Mr. Clemens as apprenticeⒶapparatus note to Mr. Ament—Wilhelm II’s dinner, and potato incident—The printing of ReverendⒶapparatus note Alexander Campbell’s sermon—Incident of dropping watermelonⒶapparatus note on Henry’s head—Orion buys Hannibal Journal Ⓐapparatus note which is a failure—Then he goes to Muscatine, Iowa, and marries—Mr. Clemens starts out alone to see the world—Visits St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Washington—Then goes to Muscatine and works in Orion’s office—Finds fifty-dollarⒶapparatus note bill—Thinks of going to explore the Amazon and collect cocaⒶapparatus note—Gets Horace Bixby to train him as pilot—Starts with Orion for Nevada when Orion is made Secretary to Territory of Nevada.
But I am in error.Ⓐapparatus note OrionⒶapparatus note did not come to Hannibal until two or three years after my father’s death. He remained in St. Louis. Meantime heⒶapparatus note was a journeyman printer and earning wagesⒺexplanatory note. Out of his wage he supported my mother and my brother Henry, who was two years younger than I. My sister Pamela helped in this support by taking piano pupilsⒺexplanatory note. Thus we got along, but it was pretty hard sledding. I was not one of the burdens, because I was taken from school at once,Ⓐapparatus note upon my father’s death,Ⓐapparatus note and placed in the office of the Hannibal Courier,Ⓐapparatus note as printer’s apprentice, and Mr. Ament,Ⓐapparatus note the editor and proprietor of the paperⒺexplanatory note,Ⓐapparatus note allowed me the usual emolument of the office of apprentice—that is to say board and clothes, but no money. The clothes consisted of two suits a year, but one of the suits always failed to materialize and the other suit was not purchased so long as Mr. Ament’sⒶapparatus note old clothes held out. I was only about half as big as Ament,Ⓐapparatus note consequently his shirts gave me the uncomfortable sense of living in a circus-tentⒶapparatus note, and I had to turn up his pants to my ears to make them short enough.
There were two other apprentices. One was Wales McCormick,Ⓐapparatus note seventeen or eighteen years oldⒶapparatus note and a giant. When he was in Ament’sⒶapparatus note clothes they fitted him as the candle-mouldⒶapparatus note fits the [begin page 456] candle—thus he was generally in a suffocated condition, particularly in the summertimeⒶapparatus note. He was a reckless, hilarious, admirable creature; he had no principles, and was delightful companyⒺexplanatory note. At first we three apprentices had to feed in the kitchen with the old slave cook and her very handsome and bright and well-behaved young mulatto daughter. For his own amusement—for he was not generally laboring for other people’s amusement—WalesⒶapparatus note was constantly and persistently and loudly and elaborately making love to that mulatto girl and distressing the life out of her and worrying the old mother to death. She would sayⒶapparatus note “NowⒶapparatus note Marse Wales, Marse Wales,Ⓐapparatus note can’t you behave yourself?” With encouragement like that, WalesⒶapparatus note would naturally renew his attentions and emphasize them. It was killingly funny to RalphⒺexplanatory note and me. And, to speak truly, the old mother’s distress about it was merely a pretenseⒶapparatus note. She quite well understood that by the customs of slave-holdingⒶapparatus note communities it was Wales’sⒶapparatus note right to make love to that girl if he wanted to. But the girl’s distress was very real. She had a refined nature, and she took all Wales’sⒶapparatus note extravagant love-making in resentfulⒶapparatus note earnest.
We got but little variety in the way of food at that kitchen table, and there wasn’t enough of it anyway. So we apprentices used to keep alive by arts of our own—that is to say, we crept into the cellar nearly every night, by a private entrance which we had discovered, and we robbed the cellar of potatoes and onions and such things, and carried them down townⒶapparatus note to the printing-office, where we slept on pallets on the floor, and cooked them at the stove and had very good times. WalesⒶapparatus note had a secret of cooking a potato which was noble and wonderful and all his own. Since hisⒶapparatus note day I have seen a potato cooked in that way only once. It was when Wilhelm II,Ⓐapparatus note Emperor of Germany, commanded my presence at a private feedⒶapparatus note toward the end of the year 1901. And when that potato appeared on the table it surprised me out of my discretion and made me commit the unforgivable sin, before I could get a grip on my discretion again—that is to say, I made a joyful exclamation of welcome over the potato, addressing my remark to the Emperor at my side without waiting for him to take the first innings. I think he honestly tried to pretend that he was not shocked and outragedⒺexplanatory note, but he plainly was; and so were the other half-dozen grandees who were present. They were all petrified, and nobody could have said a word if he had tried. The ghastly silence endured for as much as half a minute, and would have lasted until now, of course, if the Emperor hadn’t broken it himself, for no one else there would have ventured that. It was at half pastⒶapparatus note six in the evening, and the frost did not get out of the atmosphere entirely until close upon midnight, when it did finally melt away—or wash away—under generous floods of beer.
