Paine published this manuscript, with typical errors and omissions, under a title he contrived for it, “Early Years in Florida, Missouri” ( MTA, 1:7–10). The text itself shows that Clemens wrote it in 1877, heading it simply “Chap. 1” (omitted by Paine). Neider copied Paine’s version (errors and all), but he left off the last sixty words and inserted three paragraphs from “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It],” two after the first sentence and one at the end ( AMT, 1–3). It seems likely that the manuscript was the “beginning,” or one of the beginnings, of an autobiography that Clemens made in response to prodding from his friend John Milton Hay (see “John Hay”). The manuscript was doubtless part of the Mark Twain Papers on which Paine drew for the biography and other works, but in about 1920 he gave the manuscript to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where it now resides.
I was born the 30thⒶapparatus note of November, 1835, in the almost invisible village of Florida, Monroe county, Missouri. IⒶapparatus note suppose Florida had less than three hundred inhabitants. It had two streets, each a couple of hundred yards long; the rest of the avenues mere lanes, with rail fences and corn fields on either side. Both the streets and the lanes were paved with the same material—tough black mudⒶapparatus note, in wet times, deep dust in dry.
Most of the houses were of logs—all of them, indeed, except three or four; these latter were frame ones. There were none of brick, and none of stone. There was a log church, with a puncheon floor and slab benches. AⒶapparatus note puncheon floor is made of logs whose upper surfaces have been chipped flat with the adze. The cracks between the logs wereⒶapparatus note not filled;Ⓐapparatus note there was no carpet; consequently, if you dropped anything smaller than a peach, it was likely to go through. The church was perched upon short sections of logs, which elevated it two or three feet from the ground. Hogs slept under there, and whenever the dogs got after them during services, the minister hadⒶapparatus note to wait till the disturbance was over. In winter there was always a refreshing breeze up through the puncheon floor; in summer there were fleas enough for all.
A slab bench is made of the outside cut of a saw-log, with the bark side down; it is supported on four sticks driven into augur-holes at the ends; it has no back, and no cushions. The church was twilighted with yellow tallow candles in tin sconces hung against the walls. Week-days, the church was a schoolhouseⒶapparatus note.
There wereⒶapparatus note two stores in the village. My uncle, John A. QuarlesⒺexplanatory note,Ⓐapparatus note was proprietor of one of them. It was a very small establishment, with a few rolls of “bit” calicoesⒺexplanatory note in half a dozen shelves, a few barrels of saltⒶapparatus note mackerel, coffee, and New Orleans sugar behind the counter, stacks of brooms, shovels, axes, hoes, rakes, and such things, here and there, a lot of cheap hats, bonnets and tin-ware strung on strings and suspended from the walls; and at the other end of the room was another counter with bags of shot on it, a cheese or two, and a keg of powder;Ⓐapparatus note in front of it a row of nail kegs and a few pigs of lead; and behind it a barrelⒶapparatus note or two of New Orleans molasses and native corn whisky on tap. If a boy bought five or ten cents’Ⓐapparatus note worth of anything, he was entitled to half a handful of sugar from the barrel; if a woman bought a few yards of calico she was entitled to a spool of thread in addition to the usual gratisⒶapparatus note [begin page 65] “trimmins;” if a man bought a trifle, he wasⒶapparatus note at liberty to draw and swallow as big a drink of whisky as he wanted.
Everything was cheap: apples, peaches, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, and corn, ten cents a bushel; chickens ten cents apiece, butter sixⒶapparatus note cents a pound, eggs three cents a dozen, coffee and sugar five cents a pound, whisky ten cents a gallon. I do not know how prices are out there in interior Missouri now, (1877,)Ⓐapparatus note but I know what they are here in Hartford, Connecticut. To witⒶapparatus note: apples, three dollars a bushel; peaches five dollars; Irish potatoes (choice Bermudas), five dollars; chickensⒶapparatus note a dollar to a dollar and a half apiece according to weight; butter forty-five to sixty cents a pound, eggs fifty to sixty cents a dozen; coffee forty-five cents a pound; sugar about the same; native whisky four or five dollars a gallon, I believe, but I can only be certain concerning the sort which I use myself, which is Scotch and costs ten dollars a gallon when you take two gallons—more when you take less.
