and a Mrs. Damrell. Probably all were present and +assisted.]--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. + +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.--[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."] + + + + +IV + +BEGINNING A LONG JOURNEY + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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: + +"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?" + +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: + +"YOU'VE got it!' and she tore him all to pieces!" + +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. + +"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." + +"How big was it, Uncle Ned?" + +"Oh, 'bout as big as your head, and I 'spect it's likely to come down dis +yere chimney 'most any time." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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. + +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: + +"You--if I have to hunt you again after dark, I will make you smell like +a burnt horn!" + +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. + + + + +V + +THE WAY OF FORTUNE + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +But John Quarles, who was present, laughed: + +"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." + +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.--[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.] + +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. + + + + +VI + +A NEW HOME + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +"We will struggle along somehow, Jane," he would say. "We will not throw +away the children's fortune." + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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!'" + +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. + +--[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.] + + + + +VII + +THE LITTLE TOWN OF HANNIBAL + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.--[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.]-- + +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. + +"You gave me more uneasiness than any child I had," she said to him once, +in her old age. + +"I suppose you were afraid I wouldn't live," he suggested, in his +tranquil fashion. + +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. + +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. + +"Why," said the judge, aghast, "I never once thought of him after I left +him asleep." + +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. + + + + +VIII + +THE FARM + +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,--[Tabitha Quarles, now Mrs. Greening, of +Palmyra, Missouri, has supplied most of the material for this chapter.]-- +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. + +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. + +Jane Clemens was not heavily concerned. + +"Sammy will pull through," she said; "he wasn't born to die that way." + +It is the slender constitution that bears the strain. "Sammy" did pull +through, and in a brief time was ready for fresh adventure. + +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. + +His tendency to mischief grew with this wide liberty, improved health, +and the encouragement of John Quarles's good-natured, fun-loving slaves. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +IX + +SCHOOL-DAYS + +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. + +"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." + +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." + +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. + +"You don't believe anything that child says, I hope." + +"Oh yes, I know his average. I discount him ninety per cent. The rest +is pure gold." At another time she said: "Sammy is a well of truth, but +you can't bring it all up in one bucket." + +This, however, is digression; the incidents may have happened somewhat +later. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Perhaps Miss Horr's sense of humor prompted forgiveness, but discipline +must be maintained. + +"Samuel Langhorne Clemens," she said (he had never heard it all strung +together in that ominous way), "I am ashamed of you! Jimmy Dunlap, go +and bring a switch for Sammy." And 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. + +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: + + MISS PAMELA CLEMENS + + Has won the love of her teacher and schoolmates by her amiable + deportment and faithful application to her various studies. + E. Horr, Teacher. + +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. + +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. + +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 balker'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. + +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: + +"What's the matter, Sammy; are you sick?" + +"No," he said, "but I don't believe in saying prayers any more, and I'm +never going to do it again." + +"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. + +"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." + +And so passed and ended Little Sam's first school-days. + + + + +X + +EARLY VICISSITUDE AND SORROW + +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: + +"Kind-hearted and compassionate as she was, I think she was not conscious +that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarranted ursurpation. 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." + +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. + +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: + +"Ma--[that was the Southern term]--,make Sandy stop singing all the +time. It's awful." + +Tears suddenly came into his mother's eyes. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + +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 Sehns, 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. + +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. + +"I am not able to dig in the streets," he added, and Orion, who records +this, adds: + +"I can see yet the hopeless expression of his face." + +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. + +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. + +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."--['This house, in 1911, was bought by +Mr. and Mrs. George A. Mahan, and presented to Hannibal for a memorial +museum.]--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: + +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. + +"I command the peace!" he shouted, as he came up to them. + +No one paid the least attention. + +"I command the peace!" he shouted again, still louder, but with no +result. + +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. + +"I command the peace!" he said, for the third time, and struck a +considerably smarter blow. + +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. + + + + +XI + +DAYS OF EDUCATION + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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 warren 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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"Do you use terbacker?" the big girl had asked, meaning did he chew it. + +"No," he said, abashed at the confession. + +"Haw!" she cried to the other scholars; "here's a boy that can't chaw +terbacker." + +Degraded and ashamed, he tried to correct his fault, but it only made him +very ill; and he did not try again. + +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. + +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: + +"Yes, no matter what it is, I am always the one to get punished"; and his +mother would answer: + +"Well, Sam, if you didn't deserve it for that, you did for something +else." + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XII + +TOM SAWYER'S BAND + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Look out, boys, she's coming!" + +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. + +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. Selins'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, Selins's clerk, said: + +"Look here, Selms, there is something wrong about this. That boy has +been selling us coonskins all the afternoon." + +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. + +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: + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.