As I have indicated, Mr. Ament’sⒶapparatus note economies were of a pretty close and rigid kind. By and by, when we apprentices were promoted from the basement to the ground floor and allowed to sit at the family table, along with the one journeyman, Pet McMurryⒺexplanatory note,Ⓐapparatus note the economies continued. Mrs. AmentⒶapparatus note was a bride. She had attained to that distinction very recently, after waiting a good part of a lifetime for itⒺexplanatory note, and she was the right woman in the right place, according to the Amentian idea,Ⓐapparatus note for she did not trust the sugar-bowl to us, but sweetened our coffee herself. That isⒶapparatus note she went through the motions. She didn’t really sweeten it. She seemed to put one heaping teaspoonful of brown sugar into each cup, but, according to Wales,Ⓐapparatus note that was a deceit. He said she dipped the spoon in the coffee first to make the sugar stick, and then scooped the sugar out of the bowl with the spoon upside-downⒶapparatus note, so that the effect to the eye was a heaped-up [begin page 457] spoon, whereas the sugar on it was nothing but a layer. This all seems perfectly true to me, and yet that thing would be so difficult to perform that I suppose it really didn’t happen, but was one of Wales’sⒶapparatus note lies.
I have said that WalesⒶapparatus note was reckless, and he was. It was the recklessness of ever-bubbling and indestructible good spirits flowing from the joyⒶapparatus note of youth. I think there wasn’t anything that that vast boy wouldn’t have done toⒶapparatus note procure five minutes’ entertainment for himself. One never knew where he would break out next. Among his shining characteristics was the most limitless and adorable irreverence. There didn’t seem to be anything serious in life for him; there didn’t seem to be anything that he revered.
Once the celebrated founder of the at that time new and wide-spread sect called CampbellitesⒺexplanatory note, arrived in our village fromⒶapparatus note Kentucky, and it made a prodigious excitement. The farmers and their families drove or tramped into the village from miles around to get a sight of the illustrious Alexander Campbell and to have a chance to hear him preach. When he preached in a church many had to be disappointed, for there was no church that would begin to hold all the applicants; so in order to accommodate all, he preached in the open air in the public square, and that was the first time in my life that I had realized what a mighty population this planet contains when you get them all together.
He preached a sermon on one of these occasions which he had written especially for that occasion. All the Campbellites wanted it printed, so that they could save it and read it over and over again, and get it by heart. So they drummed upⒶapparatus note sixteen dollars, which was a large sum then, and for this great sum Mr. AmentⒶapparatus note contracted to print five hundred copies of that sermon and put them in yellow paper covers. It was a sixteen-page duodecimo pamphlet, and it was a great event in our office. As we regarded it, it was a book, and it promoted us to the dignity of book printers. Moreover, no such mass of actual money as sixteen dollars, in one bunch, had ever entered that office on any previous occasion. People didn’t pay for their paper and for their advertising in money, they paid in dry-goods, sugar, coffee, hickory wood, oak wood, turnips, pumpkins, onions, watermelonsⒶapparatus note—and it was very seldom indeed that a man paid in money, and when that happened we thought there was something the matter with him.
