Susy’sⒶapparatus note BiographyⒶapparatus note continued—Some of the tricks played in “Tom Sawyer”Ⓐapparatus note— The broken sugar-bowl—Skating on the Mississippi with Tom Nash, etc.Ⓐapparatus note
From Susy’s Biography.Ⓐapparatus note
ClaraⒶapparatus note and I are sure that papa played the trick on Grandma, about the whippingⒺexplanatory note, that is related in “TheⒶapparatus note Adventures of Tom Sayer:”Ⓐapparatus note “HandⒶapparatus note me that switch.”Ⓐapparatus note The switch hovered in the air, the peril was desperate—“MyⒶapparatus note, look behind you Aunt!”Ⓐapparatus note The old lady whirled around and snatched her skirts out of danger. The lad fled on the instant, scrambling up the high board fence and dissapeared over it.Ⓐapparatus note
Susy and Clara were quite right about that.Ⓐapparatus note
Then SusyⒶapparatus note says:
AndⒶapparatus note we know papa played “Hookey”Ⓐapparatus note all the time. And how readily would papa pretendⒶapparatus note to be dying so as not to have to go to school!Ⓐapparatus note
These revelations and exposures are searching, but they are just. If I am as transparent to other people as I was to SusyⒶapparatus note, I have wasted much effort in this life.
GrandmaⒶapparatus note couldn’t make papa go to school, so she let him go into a printing-office to learn the trade. He did so, and gradually picked up enough education to enable him to do about as well as those who were more studious in early lifeⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐapparatus note
It is noticeable that SusyⒶapparatus note does not get overheated when she is complimenting me, but maintains a proper judicial and biographical calm. It is noticeable,Ⓐapparatus note also, and it is to her credit as a biographer, that she distributes compliment and criticism with a fair and even hand.
My mother had a good deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it. She had none at all with my brother Henry, who was two years younger than I, and I think that the unbroken monotony of his goodness and truthfulness and obedience would have been a burden to her but for the relief and variety which I furnished in the other direction. I was a tonic. I was valuable to her. I never thought of it before, but now I see it. I never knew Henry to do a vicious thing toward me, or toward any one else—but he frequently did righteous onesⒶapparatus note that cost me as heavily. It was his duty to report me, when I needed reporting and neglected to do it myself, and he was very faithful in discharging that duty. He is “Sid” in “Tom Sawyer.” But Sid was not Henry. Henry was a very much finer and better boy than ever Sid was.
It was Henry who called my mother’s attention to the fact that the thread with which she had sewed my collar together to keep me from going in swimming, had changed colorⒺexplanatory note. My mother would not have discovered it but for that, and she was manifestly piqued when she recognized that that prominent bit of circumstantial evidence had escaped her sharp eye. That detail probably added a detail to my punishment. It is human. We generally visit our shortcomings on somebody else when there is a possible excuse for it—but no matter,Ⓐapparatus note I took it out of Henry. There is always compensation for such as are unjustly used. I often took it out of him— [begin page 351] sometimes as an advance payment for something which I hadn’t yet done. These were occasions when the opportunity was tooⒶapparatus note strong a temptation, and I had to draw on the future. I did not need to copy this idea from my mother, and probably didn’t. It is most likely that I invented it for myself. Still she wrought upon that principle upon occasion.