--[Much of the detail in this chapter was furnished +to the writer by John Briggs shortly before his death in 1907.]--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. + +This is the real story: + +A slave ran off from Monroe County, Missouri, and got across the river +into Illinois. Ben used to fish and hunt over there in the swamps, and +one day found him. It was considered a most worthy act in those days to +return a runaway slave; in fact, it was a crime not to do it. Besides, +there was for this one a reward of fifty dollars, a fortune to ragged +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XIII + +THE GENTLER SIDE + +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. + +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. + +"I believe I was as miserable as a grown man could be," he said once, +remembering. + +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. + +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 +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.]--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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + + Cross by name and cross by nature + Cross jumped over an Irish potato. + +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. + +"Oh, pshaw!" said John. "I wouldn't be afraid to do it. + +"I dare you to do it," said Sam. + +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. + +"Did you do that?" he asked, ominously. + +It was a time for truth. + +"Yes, sir," said John. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XIV + +THE PASSING OF JOHN CLEMENS + +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. + +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: + +"I believe if I had stayed in Tennessee I might have been worth twenty +thousand dollars to-day." + +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. + +"Cling to the land," he whispered. "Cling to the land, and wait. Let +nothing beguile it away from you." + +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. + +"Let me die," he said. + +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. + + + + +XV + +A YOUNG BEN FRANKLIN + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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----" + +He turned, his eyes streaming with tears, and flung himself into her +arms. + +"I will promise anything," he sobbed, "if you won't make me go to school! +Anything!" + +His mother held him for a moment, thinking, then she said: + +"No, Sammy; you need not go to school any more. Only promise me to be a +better boy. Promise not to break my heart." + +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. + +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: + +"Sam!" she said. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + + If your memory extends so far back, you will recall a little sandy- + haired boy--[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.]--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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XVI + +THE TURNING-POINT + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"De hain eet flee whoop in de hayer." + +"Dere!" he said, triumphantly; "you know dose vord?" + +The students looked at each other helplessly. + +The teacher repeated the sentence, and again they were helpless when he +asked if they recognized it. + +Then in despair he showed them the book. It was an English primer, and +the sentence was: + +"The hen, it flies up in the air." + +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: + +"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. + +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: + +"You mustn't cheat that boy." And the cheating stopped. When it didn't, +there was a combat, with consequences. + + + + +XVII + +THE HANNIBAL "JOURNAL" + + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +Orion was a gentle, accommodating soul, but he lacked force and +independence. + +"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." + +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: + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"For two cents I'd get out there and knock their heads off." + +"You wouldn't dare to do it," Sam said, purringly. + +This was wormwood to Jim. He was really a brave spirit. + +"I would too," he said, "and I will if you say that again." + +"Why, Jim, of course you wouldn't dare to go out there. You might catch +cold." + +"You wait and see," said Jim Wolfe. + +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. + +"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?" + +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. + +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. + + + + +XVIII + +THE BEGINNING OF A LITERARY LIFE + +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. + +"I was walking backward," he said, "not seeing where I stepped." + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"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. + +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.--[In Mark Twain's sketch "My +First Literary Venture" he has set down with characteristic embroideries +some account of this early authorship.] + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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: + +"I want you to take hold of the other end of this, Sam," she said, "and +make me a promise." + +If one might have a true picture of that scene: the shin, 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. + +"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." + +He repeated the oath after her, and she kissed him. + +"Remember that, Sam, and write to us," she said. + +"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." + + + + + +XIX + +IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FRANKLIN + +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. + +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. + + From the gallery (second floor) you have a glorious sight--the flags + of the different countries represented, the lofty dome, glittering + jewelry, gaudy tapestry, etc., with the busy crowd passing to and + fro 'tis a perfect fairy palace--beautiful beyond description. + + The machinery department is on the main floor, but I cannot + enumerate any of it on account of the lateness of the hour (past 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. + + 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! + + 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 .... + + (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. + + Truly your brother, SAM + + 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. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + + 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 . . . . + + 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.". . . + + 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. + +"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. + +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. + +"My efforts were not received with approval," was all he ever said of it +afterward. + +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: + +"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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +There is a flavor of the 'Innocents' about it; then a little further +along: + + 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 . . . . + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + + How do you like "free soil"?