Thirty and forty years ago, out yonder in Missouri, the ordinary cigar cost thirty cents a hundred,Ⓐapparatus note but most people did not try to afford them, since smokingⒶapparatus note a pipe cost nothing in that tobacco-growing country. Connecticut is also given up to tobaccoⒶapparatus note raising, to-day, yet we pay ten dollars a hundred for Connecticut cigars and fifteenⒶapparatus note to twenty-five dollars a hundred for the imported article.Ⓐapparatus note
At first my father owned slavesⒺexplanatory note, but by and by he sold them, and hired others by the yearⒶapparatus note from the farmers. For a girl of fifteen he paid twelve dollars a year and gave her two linsey-wolsey frocks and a pair of “stogy” shoes—cost, a modification of nothing; for a negro woman of twenty-five, as general house servant, he paid twenty-five dollars a year and gave her shoesⒶapparatus note and the aforementioned linsey-wolsey frocks; for a strong negro woman of forty, as cook, washer, etc., he paid forty dollars a year and the customary two suits of clothes; and for an able bodied man he paid from seventy-five to a hundred dollars a year and gave him two suits of jeans and two pairs of “stogy” shoesⒺexplanatory note—an outfit that cost about three dollars. But times have changed. We pay our German nursemaidⒶapparatus note $155 a year; IrishⒶapparatus note housemaid,Ⓐapparatus note $150; Irish laundress, $150; negro woman, as cook, $240; young negro man, to wait on door and table, $360; Irish coachman, $600 a year, with gas, hot and cold water, and dwelling consistingⒶapparatus note of parlor, kitchen and two bed-rooms, connected with the stable, free.
My uncle, John A. Quarles] John Adams Quarles (1802–76) was married to Martha Ann Lampton, with whom he had ten children. She was the younger sister of Clemens’s mother. He settled in Florida, Missouri, in the mid-1830s, where he became a prosperous merchant and farmer. After the Clemens family moved to Hannibal in 1839, Clemens spent his summers at the Quarles farm, from about age seven until he was eleven or twelve ( Inds, 342). For a longer reminiscence of life on the farm see “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It].”
“bit” calicoes] Presumably calicoes were sold at the rate of one “bit” (one-eighth of a dollar) per yard (Ramsay and Emberson 1963, 21).
my father owned slaves] In about 1833 John Marshall Clemens bought “one negro man” from Rawley Chapman (b. 1793) in Tennessee—his only documented slave purchase. The family also owned a woman named “Jenny,” who had been given to Clemens’s parents in about 1825. Clemens recalled that she was the “only slave we ever owned in my time” ( Inds, 327; record of bill of sale, Fentress County Deeds, Vol. A:233). See “Jane Lampton Clemens” ( Inds, 82–92) for a fuller discussion of the family’s attitude toward slavery.
“stogy” shoes] A rough heavy kind of shoe; the name is supposedly derived from “Conestoga,” a town in Pennsylvania.
[Early Years in Florida, Missouri] Chapter 1 ❉ Textual Commentary
Source document.
MS Manuscript of 11 leaves, written in 1877, NNAL.The MS was written, according to the text, in 1877 (65.6); it is in brown ink (page 1) and purple ink (pages 2–11) on torn half sheets of white wove paper, embossed “Crystal-Lake Mills” in the upper left corner, with blue lines, measuring 4⅞ by 8 inches. Paine supplied the title “Early Years in Florida, Missouri,” when he published this manuscript in MTA; Clemens entitled it merely “Chap. 1.”