If the incident of the broken sugar-bowl is in “Tom Sawyer”Ⓔexplanatory note—I don’t remember whether it is or not—that is an example of it. Henry never stole sugar. He took it openly from the bowl. His mother knew he wouldn’t take sugar when she wasn’t looking, but she had her doubts about me. Not exactly doubts, either. She knew very well I would. One day when she was not present, Henry took sugar from her prized and precious old-EnglishⒶapparatus note sugar-bowl, which was an heirloom in the family—and he managed to break the bowl. It was the first time I had ever had a chance to tell anything on him, and I was inexpressibly glad. I told him I was going to tell on him, but he was not disturbed. When my mother came in and saw the bowl lying on the floor in fragments, she was speechless for a minute. I allowed that silence to work; I judged it would increase the effect. I was waiting for her to ask “Who did that?”—so that I could fetch out my news. But it was an error of calculation. When she got through with her silence she didn’t ask anything about it—she merely gave me a crack on the skull with her thimble that I felt all the way down to my heels. Then I broke out with my injured innocence, expecting to make her very sorry that she had punished the wrong one. I expected her to do something remorseful and pathetic. I told her that I was not the one—it was Henry. But there was no upheaval. She said, without emotion,Ⓐapparatus note “It’s all right. It isn’t any matter. You deserve it for something you’ve done that I didn’t know about; and if you haven’t done it, why then you deserve it for something that you are going to do, that I shan’tⒶapparatus note hear about.”
There was a stairway outside the house, which led up to the rear part of the second story. One day Henry was sent on an errand, and he took a tin bucket along.Ⓐapparatus note I knew he would have to ascend those stairs, so I went up and locked the door on the inside, and came down into the garden, which had been newly plowedⒶapparatus note and was rich in choice firm clods of black mouldⒶapparatus note. I gathered a generous equipment of these, and ambushed him. I waited till he had climbed the stairs and was near the landing and couldn’t escape. Then I bombarded him with clods, which he warded off with his tin bucket the best he could, but without much success, for I was a good marksman. The clods smashing against the weatherboardingⒶapparatus note fetched my mother out to see what was the matter, and I tried to explain that I was amusing Henry. Both of them were after me in a minute, but I knew the way over that high board fence and escaped for that time. After an hour or two, when I ventured back, there was no one around and I thought the incident was closed. But it was not.Ⓐapparatus note Henry was ambushing me. With an unusually competent aim for him, he landed a stone on the side of my headⒶapparatus note which raised a bump there whichⒶapparatus note felt like the Matterhorn. I carried it to my mother straightway for sympathy, but she was not strongly moved. It seemed to be her idea that incidents like this would eventually reform me if I harvested enough of them. So the matter was only educational. I had had a sterner view of it than that,Ⓐapparatus note before.
It was not right to give the cat the Pain-KillerⒺexplanatory note;Ⓐapparatus note I realize it now. I would not repeat it in these days. But in those “Tom Sawyer” days it was a great and sincere satisfaction to me to see Peter perform under its influence—and if actions do speak as loud as words, he took as much interest in it as I did. It was a most detestable medicine, Perry Davis’s Pain-Killer. Mr. Pavey’s negro [begin page 352] manⒺexplanatory note, who was a person of good judgment and considerable curiosity, wanted to sample it, and I let him. It was his opinion that it was made of hellfire.Ⓐapparatus note
Those were the cholera days of ’49. The people along the Mississippi were paralysedⒶapparatus note with fright. Those who could run away, did it. And many died of fright in the flight. Fright killed three persons where the cholera killed one. Those who couldn’t flee kept themselves drenched with cholera preventivesⒶapparatus note, and my mother chose Perry Davis’s Pain-Killer for meⒺexplanatory note. She was not distressed about herself. She avoided that kind of preventiveⒶapparatus note. But she made me promise to take a teaspoonful of Pain-Killer every day. Originally it was my intention to keep the promise, but at that time I didn’t know as much about Pain-Killer as I knew after my first experiment with it. She didn’t watch Henry’s bottle—she could trust Henry. But she marked my bottle with a pencil, on the label, every day, and examined it to see if the teaspoonful had been removed. The floor was not carpeted. It had cracks in it, and I fed the Pain-Killer to the cracks with very good results—no cholera occurredⒶapparatus note down below.
It was upon one of these occasions that that friendly cat came waving his tail and supplicating for Pain-Killer—which he got—and then went into those hysterics which ended with his colliding with all the furniture in the room and finally going out of the open window and carrying the flower-pots with him, just in time for my mother to arrive and look over her glasses in petrified astonishment and sayⒶapparatus note “What in the world is the matter with Peter?”