--I would like amazingly to see a good + old-fashioned negro. My love to all. + + Truly your brother, SAM + +In the letter to Pamela he is clearly homesick. + +"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." + +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: + + "An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"You, Sam! You, Sam!" cried Jane Clemens. "Behave yourself," for she +was wary of a gun. + +Then he had had his joke and gave himself into his mother's arms. + + + + +XX + +KEOKUK DAYS + +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. + +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: + + MY DEAR BURROUGH,--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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +Isbell now adopted new tactics. He came up very pleasantly and said: + +"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." + +Sam Clemens regarded him with mild surprise. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"What will you have, Sam?" he asked. + +"Come in, Ed; Henry's asleep, and I am in trouble. I want somebody to +light my pipe." + +"Why don't you get up and light it yourself?" Brownell asked. + +"I would, only I knew you'd be along in a few minutes and would do it for +me." + +Brownell scratched the necessary match, stooped down, and applied it. + +"What are you reading, Sam?" he asked. + +"Oh, nothing much--a so-called funny book--one of these days I'll write a +funnier book than that, myself." + +Brownell laughed. + +"No, you won't, Sam," he said. "You are too lazy ever to write a book." + +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." + +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. + +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. + +Orion Clemens records how his brother undertook to teach the German +apprentice music. + +"There was an old guitar in the office and Sam taught Fritz a song +beginning: + + "Grasshopper sitting on a sweet-potato vine, + Turkey came along and yanked him from behind." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + 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,-- + [Orion printed two editions of the directory. This was probably the + second one.]--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 . . . + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXI + +SCOTCHMAN NAMED MACFARLANE + +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 along 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.--[Supplied by Thomas Rees, of +the Springfield (Illinois) Register, son of George Rees named.] + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + + +XXII + +THE OLD CALL OF THE RIVER + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Horace Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones, then a man of thirty-two, still +living (1910) and at the wheel,--[The writer of this memoir interviewed +Mr. Bixby personally, and has followed his phrasing throughout.]--was +looking out over the bow at the head of Island No. 35 when he heard a +slow, pleasant voice say: + +"Good morning." + +Bixby was a clean-cut, direct, courteous man. + +"Good morning, sir," he said, briskly, without looking around. + +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. + +"How would you like a young man to learn the river?" he said. + +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. + +"I wouldn't like it. Cub pilots are more trouble than they're worth. +A great deal more trouble than profit." + +The applicant was not discouraged. + +"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." + +Bixby kept his eye on the river; but a note of interest crept into his +voice. + +"What makes you pull your words that way?" ("pulling" being the river +term for drawling), he asked. + +The young man had taken a seat on the visitors' bench. + +"You'll have to ask my mother," he said, more slowly than ever. "She +pulls hers, too." + +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. + +"Do you know the Bowen boys?" he asked--"pilots in the St. Louis and New +Orleans trade?" + +"I know them well--all three of them. William Bowen did his first +steering for me; a mighty good boy, 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." + +"Old schoolmates of mine in Hannibal. Sam and Will especially were my +chums." + +"Come over and stand by the side of me," he said. "What is your name?" + +The applicant told him, and the two stood looking at the sunlit water. + +"Do you drink?" + +"No." + +"Do you gamble?" + +"No, Sir." + +"Do you swear?" + +"Not for amusement; only under pressure." + +"Do you chew?" + +"No, sir, never; but I must smoke." + +"Did you ever do any steering?" was Bixby's next question. + +"I have steered everything on the river but a steamboat, I guess." + +"Very well; take the wheel and see what you can do with a steamboat. +Keep her as she is--toward that lower cottonwood, snag." + +Bixby had a sore foot and was glad of a little relief. He sat down on +the bench and kept a careful eye on the course. By and by he said: + +"There is just one way that I would take a young man to learn the river: +that is, for money." + +"What do you charge?" + +"Five hundred dollars, and I to be at no expense whatever." + +In those days pilots were allowed to carry a learner, or "cub," board +free. Mr. Bixby meant that he was to be at no expense in port, or for +incidentals. His terms looked rather discouraging. + +"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." + +Bixby dissented. + +"No; I don't want any unimproved real estate. I have too much already." + +Sam reflected upon the amount he could probably borrow from Pamela's +husband without straining his credit. + +"Well, then, I'll give you one hundred dollars cash and the rest when I +earn it." + +Something about this young man had won Horace Bixby's heart. His slow, +pleasant speech; his unhurried, quiet manner 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. + +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. + + + + +XXIII + +THE SUPREME SCIENCE + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +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: + + MERIWEATHER'S BEND + + 1/4 less 3--[Depth of water. One-quarter less than three + fathoms.]----run shape of upper bar and go into the low place in + willows about 200(ft.) lower down than last year. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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: + + One day he turned on me suddenly with this settler: + + "What is the shape of Walnut Bend?" + + He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of + protoplasm. I 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: + + "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." + + "How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?" + + "How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know the + shape of it. You can't see it." + + "Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling + variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well + as I know the shape of the front hall at home?" + + "On my honor, you've got to know them better than any man ever did + know the shapes of the halls in his own house." + + "I wish I was dead!" + + "Now, I don't want to discourage you, but----" + + "Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time." + + "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----" + + "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." + + "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." + + "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?" + + Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W. came in to take the watch, and + he said: + + "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." + + 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. + + 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! + + 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: + + "How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-The- + Wall, trip before last?" + + I considered this an outrage. I said: + + "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?" + + "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." + + When I came to myself again, I said: + + "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." + + "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." + +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. + + + + +XXIV + +THE RIVER CURRICULUM + +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. + +He acquired a vast knowledge of human character. He says: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem, + A long time ago. + +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. + +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. + +"Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?" + +"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. + + 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. + +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." + +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. + +"Here," he would shout, "where are you going now? Pull her down! Pull +her down! Don't you hear me? Dod-derned mud-cat!" + +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. + +"Here, where are you heading for now?" he yelled. "What in nation are +you steerin' at, anyway? Deyned numskull!" + +"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." + +"Get away from that wheel! and get outen this pilothouse!" yelled Brown. +"You ain't fit to become no pilot!" + +Which was what Sam wanted. Any temporary relief from the carping tyranny +of Brown was welcome. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + + + + +XXV + +LOVE-MAKING AND ADVENTURE + +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. + +"I was not four inches from that girl's elbow during our waking hours for +the next three days." + +Then came a sudden interruption: Zeb Leavenworth came flying aft +shouting: + +"The Pennsylvania is backing out." + +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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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: + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Didn't Henry tell you to land here?" + +"No, sir." + +Captain. Klinefelter turned to Sam: + +"Didn't you hear him?" + +"Yes, sir." + +Brown said: "Shut your mouth! You never heard anything of the kind." + +By and by Henry came into the pilot-house, unaware of any trouble. Brown +set upon him in his ugliest manner. + +"Here, why didn't you tell me we had got to land at that plantation?" he +demanded. + +Henry was always polite, always gentle. + +"I did tell you, Mr. Brown." + +"It's a lie." + +Sam Clemens could stand Brown's abuse of himself, but not of Henry. He +said: "You lie yourself. He did tell you." + +Brown was dazed for a moment and then he shouted: + +"I'll attend to your case in half a minute!" and ordered Henry out of +the pilot-house. + +The boy had started, when Brown suddenly seized him by the collar and +struck him in the face.--[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: +"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."]--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. + +"Get out of this here pilot-house," he raged. + +But his subordinate was not afraid of him now. + +"You should leave out the 'here,'" he drawled, critically. "It is +understood, and not considered good English form." + +"Don't you give me none of your airs," yelled Brown. "I ain't going to +stand nothing more from you." + +"You should say, 'Don't give me any of your airs,'" Sam said, sweetly, +"and the last half of your sentence almost defies correction." + +A group of passengers and white-aproned servants, assembled on the deck +forward, applauded the victor. + +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: + + "Did you strike him first?" Captain Klinefelter asked. + + "Yes, sir." + + "What with?" + + "A stool, sir." + + "Hard?" + + "Middling, sir." + + "Did it knock him down?" + + "He--he fell, sir." + + "Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?" + + "Yes, sir." + + "What did you do?" + + "Pounded him, sir." + + "Pounded him?" + + "Yes, sir." + + "Did you pound him much--that is, severely?" + + "One might call it that, sir, maybe." + + "I am 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."--["Life on + the Mississippi."] + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"In case of accident, whatever you do, don't lose your head--the +passengers will do that. Rush for the hurricane deck and to the life- +boat, and obey the mate's orders. When the boat is launched, help the +women and children into it. Don't get in yourself. The river is only a +mile wide. You can swim ashore easily enough." + +It was good manly advice, but it yielded a long harvest of sorrow. + + + + +XXVI + +THE TRAGEDY OF THE "PENNSYLVANIA" + +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: + +"The Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis, at Ship Island! One +hundred and fifty lives lost!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + MEMPHIS, TENN., Friday, June 18, 1858. + + DEAR SISTER MOLLIE,--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. + + 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. + + Pray for me, Mollie, and pray for my poor sinless brother. + Your unfortunate brother, + + SAML. L. CLEMENS. + + P. S.--I got here two days after Henry. + + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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: + +"I have no way of measuring. I don't know how much an eighth of a grain +would be." + +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. + +"If you have studied drugs," he said, "you ought to be able to judge an +eighth of a grain of morphine." + +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. + +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. + +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.--[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.] + +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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXVII + +THE PILOT + +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.--[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]--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. + +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. + +"Not only was he a pilot, but a good one." These are Horace Bixby's +words, and he added: + +"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." + +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: + + 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! + + 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. + +Orion and his wife had returned to Keokuk by this time, waiting for +something in the way of a business opportunity. + +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. + + 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?" + + 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. + +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. + +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. + + 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. + +Another riverman of those days has recalled a story he heard Sam Clemens +tell: + + We were speaking of presence of mind in accidents--we were always + talking of such things; then he said: + + "Boys, I had great presence of mind once. It was at a fire. An old + man leaned out of a four-story building calling for help. Everybody + in the crowd below looked up, but nobody did anything. The ladders + weren't long enough. Nobody had any presence of mind--nobody but + me. I came to the rescue. I yelled for a rope. When it came I + threw the old man the end of it. He caught it and I told him to tie + it around his waist. He did so, and I pulled him down." + +This was 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." + +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. + +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. + +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.--[See Appendix B, +at the end of the last volume.] + +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. + +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. + + + + + +XXVIII + +PILOTING AND PROPHECY + +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. + +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. + +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. + + 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.... + + Night--didn't run either 77 or 76 towheads--8 ft. bank on main shore + Ozark Chute.... + +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." + +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: + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"'Sam,' he said, "let me take the wheel. Maybe I have been over this +place since you have.' + +"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." + +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. + +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: + + HOW TO TAKE LIFE.