We set up the great book in pages—eight pages to a form—and by help of a printer’s manual we managed to get the pages in their apparently crazy but really sane places on the imposing-stone. We printed that form on a Thursday. Then we set up the remaining eight pages, locked them into a form and struck a proof. WalesⒶapparatus note read the proof, and presently was aghast, for he had struck a snag. And it was a bad time to strike a snag, because it was Saturday; it was approaching noon; Saturday afternoon was our holiday, and we wanted to get away and go fishing. At such a time as this, Wales struck that snag and showed us what had happened. He had left out a couple of words in a thin-spacedⒶapparatus note page of solid matter and there wasn’t another break-line for two or three pages ahead. What in the world was to be done? Overrun all those pages in order to get in theⒶapparatus note two missing words? Apparently there was no other way. It would take an hour to do it. Then a revise must be sent to the great minister; we must wait for him to read the revise; if he encountered any errors we must correct them. It looked as if we might lose half the afternoon before we could get away. Then Wales had one of his brilliant ideas. In the line in which the “out” had been made occurred the name Jesus Christ. Wales reduced thatⒶapparatus note to J. C. [begin page 458] It made room for the missing words, but it took 99 per centⒶapparatus note of the solemnity out of a particularly solemn sentence. We sent off the revise and waited. We were not intending to wait long. In the circumstances we meant to get out and go fishing before that revise should get back, but we were not speedy enough. Presently that great Alexander Campbell appeared at the far end of that sixty-foot room, and his countenance cast a gloom over the whole place. He strode down to our end and what he said was brief but it was very stern, and it was to the point. He read Wales a lecture. He said “So long as you live, don’t you ever diminish the Savior’sⒶapparatus note name again. Put it allⒶapparatus note in.” He repeated this admonition a couple of times to emphasize it, then he went away.
In that day the common swearers of the region had a way of their own of emphasizingⒶapparatus note the Savior’sⒶapparatus note name when they were using it profanely, and this fact intruded itself into Wales’s incorrigible mind. It offered him an opportunity for a momentary entertainment which seemed to him to be more precious and more valuable than even fishing and swimming could afford. So he imposed upon himself the long and weary and dreary task of overrunningⒶapparatus note all those three pages in order to improve upon his former work and incidentally and thoughtfully improve upon the great preacher’s admonition. He enlarged the offending J. C. into Jesus H. Christ. Wales knew that that would make prodigious trouble, and it did. But it was not in him to resist it. He had to succumb to the law of his make. I don’t remember what his punishment was, but he was not the person to care for that. He had already collected his dividend.
It was during my first year’s apprenticeshipⒶapparatus note in the Courier office that I did a thing which I have been trying to regret for fifty-five years. It was a summer afternoon and just the kind of weather that a boy prizes for river excursions and other frolics, but I was a prisoner. The others were all gone holidaying. I was alone and sad. I had committed a crime of some sort and this was the punishment. I must lose my holiday, and spend the afternoon in solitude besides. I had the printing-office all to myself, there in the third story. I had one comfort, and it was a generous one while it lasted. It was the half of a long and broad watermelonⒶapparatus note, fresh and red and ripe. I gouged it out with a knife, and I found accommodation for the whole of it in my person—though it did crowd me until the juice ran out of my ears. There remained then the shell, the hollow shell. It was big enough to do duty as a cradle. I didn’t want to waste it, and I couldn’t think of anything to do with it which could afford entertainment. I was sitting at the open window which looked out upon the sidewalk of the main street three stories below, when it occurred to me to drop it on somebody’s head. I doubted the judiciousness of this, and I had some compunctions about it too, because so much of the resulting entertainment would fall to my share and so little to the other person. But I thought I would chance it. I watched out of the window for the right person to come along—the safe person—but he didn’t come. Every time there was a candidate he or she turned out to be an unsafe one, and I had to restrain myself. But at last I saw the right one coming. It was my brother Henry. He was the best boy in the whole region. He never did harm to anybody, he never offended anybody. He was exasperatingly good. He had an overflowing abundance of goodness—but not enough to save him this time. I watched his approach with eager interest. He came strolling along, dreaming his pleasant summer dream and not doubting but that Providence had him in his care. If he had known where I was he would have had less confidence in that superstition. As he approached [begin page 459] his form became more and more foreshortened. When he was almost under me he was so foreshortened that nothing of him was visible from my high place exceptⒶapparatus note the end of his nose and his alternately approaching feet. Then I poised the watermelonⒶapparatus note, calculated my distance and let it go, hollow side down. The accuracy of that gunnery was beyond admiration. He had about six steps to make when I let that canoe go, and it was lovely to see those two bodies gradually closing in on each otherⒶapparatus note. If he had had seven steps to make, or five steps to make, my gunnery would have been a failure. But he had exactly the right number to make, and that shell smashed down right on the top of his head and drove him into the earth up to the chin. The chunks of that broken melon flew in every direction like a spray, and they broke third story windows all around. They had to get a jack such as they hoist buildings with to pull him out. I wanted to go down there and condole with him, but it would not have been safe. He would have suspected me at once. I expected him to suspect me anyway, but as he said nothing about this adventure for two or three days—I was watching him in the meantime in order to keep out of danger—I was deceived into believing that this time he didn’t suspect me. It was a mistake. He was only waiting for a sure opportunity. Then he landed a cobblestoneⒶapparatus note on the side of my head which raised a bump there so large that I had to wear two hats for a time. I carried this crime to my mother, for I was always anxious to get Henry into trouble with her and could never succeed. I thought that I had a sure case this time when she should come to see that murderous bump. I showed it to her but she said it was no matter. She didn’t need to inquire into the circumstances. She knew I had deserved it, and the best way would be for me to accept it as a valuable lesson, and thereby get profit out of it.