I don’t remember what my explanation was, but if it is recorded in that book it may not beⒶapparatus note the right oneⒺexplanatory note.
Whenever my conduct was of such exaggerated impropriety that my mother’s extemporary punishments were inadequate, she saved the matter up for Sunday, and made me go to church Sunday night—which was a penalty sometimes bearable, perhaps, but as a rule it was not, and I avoided it for the sake of my constitution. She would never believe that I had been to church until she had applied her test: sheⒶapparatus note made me tell her what the text was. That was a simple matter, andⒶapparatus note caused me no trouble. I didn’t have to go to church to get a text. I selected one for myself. This worked very well until one time whenⒶapparatus note my text and the one furnished by a neighbor, who had been to church, didn’t tally. After that my mother took other methods. I don’t know what they were now.
In those days men and boys wore rather long cloaks in the winter-time. They were black, and were lined with very bright and showy Scotch plaids. One winter’s night when I was starting to church to square a crime of some kind committed during the week, I hid my cloak near the gate and went off and played with the other boys until church was over. Then I returned home. But in the dark I put the cloak on wrong-sideⒶapparatus note out, entered the room, threw the cloak aside, and then stood the usual examination. I got along very well until the temperature of the church was mentioned. My mother said,
“ItⒶapparatus note must have been impossible to keep warm there on such a night.”
I didn’t see the art of that remark, and was foolish enough to explain that I wore my cloak all the time that I was in church. She asked if I kept it on from church home, too. I didn’t see the bearing of that remark. I said that that was what I had done. She said,
“YouⒶapparatus note wore it in churchⒶapparatus note with that red Scotch plaid outside and glaring? Didn’t that attract any attention?”
[begin page 353]Of course to continue such a dialogue would have been tedious and unprofitable, and I let it go, and took the consequences.
That was about 1849. Tom Nash was a boy of my own age—the postmaster’sⒶapparatus note sonⒺexplanatory note. The Mississippi was frozen across, and he and I went skating one night, probably without permission. I cannot see why we should go skating in the night unless without permission, for there could be no considerable amusement to be gotten out of skating at nightⒶapparatus note if nobodyⒶapparatus note was going to object to it. About midnight, when we were more than half a mileⒶapparatus note out toward the Illinois shore, we heard some ominous rumbling and grinding and crashing going on between us and the home side of the river, and we knew what it meant—the iceⒶapparatus note was breaking up. We started for home, pretty badly scared. We flew along at full speed whenever the moonlight sifting down between the clouds enabled usⒶapparatus note to tell which was ice and which was water. In the pauses we waited; started again whenever there was a good bridge of ice; paused again when we came to naked water and waited in distress until a floating vast cake should bridge that place. It took us an hour to make the trip—a trip which we made in a misery of apprehension all the time. But at last we arrived within a very brief distance of the shore.Ⓐapparatus note We waited again; thereⒶapparatus note was another place that needed bridging. All about us the ice was plunging and grinding along and piling itself up in mountains on the shore, and the dangers were increasing, not diminishing. We grew very impatient to get to solid ground, so we started too early and went springing from cake to cake. Tom made a miscalculation, and fell short. He got a bitter bath, but he was so close to shore that he only had to swim a stroke or two—then his feet struck hard bottom and he crawled out. I arrived a little later, without accident. We had been in a drenching perspiration, and Tom’s bath was a disaster for him. He took to his bed sick, and hadⒶapparatus note a procession of diseases.Ⓐapparatus note The closing one was scarlet feverⒶapparatus note, and he came out of it stone deafⒺexplanatory note. Within a year or two speech departed, of course. But some years later he was taught to talk,Ⓐapparatus note after a fashion—one couldn’t always make out what it was he was trying to say. Of course he could not modulate his voice, since he couldn’t hear himself talk. When he supposed he was talking lowⒶapparatus note and confidentially, you could hear him in Illinois.