--Take it just as though it was--as it is--an + earnest, vital, and important affair. Take it as though you were + born to the task of performing a merry part in it--as though the + world had awaited for your coming. Take it as though it was a grand + opportunity to do and achieve, to carry forward great and good + schemes; to help and cheer a suffering, weary, it may be + heartbroken, brother. Now and then a man stands aside from the + crowd, labors earnestly, steadfastly, confidently, and straightway + becomes famous for wisdom, intellect, skill, greatness of some sort. + The world wonders, admires, idolizes, and it only illustrates what + others may do if they take hold of life with a purpose. The + miracle, or the power that elevates the few, is to be found in their + industry, application, and perseverance under the promptings of a + brave, determined spirit. + +The old note-book contains no record of disasters. Horace Bixby, who +should know, has declared: + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + + 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'. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + + 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: + + '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. + + 'S. L. C.' Which proves nothing. + + '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. + + 'S. L. C.' You flatter well, Madame. + + '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. + + 'S. L. C.' Which was? + + '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.... + + 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. + + 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? + + 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. + SAM. + +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. + + + + + +XXIX + +THE END OF PILOTING + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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." + +He went up the river as a passenger on a steamer named the Uncle Sam. +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 basely escaped the +blockade. At Cairo, Illinois, they saw soldiers drilling--troops later +commanded by Grant. The Uncle Sam 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. + +"Good Lord Almighty! Sam;" he said, "what do they mean by that?" + +Clemens stepped to the wheel and brought the boat around. "I guess they +want us to wait a minute, Zeb," he said. + +They were examined and passed. It was the last steamboat to make the +trip from New Orleans to St. Louis. Mark Twain's pilot-days were over. +He would have grieved had he known this fact. + +"I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since," he +long afterward declared, "and I took a measureless pride in it." + +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. + + + + +XXX + +THE SOLDIER + +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. + +--[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.] + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +That settled it. Most of them knew Tom Harris, and they regarded his +neglect of them as perfidy. They broke camp without further ceremony. + +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. + +"Ah," said Clemens, as he mopped his face, "do you know that little devil +waded all the way across?" + +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: + +"You're secesh, ain't you?" + +They acknowledged that they were defenders of the cause and that they +wanted to buy provisions. The request seemed to inflame her. + +"Provisions!" she screamed. "Provisions for secesh, and my husband a +colonel in the Union Army. You get out of here!" + +She reached for a hickory hoop-pole 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +--[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.] + + + + +XXXI + +OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY + +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. + +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. + + 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.'--['Roughing It'.]-- + +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." + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +XXXII + +THE PIONEER + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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." + + 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. + + 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." + +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. + +The Clemens brothers took lodging with a genial Irishwoman, Mrs. Murphy, +a New York retainer of Governor Nye, who boarded the camp-followers.-- +[The Mrs, O'Flannigan of 'Roughing It'.]--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. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"It never occurred to us, for one thing; and, besides, it was built to +hold the ground, and that was enough. We did not wish to strain it." + +They 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. + + 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!" + +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: + + 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. + +Further along in the same letter his own overflowing Seller's optimism +develops. + + 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. + +This letter bears date of October 25th, and from it we gather that a +certain interest in mining claims had by this time developed. + + 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. + + 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. + +He refers to Pamela's two little children, his niece Annie and Baby Sam, +--[Samuel E. Moffett, in later life a well-known journalist and editor.] +--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. + + + + + +XXXIII + +THE PROSPECTOR + +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. + +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. + + 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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + + 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.--[S. L. C. to his mother. Published in + the Keokuk (Iowa) Gate city.]-- + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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."--['The Innocents Abroad.'] + +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. + +In the letter which Samuel Clemens wrote home he tells of what they found +in Unionville. + + "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. + +"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 + +"One week of this satisfied me. I resigned." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXXIV + +TERRITORIAL CHARACTERISTICS + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +He pauses at this point for a paragraph of self-analysis--characteristic +and crystal-clear. + + 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? + + But-but + In the bright lexicon of youth, + There is no such word as Fail-- + and I'll prove it! + +Whereupon, he lets himself go again, full-tilt: + + 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. + +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. + +He closes at last with a bit of pleasantry for his mother. + + 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? + + + + +XXXV + +THE MINER + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + +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: + + 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.... + + Man named Gebhart shot here yesterday while trying to defend a claim + on Last Chance Hill. Expect he will die. + + These mills here are not worth a d--n--except Clayton's--and it is + not in full working trim yet. + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + + 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.... + + 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 . . . . + +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: + + 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.... + + 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. + + 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. + + What the devil does a man want with any more feet when he owns in + the invincible bomb-proof "Monitor"? + +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. + +"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. + +"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." + +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?" + +This is midsummer, and snow still interferes with the work. One feels +the dreary uselessness of the quest. + +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. + +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." + +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. + + + + +XXXVI + +LAST MINING DAYS + +It was late in July when he wrote: + + 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. + +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--[Ella +Sterling Cummins, author of The Story of the Files, etc]--declares: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + +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. + +"That is the sort of thing we want," he said. "Write to him, Barstow, +and ask him if he wants to come up here." + +Barstow wrote, offering twenty-five dollars a week, a tempting sum. This +was at the end of July, 1862. + +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 +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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? + + + + +XXXVII + +THE NEW ESTATE + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +It was the master of the world's widest estate come to claim his kingdom: + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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--[Named for its discoverer, Henry T. P. +Comstock, a half-crazy miner, who realized very little from his +stupendous find.]--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.--[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.]-- + +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. + +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. + +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.--[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"]--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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XXXVIII + +ONE OF THE "STAFF" + +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.--["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.]--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. + +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 jolt 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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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 comer, 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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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: + +"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate +circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer." + +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. + +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. + +Now, amoung 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: + +"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." + +The little clergyman caught his breath. + +"Maybe I should, Mr. Clemens," he replied, "but I should try to say, +'Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.'" + +"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." + +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. + +"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?" + +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." + + + + +XXXIX + +PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY + +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: + +"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." + +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. + + By Nebo's lonely mountain, + On this side Jordan's wave, + In a vale in the land of Moab, + There lies a lonely grave. + + And no man knows that sepulchre, + And no man saw it e'er, + For the angels of God, upturned the sod, + And laid the dead man there. + +Another stanza that he cared for almost as much was the one beginning: + + And had he not high honor-- + The hill-side for a pall, + To lie in state while angels wait + With stars for tapers tall, + And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes, + Over his bier to wave, + And God's own hand in that lonely land, + To lay him in the grave? + +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: + +"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." + +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." + +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. + + + + + +XL + +"MARK TWAIN" + +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 Mask 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Rice and Clemens, it should be said, though rivals, were the best of +friends, and there was never any real animosity between them. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Joe," he said, to Goodman, "I want to sign my articles. I want to be +identified to a wider audience." + +"All right, Sam. What name do you want to use 'Josh'?" + +"No, I want to sign them 'Mark Twain.' It is an old river term, a 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." + +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: + +"Very well, Sam," he said, "that sounds like a good name." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XLI + +THE CREAM OF COMSTOCK HUMOR + +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. + +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: + +"Nobody ever gives me a meerschaum pipe," he said, plaintively. "Don't I +deserve one yet?" + +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: + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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: + +"'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?' + +"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. + +"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?' + +"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: + +"'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.' + +"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: + +"'Is that another of those bogus old pipes?' + +"He accepted it, though, and general peace was restored. One day, soon +after, he said to me: + +"'Steve, do you know that I think that that bogus pipe smokes about as +well as the good one?'" + +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. + +"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!" + +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: + + 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. + +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: + + 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. + +"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: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"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." + +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." + +"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." + +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. + +--[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.]