Samuel Clemens

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

“ And the boy who hated school has become a reader—he is reveling in a printers' library of thousands of volumes. We feel, somehow, that Samuel Clemens has suddenly become quite a serious-minded person, that he has left Tom Sawyer and Joe Harper and Huck Finn somewhere in a beautiful country a long way behind. ”

“ We get a fair idea of Samuel Clemens at seventeen from this letter. For one thing, he could write good, clear English, full of interesting facts. He is enthusiastic, but not lavish of words. He impresses us with his statement that the visitors to the Palace each day are in number double the population of Hannibal; a whole river is turned from its course to supply New York City with water; the water comes thirty-eight miles, and each family could use a hundred barrels a day! ”

“ Those were fermenting discourses that young Samuel Clemens listened to that winter in Macfarlane's room, and they did not fail to influence his later thought.
It was the high-tide of spring, late in April, when the prospective cocoa-hunter decided that it was time to set out for the upper Amazon. He had saved money enough to carry him at least as far as New Orleans, where he would take ship, it being farther south and therefore nearer his destination. Furthermore, he could begin with a lazy trip down the Mississippi, which, next to being a pilot, had been one of his most cherished dreams. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The hard struggle of an upright, impractical man had come to a close. This was in March, 1847. John Clemens had lived less than forty-nine years.
The children were dazed. They had loved their father and honored his nobility of purpose. The boy Sam was overcome with remorse. He recalled his wildness and disobedience—a thousand things trifling enough at the time, but heartbreaking now. Boy and man, Samuel Clemens was never spared by remorse. Leading him into the room where his father lay, his mother said some comforting words and asked him to make her a promise. ”

“ The Clemens brothers took lodging with a genial Irishwoman, Mrs. Murphy, a New York retainer of Governor Nye, who boarded the camp-followers.* This retinue had come in the hope of Territorial pickings and mine adventure—soldiers of fortune they were, and a good-natured lot all together. One of them, Bob Howland, a nephew of the governor, attracted Samuel Clemens by his clean-cut manner and commanding eye.
* The Mrs. O’Flannigan of ‘Roughing It’.
“The man who has that eye doesn’t need to go armed,” he wrote later. ”

“ CLX A GREAT PUBLISHER AT HOME Men are likely to be spoiled by prosperity, to be made arrogant, even harsh. Success made Samuel Clemens merely elate, more kindly, more humanly generous. Every day almost he wrote to Webster, suggesting some new book or venture, but always considerately, always deferring to suggestions from other points of view. ”

“ They were all new churches to Samuel Clemens, but he pretended not to recognize this fact. In each one he was asked to speak a few words, and he began by saying how good it was to be back in the old home Sunday-school again, which as a boy he had always so loved, and he would go on and point out the very place he had sat, and his escort hardly knew whether or not to enjoy the proceedings. At one place he told a moral story. He said:
Little boys and girls, I want to tell you a story which illustrates the value of perseverance—of sticking to your work, as it were. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side and from the other then he said:
"Tiens! in effect! — At what is she good?"
"My God!" respond Smiley, always with an air disengaged, "she is good for one thing, to my notice, (a mon avis) she can batter in jumping (elle peut batter en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras."
The individual re-took the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate:
"Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog. ”

“ The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in a chair of state meditating. Presently he said, with a tender accent—"My daughter?"
A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly mail, answered—"Speak, father!"
"My daughter, the time has come for the revealing of the mystery that hath puzzled all your young life. Know, then, that it had its birth in the matters which I shall now unfold. My brother Ulrich is the great Duke of Brandenburgh. Our father, on his deathbed, decreed that if no son were born to Ulrich the succession should pass to my house, provided a son were born to me. ”

“ 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.* Samuel Clemens immediately became “Sam,” or “Josh,” to his associates, just as De Quille was “Dan” and Goodman “Joe.” ”

“ Now, among his Virginia acquaintances was a young minister, a Mr. Rising, “the fragile, gentle new fledgling” of the Buck Fanshaw episode. Clemens greatly admired Mr. Rising’s evident sincerity, and the young minister had quickly recognized the new reporter’s superiority of mind. Now and then he came to the office to call on him. Unfortunately, he happened to step in just at that moment when, infuriated by the latest theft of his property, Samuel Clemens was engaged in his rotary denunciation of the criminals, oblivious of every other circumstance. Mr. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lui et l'individu touchent leurs grenouilles par derriére, et la grenouille neuve se met à sautiller, mais Daniel se soulève lourdement, hausse les épaules ainsi, comme un Frainçais; à quoi bon? il ne pouvait bouger, il était planté solide comme une enclume, il n'avançait pas puls que si on l'éut mis à l'ancre. Smiley fut surpris et dégoûté, mais il ne se doutait pas du tour, bien entendu. L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en va, et en s'en allant est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup de pouce par-dessus lé'paule, comme ça, au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air délibére: — Eh bien! ”