Four years ago (1902) I was invited by the University of Missouri to come out there and receive the honorary degree of LL.D.Ⓔexplanatory note I took that opportunity to spend a week in Hannibal—a city now, a village in my day. It had been fifty-threeⒶapparatus note years since Tom Nash and I had had that adventure. When I was at the railway station ready to leave Hannibal, there was a crowdⒶapparatus note of citizens there. I saw Tom Nash approaching me across a vacant space, and I walked toward him, for I recognized him at once. He was old and white-headed,Ⓐapparatus note but the boy of fifteen was still visible in him. He came up to me, made a trumpet of his hands at my ear, nodded his head toward the citizens and said confidentially—in a yell like a fog-horn—Ⓐapparatus note
“SameⒶapparatus note damned fools, Sam!Ⓐapparatus note”
From Susy’s Biography.Ⓐapparatus note
PapaⒶapparatus note was about twenty years old when he went on the Mississippi as a pilot. Just before he started on his tripp Grandma Clemens asked him to promise her on the Bible not to touch intoxicating liquors or swear, and he said “YesⒶapparatus note, mother, I will,”Ⓐapparatus note Ⓔexplanatory note and he kept that promise seven years when Grandma released him from it.Ⓐapparatus note
Under the inspiring influence of that remark, what a garden of forgotten reforms rises upon my sight!Ⓐapparatus note
trick on Grandma, about the whipping] This incident occurs in chapter 1 of Tom Sawyer.
Grandma couldn’t make papa go to school . . . those who were more studious in early life] Susy found this information in the April 1885 interview with Jane Clemens. She quoted nearly verbatim the last sentence in the following paragraph:
When Sam’s father died, which occurred when Sam was eleven years of age, I thought then, if ever, was the proper time to make a lasting impression on the boy and work a change in him, so I took him by the hand and went with him into the room where the coffin was and in which the father lay, and with it between Sam and me I said to him that here in this presence I had some serious requests to make of him, and that I knew his word, once given, was never broken. For Sam never told a falsehood. He turned his streaming eyes upon me and cried out: “Oh mother, I will do anything, anything you ask of me, except to go to school; I can’t do that!” That was the very request I was going to make. Well, we afterwards had a sober talk, and I concluded to let him go into a printing office to learn the trade, as I couldn’t have him running wild. He did so, and has gradually picked up enough education to enable him to do about as well as those who were more studious in early life. (“Mark Twain’s Boyhood. An Interview with the Mother of the Famous Humorist,” New York World, 12 Apr 1885, 19, reprinting the Chicago Inter-Ocean)
It was Henry . . . the thread . . . had changed color] See Tom Sawyer, chapter 1.
If the incident of the broken sugar-bowl is in “Tom Sawyer”] It is in chapter 3.
to give the cat the Pain-Killer] See Tom Sawyer, chapter 12. Perry Davis’s Pain-Killer was invented in 1840 and enjoyed widespread success. The label indicated that it could be taken internally “for Chills, Cramps, Colic” or applied externally for “Sore Throat, Sprains, Bruises, Chilblains.” Its main ingredient was alcohol, with added camphor and cayenne pepper (Ober 2003, 54–60).
Mr. Pavey’s negro man] Jesse H. Pavey was the proprietor of a Hannibal tavern until 1850, when he moved his family to St. Louis ( Inds, 340).
cholera days of ’49 . . . chose Perry Davis’s Pain-Killer for me] Cholera visited the Mississippi valley perennially throughout Clemens’s youth. After its appearance in New Orleans in February 1849 it soon spread northward along the Mississippi River. Numerous deaths in Hannibal caused fear of a major epidemic like the one that was ravaging St. Louis, and the Pain-Killer was used as a preventive (Holcombe 1884, 297–98; Wecter 1952, 213–14; Ober 2003, 45–54).
I don’t remember what my explanation was . . . may not be the right one] Tom’s “explanation” was as follows:
“Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?”
“I done it out of pity for him—because he hadn’t any aunt.”
“Hadn’t any aunt!—you numscull. What has that got to do with it?”