AboutⒶapparatus note 1849 or 1850 Orion severed his connection with the printing-house in St. Louis and came up to HannibalⒶapparatus note and bought a weekly paper called the Hannibal JournalⒺexplanatory note,Ⓐapparatus note together with its plant and its good-will, for the sum of five hundred dollars cash. He borrowed the cash at 10 per centⒶapparatus note interest,Ⓐapparatus note from an old farmer named Johnson who lived five miles out of town. Then he reduced the subscription price of the paper from two dollars to one dollar. He reduced the rates for advertising in about the same proportion, and thus he created one absolute and unassailable certainty—to wit: that the business would never pay him a single centⒶapparatus note of profit. He took me out of the CourierⒶapparatus note office and engaged my services in his own at three dollars and a half a week, which was an extravagant wage, but Orion was always generous, always liberal with everybody except himself. It cost him nothing in my case, for he never was able to pay me a pennyⒶapparatus note as long as I was with him. By the end of the first year he found he must make some economies. The office rent was cheap, but it was not cheap enough. He could not afford to pay rent of any kind, so he moved the whole plant into the house we lived in, and it cramped the dwelling-place cruelly. He kept that paper alive during four years, but I have at this time no idea how he accomplished it. Toward the end of each year he had to turn outⒶapparatus note and scrape and scratch for the fifty dollars of interest due Mr. Johnson, and that fifty dollars was about the only cash he ever received or paid out, I suppose, while he was proprietor of that newspaper, except for ink and printing-paper.Ⓐapparatus note The paper was a dead failure. It had to be that from the start. Finally he handed it over to Mr. Johnson, and went up to Muscatine, Iowa, and acquired a small interest in a weekly newspaper thereⒺexplanatory note. It was not a sort of property to marry on—but no matter. He came across a winning and pretty girl who lived in QuincyⒶapparatus note, Illinois, a few miles [begin page 460] below Keokuk, and they became engaged. He was always falling in love with girls, but by some accident or other he had never gone so far as engagement before. And now he achieved nothing but misfortune by it, because he straightway fell in love with a Keokuk girl—at least he imagined that he was in love with her, whereas I think she did the imagining for him. The first thing he knew he was engaged to her, and he was in a great quandary. He didn’t know whether to marry the Keokuk one or the Quincy one, or whether to try to marry both of them and suit every one concerned. But the Keokuk girl soon settled that for him. She was a master spirit and she ordered him to write the Quincy girl and break off that match, which he did. Then heⒶapparatus note married the Keokuk girl and they began a struggle for lifeⒺexplanatory note which turned out to be a difficult enterprise, and very unpromising.
To gain a living in Muscatine was plainly impossible, so Orion and his new wife went to Keokuk to live, for she wanted to be near her relatives. He bought a little bit of a job printing-plantⒶapparatus note Ⓔexplanatory note—on credit, of course—and at once put prices down to where not even the apprentices could get a living out of it, and this sort of thing went on.