“ So old Maria departed and took up her ancient quarters in the nursery.
Penelope coughed twice in her sleep.
"Oh, why don't that doctor come! Mortimer, this room is too warm. This room is certainly too warm. Turn off the register — quick!"
I shut it off, glancing at the thermometer at the same time, and wondering to myself if 70 was too warm for a sick child.
The coachman arrived from down town, now, with the news that our physician was ill and confined to his bed. Mrs. McWilliams turned a dead eye upon me, and said in a dead voice:
"There is a Providence in it. It is foreordained. ”

“ That Samuel L. Clemens was the greatest American humorist of his age nobody will deny. Posterity will be left to decide his relative position, in letters among the humorists of English literature. It is certain that his contemporary fame abroad was equal to his fame at home. All Europe recognized his genius, the English people appreciated him at his own worth, and the University of Oxford honored him with a degree. His writings commanded a higher price in the market than those of any other contemporary whose career was solely devoted to literature. ”

“ When Samuel was about nine years old his father decided to move to Hannibal, in the same State. The prime cause of this immigration was the failure of the elder Clemens to make Salt River navigable; hence, as one writer has suggested, the probable origin of the old synonym for disaster, "gone up Salt River."
Young Clemens was sent to school in Hannibal. Some of his schoolmates are [48] living in the old town to-day. He seems to have enjoyed the rule of two teachers, Miss Newcomb and Miss Lucy Davis. ”

“ He is the most disjointed, sway-backed, and generally distorted old skeleton you ever saw, but he is full of fun. When he laughs it sounds like rasping two stones together, and he always starts it off with a cheery screech like raking a nail across a window-pane. Hey, Jones! That is old Columbus Jones—shroud cost four hundred dollars—entire trousseau, including monument, twenty-seven hundred. ”

“ He returned to America, and started for the Rocky Mountains. After sixty-eight days of arduous travel on the Plains, and when he had got within four miles of Sherman's head-quarters, he was tomahawked and scalped, and the Indians got the beef. They got all of it but one barrel. Sherman's army captured that, and so even in death, the bold navigator partly fulfilled his contract. In his will, which he had kept like a journal, he bequeathed the contract to his son Bartholomew W. Bartholomew W. made out the following bill, and then died:—
The United States
He died then ”

“ Two thousand miles of ceaseless rush and rattle and clatter, by night and by day, and never a weary moment, never a lapse of interest! The first seven hundred miles a level continent, its grassy carpet greener and softer and smoother than any sea, and figured with designs fitted to its magnitude—the shadows of the clouds. ”

“ At last, 'A Mediaeval Romance'—a story which has been said to contain the germ of 'A Connecticut Yankee', because of its burlesque of mediaevalism—won the enthusiastic approval of Bret Harte.
From this time forward, Samuel L. Clemens is seen in a new environment, in association with new ideas and a new civilization. The history of this second period does not fall within the scope of the present work. ”

“ Once in three or four years a ship touched there, moved them with aged news of bloody battles, devastating epidemics, fallen thrones, and ruined dynasties, then traded them some soap and flannel for some yams and bread-fruit, and sailed away, leaving them to retire into their peaceful dreams and pious dissipations once more. ”

“ The two gladiators fell upon each other's necks, with floods of proud and happy tears; that other second embraced me; the surgeons, the orators, the undertakers, the police, everybody embraced, everybody congratulated, everybody cried, and the whole atmosphere was filled with praise and with joy unspeakable.
It seemed to me then that I would rather be the hero of a French duel than a crowned and sceptred monarch. ”

“ Stripped of its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed above me!
All my misery vanished—for a child might know that no harm could come with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once, and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the friendly giant. ”

“ He had nothing to do with beef contracts for General Sherman either. I began to think it was a curious kind of a Government. It looked somewhat as if they wanted to get out of paying for that beef. The following day I went to the Secretary of the Interior.
I said, "Your Imperial Highness, on or about the 10th day of October——"
"That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you before. Go, take your infamous beef contract out of this establishment. The Interior Department has nothing whatever to do with subsistence for the army." ”

“ I felt that if I ever got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that perdition could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs, till to tell you the truth I am almost worn out. ”

“ There are no unsightly stone walls, and never a fence of any kind. There is no dirt, no decay, no rubbish, anywhere— nothing that even hints at untidiness, nothing that even suggests neglect. All is orderly and beautiful—everything is charming to the eye. ”