“Heaps. Because if he’d a had one she’d a burnt him out herself! She’d a roasted his bowels out of him ’thout any more feeling than if he was a human!” (SLC 1982, 96)
Tom Nash was a boy of my own age—the postmaster’s son] Clemens’s schoolmate Thomas S. Nash was the son of Abner O. Nash (1804?–59) and his second wife. In “Villagers of 1840–3” (1897) Clemens noted that he became a house painter. Abner Nash was a former storekeeper and president of Hannibal’s Board of Trustees; although his “mother was Irish, had family jewels, and claimed to be aristocracy,” he had been forced to declare bankruptcy in 1844 and accept a low-paying postmastership in 1849 ( Inds, 96, 337–38).
closing one was scarlet fever, and he came out of it stone deaf] In the working notes for the “St. Petersburg Fragment,” the second extant version of “The Mysterious Stranger,” Clemens wrote that “Tom Nash’s mother took in a deserted child; it gave scarlet-fever death to 3 of her children & deafness to 2” ( MSM, 416; see also Inds, 96).
Four years ago . . . receive the honorary degree of LL.D.] Clemens traveled to Missouri in late May–early June 1902, to receive an honorary LL.D. from the University of Missouri at Columbia (4 June). He also spent a few days in both St. Louis and Hannibal, his final visit to the scenes of his childhood and youth (New York Times: “Degree for Mark Twain,” 5 June 1902, 2; “Mark Twain among Scenes of His Early Life,” 8 June 1902, 28; Notebook 45, TS pp. 14–17, CU-MARK).
Papa was about twenty years old . . . he said “Yes, mother, I will,”] Of course this too came from the interview with Jane Clemens:
He was about twenty years old when he went on the Mississippi as a pilot. I gave him up then, for I always thought steamboating was a wicked business, and was sure he would meet bad associates. I asked him if he would promise me on the Bible not to touch intoxicating liquors nor swear, and he said: “Yes, mother, I will.” He repeated the words after me, with my hand and his clasped on the holy book, and I believe he always kept that promise. (“Mark Twain’s Boyhood. An Interview with the Mother of the Famous Humorist,” New York World, 12 Apr 1885, 19, reprinting the Chicago Inter-Ocean)
Source documents.
TS1 (incomplete) Typescript, leaves numbered 289–301 (295 and most of 296 are missing), made from Hobby’s notes and revised: ‘Monday . . . these days.’ (350 title–351.40); ‘Whenever my . . . my sight!’ (352.21–354.2).TS2 Typescript, leaves numbered 432–44, made from the revised TS1.
TS3 Typescript, leaves numbered 34–45, made from the revised TS1 and further revised.
NAR 5pf Galley proofs of NAR 5, typeset from the revised TS3 and further revised, ViU (the same extent as NAR 5).
NAR 5 North American Review 183 (2 November 1906), 838–44: ‘From Susy’s . . . my sight!’ (350.3–354.2).
Clemens considered this dictation for possible publication through Samuel McClure’s newspaper syndicate, writing ‘Mc (use it)’ in blue pencil on the first page of TS1; that notation was later partially erased (see the Introduction, p. 29). The pages missing from TS1 were discarded by Paine when he edited the dictation for MTA. Harvey reviewed TS1 in August 1906 for possible publication in the NAR and selected two excerpts. Hobby incorporated the revisions that Clemens made on TS1 into both TS2 (which was not further revised) and TS3; they contain no variants, confirming the readings of the missing portion of TS1. Clemens revised TS3 to serve as printer’s copy for the second section of NAR 5, where it follows the AD of 9 February 1906 (see Contents and Pagination of TS3, Batch 3).
All typescripts have ‘(Here insert the Phelps incident, Berlin, 1891–2.)’ typed below the summary paragraph. Since Clemens failed to carry through on his intention, however, the note has been omitted from the text (see “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It” [204.25–205.16] for an account of the incident).
Marginal Notes on TS1 and TS3 Concerning Publication in the NAR