I had not joined the Muscatine migration. Just before that happened (which I think was in 1853) I disappeared one night and fled to St. Louis. There I worked in the composing-room of the Evening NewsⒶapparatus note for a time, and then started on my travels to see the world. The world was New York City, and there was a little World’s Fair there. It had just been opened where the great reservoir afterwardⒶapparatus note was, and where the sumptuous public library is now being built—Fifth Avenue and 42dⒶapparatus note streetⒶapparatus note. I arrived in New York with two or three dollars in pocket change and a ten-dollarⒶapparatus note bank-billⒶapparatus note concealed in the lining of my coat. I got work at villainous wages in the establishment of John A. Gray and Green in Cliff streetⒶapparatus note, and I found board in a sufficiently villainous mechanics’ boarding-house in Duane streetⒶapparatus note. The firm paid my wages in wildcat money at its face value, and my week’s wage merely sufficed to pay board and lodging. By and by I went to Philadelphia and worked there some months as a “sub”Ⓐapparatus note on the InquirerⒶapparatus note and the Public Ledger.Ⓐapparatus note Finally I made a flying trip to Washington to see the sights there, and in 1854 I went back to the Mississippi Valley, sitting upright in the smoking-car two or three days and nights. When I reached St. Louis I was exhausted. I went to bed on board a steamboat that was bound for Muscatine. I fell asleep at once, with my clothes on, and didn’t wake again for thirty-six hoursⒺexplanatory note.
IⒶapparatus note worked in that little job officeⒶapparatus note in Keokuk as much as two yearsⒺexplanatory note, I should say, without ever collecting a cent of wages, for Orion was never able to pay anything—but Dick Higham and I had good times. I don’t know what Dick got, but it was probably only uncashable promises.
One day in the mid-winterⒶapparatus note of 1856 or 1857Ⓔexplanatory note—I think it was 1856—I was coming along the main street of Keokuk in the middle of the forenoon. It was bitter weather—so bitter that that street was deserted, almost. A light dry snow was blowing here and there on the ground and on the pavement, swirling this way and that way and making all sorts of beautiful figures, but very chilly to look at. The wind blew a piece of paper past me and it lodged against a wall of a house. Something about the look of it attracted my attention and I gathered it in. It was a fifty-dollar bill, the only one I had ever seen, and the largestⒶapparatus note assemblage of money I had ever encounteredⒶapparatus note in one spot. I advertised it in the papers and suffered more than a thousand dollars’ [begin page 461] worth of solicitude and fear and distress during the next few days lest the owner should see the advertisement and come and take my fortune away. As many as four days went by without an applicant; then I could endure this kind of misery no longer. I felt sure that another four could not go by in this safe and secure way. I felt that I must take that money out of danger. So I bought a ticket for Cincinnati and went to that city. I worked there several months in the printing-office of WrightsonⒶapparatus note and CompanyⒺexplanatory note. I had been reading Lieutenant Herndon’s account of his explorations of the AmazonⒺexplanatory note and had been mightily attracted by what he said of cocaⒶapparatus note. I made up my mind that I would go to the head-watersⒶapparatus note of the Amazon and collect cocaⒶapparatus note and trade in it and make a fortune. I left for New Orleans in the steamer Paul JonesⒶapparatus note with this great idea filling my mind. One of the pilots of that boat was Horace BixbyⒺexplanatory note. Little by little I got acquainted with him, and pretty soon I was doing a lot of steering for him in his daylight watches. When I got to New Orleans I inquired about ships leaving for ParáⒶapparatus note and discovered that there weren’tⒶapparatus note any, and learned that there probably wouldn’t be any during that century. It had not occurred to me to inquire about these particulars before leaving Cincinnati, so there I was. I couldn’t get to the Amazon. I had no friends in New Orleans and no money to speak of. I went to Horace Bixby and asked him to make a pilot out of me. He said he would do it for a hundredⒶapparatus note dollars cash in advanceⒺexplanatory note. So I steered for him up to St. Louis, borrowed the money from my brother-in-law and closed the bargain. I had acquired this brother-in-law several years before. This was Mr. William A. Moffett, a merchant, a Virginian—a fine man in every way. He had married my sister Pamela, and the Samuel E. Moffett of whom I have been speaking was their son. Within eighteen months I becameⒶapparatus note a competent pilot, and I served that office until the Mississippi River traffic was brought to a standstill by the breaking out of the Civil WarⒶapparatus note Ⓔexplanatory note.
