The Boys Life of Mark Twain | Page 5

chapters, and while they are not history, but fiction, they are

based upon fact, and the picture they present of family hardship and
struggle is not overdrawn. The character of Colonel Sellers, who gave
the Hawkinses a grand welcome to the new home, was also real. In life
he was James Lampton, cousin to Mrs. Clemens, a gentle and radiant
merchant of dreams, who believed himself heir to an English earldom
and was always on the verge of colossal fortune. With others of the
Lampton kin, he was already settled in Missouri and had written back
glowing accounts; though perhaps not more glowing than those which
had come from another relative, John Quarles, brother-in-law to Mrs.
Clemens, a jovial, whole-hearted optimist, well-loved by all who knew
him.
It was a June evening when the Clemens family, with the barouche and
the two outriders, finally arrived in Florida, and the place, no doubt,
seemed attractive enough then, however it may have appeared later. It
was the end of a long journey; relatives gathered with fond welcome;
prospects seemed bright. Already John Quarles had opened a general
store in the little town. Florida, he said, was certain to become a city.
Salt River would be made navigable with a series of locks and dams.
He offered John Clemens a partnership in his business.
Quarles, for that time and place, was a rich man. Besides his store he
had a farm and thirty slaves. His brother-in-law's funds, or lack of them,
did not matter. The two had married sisters. That was capital enough
for his hearty nature. So, almost on the moment of arrival in the new
land, John Clemens once more found himself established in trade.
The next thing was to find a home. There were twenty-one houses in
Florida, and none of them large. The one selected by John and Jane
Clemens had two main rooms and a lean-to kitchen--a small place and
lowly--the kind of a place that so often has seen the beginning of
exalted lives. Christianity began with a babe in a manger; Shakespeare
first saw the light in a cottage at Stratford; Lincoln entered the world by
way of a leaky cabin in Kentucky, and into the narrow limits of the
Clemens home in Florida, on a bleak autumn day--November 30,
1835--there was born one who under the name of Mark Twain would
live to cheer and comfort a tired world.

The name Mark Twain had not been thought of then, and probably no
one prophesied favorably for the new-comer, who was small and feeble,
and not over-welcome in that crowded household. They named him
Samuel, after his paternal grandfather, and added Langhorne for an old
friend--a goodly burden for so frail a wayfarer. But more appropriately
they called him "Little Sam," or "Sammy," which clung to him through
the years of his delicate childhood.
It seems a curious childhood, as we think of it now. Missouri was a
slave State--Little Sam's companions were as often black as white. All
the children of that time and locality had negroes for playmates, and
were cared for by them. They were fond of their black companions and
would have felt lost without them. The negro children knew all the best
ways of doing things--how to work charms and spells, the best way to
cure warts and heal stone-bruises, and to make it rain, and to find lost
money. They knew what signs meant, and dreams, and how to keep off
hoodoo; and all negroes, old and young, knew any number of weird
tales.
John Clemens must have prospered during the early years of his Florida
residence, for he added another slave to his household--Uncle Ned, a
man of all work--and he built a somewhat larger house, in one room of
which, the kitchen, was a big fireplace. There was a wide hearth and
always plenty of wood, and here after supper the children would gather,
with Jennie and Uncle Ned, and the latter would tell hair-lifting tales of
"ha'nts," and lonely roads, and witch-work that would make his hearers
shiver with terror and delight, and look furtively over their shoulders
toward the dark window-panes and the hovering shadows on the walls.
Perhaps it was not the healthiest entertainment, but it was the kind to
cultivate an imagination that would one day produce "Tom Sawyer"
and "Huck Finn."
True, Little Sam was very young at this period, but even a little chap of
two or three would understand most of that fireside talk, and get
impressions more vivid than if the understanding were complete. He
was barely four when this earliest chapter of his life came to a close.
John Clemens had not remained satisfied with Florida and his

undertakings there. The town had not kept its promises. It failed to
grow, and