-- + + + + +XLII + +REPORTORIAL DAYS + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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." + +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: + + 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. + +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: + +"Put in my washing, and it costs me one hundred dollars a month to live." + +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. + + 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]--. + +The diatribe closed with a really graceful poem, and the whole was no +doubt highly regarded by the Enterprise readers. + +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. + + 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 acknowedge 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +This was Mark's opportunity. He gave an account of Dan's disaster; then, +commenting, he said: + + 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. + +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: + +"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!" + +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.' + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +Such things came out of the Comstock; such things spring out of every +turbulent frontier. + + + + +XLIII + +ARTEMUS WARD + +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. + + [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.] + +A portion of a playful letter to his mother, written from the springs, +still exists. + + 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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"Slave, slave," said Artemus. "Come out and let me banish care from +you." + +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: + +"I give you Upper Canada." + +The company rose, drank the toast in serious silence; then Goodman said: + +"Of course, Artemus, it's all right, but why did you give us Upper +Canada?" + +"Because I don't want it myself," said Ward, gravely. + +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: + +"I'm preparing a joke, Artemus, but I'm keeping it for the present." + +It was near daybreak when Ward at last called for the bill. It was two +hundred and thirty-seven dollars. + +"What"' exclaimed Artemus. + +"That's my joke." said Goodman. + +"But I was only exclaiming because it was not twice as much," returned +Ward. + +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: + +"I feel glorious. I feel like walking on the roofs." + +Virginia was built on the steep hillside, and the eaves of some of the +houses almost touched the ground behind them. + +"There is your chance, Artemus," Goodman said, pointing to a row of these +houses all about of a height. + +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: + +"Wait a minute. What are you going to do?" + +"I'm going to shoot those burglars," he said. + +"Don't for your life. Those are not burglars. That's Mark Twain and +Artemus Ward." + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, as +all others must or rather cannot be, as it were." + +Then reflectively he adds: + +"Some of the finest intellects in the world have been blunted by liquor." + +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. + + + + +XLIV + +GOVERNOR OF THE "THIRD HOUSE" + +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. + +"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." + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + +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. + +The two Houses of the last territorial legislature of Nevada assembled +January 12, 1864.--[Nevada became a State October 31, 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." + +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: + + CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864. + + GOV. MARK TWAIN, 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,--[ There had been + no former message. This was regarded as a great joke.]--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. + S. PIXLEY, + G. A. SEARS, + Trustees. + + + CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864. + + GENTLEMEN,--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. + Respectfully, + MARK TWAIN. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Well," he sand, "why am I like the Pacific Ocean?" + +Several guesses were made, but none satisfied him. Finally all gave it +up. + +"Tell us, Mark, why are you like the Pacific Ocean?" + +"I don't know," he drawled. "I was just asking for information." + +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: + +"For God's sake go to-night." + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +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. + +I took it over to show to Miss Menken the actress, Orpheus C. Ken's wife. +She is a literary cuss herself. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + + + + +XLV + +A COMSTOCK DUEL + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + + 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. + + 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: + + "What's that, Steve?" + + "Why," I said, "that's Laud. His seconds are practising him over + there." + + 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. + + "Mark," I said, "let me have that pistol. I'll show you how to + shoot." + + 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. + + "Who did that?" asked Laird's second. + + "Sam," I said. + + "How far off was it?" + + "Oh, about thirty yards." + + "Can he do it again?" + + "Of course," I said; "every time. He could do it twice that far." + + Laud's second turned to his principal. + + "Laird," he said, "you don't want to fight that man. It's just like + suicide. You'd better settle this thing, now." + + 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. + + "Fight! H--l, no! I am not going to be murdered by that d--d + desperado." + + 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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XLVI + +GETTING SETTLED IN SAN FRANCISCO + +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'. + +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. + +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,"--[L. P. Ward; well known as an athlete in +San Francisco. He lost his mind and fatally shot himself in 1903.]-- +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."--[S. L. C., 1906.]-- +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. + +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: + +"What in the nation is that noise" + +Gillis's pretended sleep and the ticking would continue. + +Clemens would sit up in bed, fling aside his book, and swear violently. + +"Steve, what is that d--d noise?" he would say. + +Steve would pretend to rouse sleepily. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +At a place on Minna Street they lived with a private family. At first +Clemens was delighted. + +"Just look at it, Steve," he said. "What a nice, quiet place. Not a +thing to disturb us." + +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. + +"Came here, Steve," he said. "Come here and kill him. I'm so chilled +through I can't get a bead on him." + +"Sam," said Steve, "don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily +kill him at that range with your profanity." + +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. + +We gather that they moved, on an average, about once a month. A home +letter of September 25, 1864, says: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +XLVII + +BOHEMIAN DAYS + +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: + + 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. + + 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. + + It was fearful drudgery-soulless drudgery--and almost destitute of + interest. It was an awful slavery for a lazy man. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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,--[The +Golden Era, California's first literary publication, was founded by +Rollin M. Daggett and J. McDonough Foard in 1852.]--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. + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +XLVIII + +THE REFUGE OF THE HILLS + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"You can never afford to publish that," the foreman said to, Goodman. + +"Let it all go in, every word," Goodman answered. "If Mark can stand it, +I can!