MeantimeⒶapparatus note Orion had been sweating along with hisⒶapparatus note little job-printing officeⒶapparatus note in Keokuk, and he and his wife were living with his wife’s family—ostensibly as boarders, but it is not likely that Orion was ever able to pay the board.Ⓐapparatus note On account of charging next toⒶapparatus note nothing for the work done in his job officeⒶapparatus note, he had almost nothing to do there. He was never able to get it through his headⒶapparatus note that work done on a profitless basis deteriorates and is presently not worth anything, and that customers are thenⒶapparatus note obliged to go where they can get better work, even if they must pay better prices for it. He had plenty of time, and he took up BlackstoneⒺexplanatory note again. He also put up a sign which offered his services to the public as a lawyer. He never got a case, in those days, nor even an applicant, although he was quite willing to transact law business for nothing and furnish the stationery himself. He was always liberal that way.
Presently he moved to a wee little hamlet called Alexandria, two or three miles down the river, and he put up that sign there. He got no bites.Ⓐapparatus note He was by this time very hard aground. But by this time I was beginning to earn a wage of two hundred and fifty dollars a month as pilot, and so I supported him thenceforth until 1861, when his ancient friend, Edward Bates, then a member of Mr. Lincoln’s first cabinet,Ⓐapparatus note got him the place of Secretary of the new Territory of Nevada, and Orion and I cleared for that country in the overland stage-coach, I paying the faresⒺexplanatory note, which were pretty heavy, and carrying with me what money I had been able to save—this was eight hundred dollars, I should say—and it was all in silver coin and a good deal of a nuisance because of its weight. And we had another nuisance, which was an Unabridged Dictionary. It weighed about a thousand pounds, and was a ruinous expense, because the [begin page 462] stage-coach Company charged for extra baggage by the ounce. We could have kept a family for a time on what that dictionary cost in the way of extra freight—and it wasn’t a good dictionary anyway—didn’t have any modern words in it—only had obsolete onesⒶapparatus note that they used to use when Noah WebsterⒺexplanatory note was a child.
Orion . . . was a journeyman printer and earning wages] Orion lived in St. Louis, working as a typesetter in the printing house of Thomas Watt Ustick, from about 1842 until mid-1850, when he returned to Hannibal ( Inds, 311, 351). See the note at 459.22–23.
My sister Pamela helped . . . by taking piano pupils] Paine reported that Pamela Clemens, “who had acquired a considerable knowledge of the piano and guitar, went to the town of Paris, in Monroe County, about fifty miles away, and taught a class of music pupils, contributing whatever remained after paying for her board and clothing to the family fund” ( MTB, 1:75–76).
placed in the office of the Hannibal Courier . . . Mr. Ament, the editor and proprietor of the paper] Clemens was apprenticed to Henry La Cossitt, editor and owner of the Hannibal Gazette, in 1847, and then, probably in May 1848, to Joseph P. Ament (1824–79), who had just moved his Missouri Courier from Palmyra to Hannibal. Clemens remained in school part-time until at least 1849, however (6 Feb 1861 to OC and MEC, L1, 113–14 n. 5; Gregory 1976, 1).
There were two other apprentices . . . Wales McCormick . . . was delightful company] McCormick had left Hannibal by 1850 and in 1885 was living in Quincy, Illinois, where Clemens visited him while on a lecture tour. Clemens was in touch with McCormick, and assisted him financially, at least as late as 1888. He was the inspiration for the handsome and charming printer Doangivadam in “No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger” ( MSM, 221–405, 489–92; see Inds, 332–33). There were two apprentices in addition to McCormick: William T. League (see the note at 459.40–41) and Dick Rutter, of nearby Palmyra, Missouri. In December 1907 Clemens recalled the names of all three of his colleagues (3? Dec 1907 to Powell, MoHM; see Inds, 331).
Ralph] Unidentified.
Emperor . . . tried to pretend that he was not shocked and outraged] This incident occurred in Berlin on 20 February 1892, at a banquet given by Clemens’s third cousin Alice Clemens von Versen (1850–1912), whose husband, Maximilian (1833–93), was an officer on the Imperial German general staff. Despite Clemens’s blunder, Wilhelm II (1859–1941), emperor of Germany and king of Prussia, was complimentary. In his Autobiographical Dictations of 6 December 1906 and 10 February 1907, Clemens reported that Wilhelm praised A Tramp Abroad and called “Old Times on the Mississippi” (that is, Life on the Mississippi) his “best and most valuable book” (Notebook 31, TS pp. 21, 31, CU-MARK; Selby 1973, 75, 146; Maximilian von Versen biographical information in CU-MARK).
