Mark Twain, A Biography Complete

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"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.