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +"It wasn't my fault," he ventured at last; "it was Billy Gillis's fault." + +"No such thing. You know better. Mr. Gillis has been here often. It +was you." + +"But do you realize, ma'am, how tired and hungry we are? Haven't you got +a bite for us to eat?" + +"No, sir, not a bite--for such as you." + +The offender's eyes, wandering about the room, spied something in a +corner. + +"Isn't that a guitar over there?" he asked. + +"Yes, sir, it is; what of it?" + +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. + +"I suppose you are just like all young folks," she said. "I was young +myself once. While you sing I'll get some supper." + +She left the door to the kitchen open so that she could hear, and cooked +whatever she could find for the belated party. + + + + +XLIX + +THE JUMPING FROG + +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 lunax +rainbow is one of the things people seldom see. He thought it an omen of +good-fortune. + +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. + + January 27. Same old diet--same old weather--went out to the + pocket-claim--had to rush back. + +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,--[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.]--a solemn, fat-witted person, who dozed by the +stove, or old 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: + +"I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other +frog," and perhaps the other would answer: + +"I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog I'd bet you." + +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. + +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: + +"Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work is too disagreeable." + +Gillis had just taken out a panful of dirt. + +"Bring one more pail, Sam," he pleaded. + +"Oh, hell, Jim, I won't do it; I'm freezing!" + +"Just one more pail, Sam," he pleaded. + +"No, sir, not a drop, not if I knew there were a million dollars in that +pan." + +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. + +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." + +In Mark Twain's old note-book occurs a memorandum of the frog story--a +mere casual entry of its main features: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +L + +BACK TO THE TUMULT + +FROM the note-book: + + 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. + +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. + +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: + + Gone, gone, gone-- + Gone to his endeavor; + Gone, gone, gone, + Forever and forever. + +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.'" + +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: + + 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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + + Tom Maguire, + Roused to ire, + Lighted on McDougal; + Tore his coat, + Clutched his throat, + And split him in the bugle. + + For shame! oh, fie! + Maguire, why + Will you thus skyugle? + Why curse and swear, + And rip and tear + The innocent McDougal? + + Of bones bereft, + Almost, you've left + Vestvali, gentle Jew gal; + And now you've smashed + And almost hashed + The form of poor McDougall + +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'. + + + + +LI + +THE CORNER-STONE + +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. + +"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."--[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.]-- + +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. + +"Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog"--[This was the original title.]-- +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. + +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: + + I do not know what to write; my life is so uneventful. I wish I was + back there piloting up and down the river again. Verily, all is + vanity and little worth--save piloting. + + To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused + for thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out + a villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on! "Jim Smiley and + His Jumping Frog"--a squib which would never have been written but + to please Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too late to + appear in his book. + + 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. + +This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco +Alta: + + "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." + + 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. + +It is difficult to judge the jumping Frog story to-day. It has the +intrinsic fundamental value of one of AEsop's Fables.--[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.]--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. + +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: + + 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. + +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. + + + + +LII + +A COMMISSION TO THE SANDWICH ISLANDS + +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. + +If the Ajax 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. + +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: + +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. + +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." + +So it is: man proposes, while fate, undisturbed, spins serenely on. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + Oh, islands there are on the face of the deep + Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep, + +he quotes in his note-book, and adds: + + 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! + +And in another place: + + They live 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. + +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. + + 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. + +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." + +'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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +LIII + +ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE "HORNET" DISASTER + +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. + +The Ajax 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, +--[Edward L. Burlingame, now for many years editor of Scribner's +Magazine.]--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. + +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: + +"California is proud of Mark Twain, and some day the American people will +be, too, no doubt." + +There has seldom been a more accurate prophecy. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +Clemens never forgot that advice. He did not always observe it, but he +rarely failed to realize its gospel. Burlingame urged him to travel. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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: + +"But there is a Scriptural command for you to go." + +"If you can quote one I'll obey it," said Clemens. + +"Very well. The Bible says, 'If any man require thee to walk a mile, go +with him, Twain.'" + +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. + +Under date of July 4 (1866), Mark Twain's Sandwich Island note-book says: + + 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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco, and the note-book entry +of that day says: + + 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! + +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. + +"How much do you think it ought to be, Mark?" James Anthony asked. + +"Oh, I'm a modest man; I don't want the whole Union office. Call it $100 +a column." + +There was a general laugh. The bill was made out at that figure, and he +took it to the business office for payment. + +"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."--["My Debut +as a Literary Person."--Collected works.]-- + +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: + + The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, + + The turf with their bayonets turning, + And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold, + And our lanterns dimly burning. + +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. + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY,1835-66, v1 +by Albert Bigelow Paine + diff --git a/old/mt1bg11.zip b/old/mt1bg11.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..65a49ce --- /dev/null +++ b/old/mt1bg11.zip |