Pet McMurry] In 1885 Clemens recalled T. P. (Pet) McMurry (d. 1886) as “a dandy, with plug hat tipped far forward & resting almost on his very nose; dark red, greasy hair, long & rolled under at the bottom, down on his neck; red goatee; a most mincing, self-conceited gait—the most astonishing gait that ever I saw—a gait possible nowhere on earth but in our South & in that old day” (23 Jan 1885 to OLC, CU-MARK, in LLMT, 232–33). McMurry later became a merchant; he was probably the model for the title character of “Jul’us Caesar,” a sketch Clemens wrote in the mid-1850s but left unpublished (SLC 1855–56; Inds, 334–35).
Mrs. Ament was a bride . . . after waiting a good part of a lifetime for it] Ament’s wife, Sarah, was only nineteen in 1850; Clemens was probably recalling his fifty-year-old mother, Judith D. Ament (Gregory 1976, 2).
new and wide-spread sect called Campbellites] The Disciples of Christ, also called Campbellites after their leaders, Thomas Campbell (1763–1854) and his son Alexander (1788–1866), originated in America early in the nineteenth century. The sect advocated individual interpretation of the Bible as the basis of faith. Clemens’s father, John Marshall Clemens, was a Campbellite sympathizer, though never a church member. Clemens’s sister Pamela was a member in her early teens ( Inds, 288).
About 1849 or 1850 Orion . . . bought a weekly paper called the Hannibal Journal] Orion returned to Hannibal in mid-1850 and started a weekly paper, the Western Union. Within a year he purchased the Hannibal Journal, and on 4 September 1851 first published the consolidated Hannibal Journal and Western Union, which six months later became just the Hannibal Journal ( Inds, 311).
Finally he handed it over to Mr. Johnson, and . . . acquired a small interest in a weekly newspaper there] In fact, on 22 September 1853 Orion sold the Hannibal Journal to William T. League, Samuel Clemens’s former fellow apprentice on the Hannibal Courier. League already was proprietor of the Hannibal Whig Messenger at the time. Orion then moved with his brother Henry and their mother to Muscatine, Iowa, where he purchased an interest in the Muscatine Journal. He published his first issue in Muscatine on 30 September 1853 ( Inds, 311, 331; L1: 3? Sept 1853 to PAM, 15 n. 5; 8 Oct 1853 to PAM, 18 n. 3).
Then he married the Keokuk girl and they began a struggle for life] Orion married Mary Eleanor (Mollie) Stotts (1834–1904) on 19 December 1854. For details of his varied and futile struggles to earn a living, some of which Clemens alludes to later in this dictation, see Inds, 311–13.
He bought a little bit of a job printing-plant] After selling the Muscatine Journal in June 1855, Orion bought the Ben Franklin Book and Job Office, in Keokuk, Iowa (link note following 5 March 1855 to the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal, L1, 58).
I disappeared one night and fled to St. Louis . . . didn’t wake again for thirty-six hours] In June 1853 Clemens escaped Hannibal to work as a typesetter in St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia, and to visit Washington, D.C. He returned to St. Louis briefly in the spring of 1854, then went to Muscatine, where he worked on Orion’s Journal for several months, before taking work in St. Louis again by August 1854. (For the best account of this period, see the link note preceding 24 Aug 1853 to JLC through the link note preceding 16 Feb 1855 to the Editors of the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal, L1, 1–46.)
I worked in that little job office in Keokuk as much as two years] Except for a few brief interruptions, Clemens lived in Keokuk, working as Orion’s assistant at the Ben Franklin Book and Job Office, from mid-June 1855 until October 1856 (see the link note following 5 Mar 1855 to the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal through the link note following 5 Aug 1856 to HC, L1, 58–69).
One day in the mid-winter of 1856 or 1857] Other than the present account, relatively little detail is available about Clemens’s activities between his departure from Keokuk in October 1856 (not in “mid-winter”) and the beginning of his steamboat piloting apprenticeship in April 1857. For a reconstruction of the period, see L1 (link note following 5 Aug 1856 to HC, 69–71).
the printing-office of Wrightson and Company] Clemens worked at T. Wrightson and Company, one of Cincinnati’s leading printers, from late October 1856 until 16 February 1857, when he left Cincinnati aboard the Paul Jones (Branch 1992, 2).
Herndon’s account of his explorations of the Amazon] Volume one, by William Lewis Herndon, of Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, Made under Direction of the Navy Department (Herndon and Gibbon 1853–54). In 1910 in “The Turning Point of My Life,” Clemens recalled that Herndon told “an astonishing tale” about the “miraculous powers” of coca, instilling in him “a longing to ascend the Amazon” and “open up a trade in coca with all the world” (SLC 1910).
One of the pilots of that boat was Horace Bixby] Bixby (1826–1912) was a leading Mississippi River steamboat pilot and later captain.
He said he would do it for a hundred dollars cash in advance] In 1910, after Clemens’s death, Bixby recalled telling Clemens “that I would instruct him till he became a competent pilot for $500.” This fee was considered exorbitant and Clemens evidently ended up paying only $300 or $400, including his down payment of $100 (see L1: link note following 5 Aug 1856 to HC, 70–71; 25 Oct 1861 to PAM and JLC, 134–35 n. 5).
I became a competent pilot, and I served that office until . . . the Civil War] Clemens received his pilot’s license on 9 April 1859, after a nearly two-year apprenticeship. He made his last trip as a pilot in early May 1861, about three weeks after the outbreak of the Civil War. For details of his time on the Mississippi, see the link note following 5 Aug 1856 to HC through the link note following 26 Apr 1861 to OC, L1, 70–121, and Life on the Mississippi, chapters 6–21 (1883).
Blackstone] Commentaries on the Laws of England, by Sir William Blackstone (1723–80), an exhaustive treatise on English law, was crucial to the teaching and study of law in England and the United States (Blackstone 1765–69).
Orion and I cleared for that country . . . I paying the fares] The Clemens brothers left St. Louis, on the first leg of their journey to Nevada Territory, on 18 July 1861. The fare for the two of them was $400 (link note following 26 Apr 1861 to OC, L1, 121–22). Clemens devoted the first twenty chapters of Roughing It to an account of the journey (see RI 1993, 574–612).
Noah Webster] Webster (1758–1843), an educator and editor as well as a lexicographer, published his landmark American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828.
Source documents.
TS1 Typescript, leaves erroneously numbered 582–602, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS2 Typescript, leaves numbered 736–56, made from the revised TS1 and further revised.
NAR 10pf Galley proofs of NAR 10, typeset from the revised TS2 and further revised, ViU (the same extent as NAR 10).
NAR 10 North American Review 184 (18 January 1907), 118–19: ‘But I . . . good times.’ (455.22–456.19); ‘As I . . . Wales’s lies.’ (456.33–457.3).
NAR 11pf Galley proofs of NAR 11, typeset from the revised TS2 and further revised, ViU (the same extent as NAR 11).
NAR 11 North American Review 184 (1 February 1907), 225–29: ‘About 1849 . . . a child.’ (459.22–462.4).
Clemens repaginated the first page of TS1, replacing the typed number 582 with 591; the remaining page numbers were corrected by Hobby to 592–611. Paine reviewed TS2 for possible publication in the NAR, querying three passages to suggest omission. Clemens revised TS2 in two stages—in ink before Paine read it, and then in blue pencil afterward. He suppressed personal names, and deleted all three passage that Paine had queried—revisions that have not been adopted here, since they were adaptations solely for publication in the NAR. TS2 served as printer’s copy for excerpts published in two NAR installments. Clemens originally selected a catena of excerpts from the ADs of 28 March, 29 March, and 2 April 1906 for NAR 10, and the galley proofs were typeset as a consecutive batch. Starting with the issue of 4 January 1907, however, the North American Review had been shortened from 128 pages to 112. The autobiography installments, which generally ran between 10 and 14 pages, had to be shorter, and the proposed installment was split: the third excerpt from the present dictation was postponed to NAR 11, where it is followed by excerpts from the AD of 2 April.
Marginal Notes on TS2 Concerning Publication in the NAR