Many of the experiences of Sam Clemens, the boy, recurred in the mature author's memory again and again. For instance, in many notebooks and in published writings he recalled the death by fire of a tramp in the Hannibal jail shortly after the boy had smuggled matches to the prisoner. He also frequently remembered his coming upon the corpse of a murdered man one night when he sneaked into the office of his father, a justice of the peace. And he wrote many notes about his boyhood companion, Tom Nash, who became deaf and dumb as a result of his breaking through the ice on the Mississippi River.
Often, too, he recalled an experience he recorded in chapter fifty-three of Life on the Mississippi. While conversing with an old man during his visit to Hannibal in 1882:
I asked about Miss ——.
“Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago—never was out of it from the time she went in; and was always suffering too; never got a shred of her mind back.”
If he spoke the truth, here was a heavy tragedy, indeed. Thirty-six years in a madhouse, that some young fools might have some fun! I was a small boy, at the time; and I saw those giddy young ladies come tiptoeing into the room where Miss —— sat reading at midnight by a lamp. The girl at the head of the file wore a shroud and a doughface; she crept behind the victim, touched her on the shoulder, and she looked up and screamed, and then fell into convulsions. She did not recover from the fright, but went mad.
Notebook 32a, which covers the period 20 June to 24 July 1897, refers to the happening at three points in a series of notes concerning “Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy.”1 In one entry he names the prankster, Roberta Jones, also identified in this connection in “Villagers.” In a notebook for 1902, Twain made another entry, apparently with the idea that he might use the incident in a story about Tom and Huck and their gang set fifty years after their youthful adventures: “Dough-face—old lady now, still in asylum—a bride then. What went with him? Shall we visit her? And shall she be expecting him in her faded bridal robes and flowers?” Later in the same notebook he wrote, “doughface, but scare no one mad.”2
This version by Huck may have been written either in 1897 or in 1902.3 The author entitled it “Huck Finn”: I have given it a more accurately descriptive title. Huck's narrative style adds little to the effect, for the tale is singularly colorless.
Well, I had a noble big bullfrog that I had traded a hymn-book for,Ⓐalteration in the MS and was all profit, becuz it never cost me anything, deacon Kyle give it to me for saving his daughter's life time she fell in the river off of the ferry boat going down to the picnic in Cave Holler, and warn'tⒶemendation any use to me on account of my being able to get along without hymns, and IⒶalteration in the MS traded the bullfrog for a cat, and sold the cat for a false-face, a horrible thingⒶalteration in the MS that was awful to look at and cost fifteen cents when it was new, and so I was prospering right along and was very well satisfied.
But I lent it to Tom Sawyer and he lent it to Miss Rowena Fuller, which was a beautiful young lady and a favorite and full of spirits and never quiet but always breaking out in a new place with her inventions and making the whole town laugh, for she just lived for fun and was born for it. She was lovely in her disposition and the happiest person you ever see, and people said it took the sorrow out of life to see that girl breeze around and carry on, and hear her laugh, and certainly she done a lot of it, she was that lively and gay and pranksome.
She neverⒶalteration in the MS meant any harm with her jokes, poor thing, but she never laughed any more after that time. She wouldn't ever done [begin page 144] what she done if she hadⒶalteration in the MS thought what was going to come of it. But she didn't think, she got right to work on her project, and she was so full of it she couldn't think; and she was so full of laugh that she couldn't hold still, but kept breaking out in a fresh place all the time, just with antissipations. She was going to scare old Miss Wormly, which was a superstitious old maid and lived all alone and was that timid she was afraid of everything, specially of ghosts, and was always dreading them, she couldn't help it. Miss Rowena put on the false-face and got herself up in a shroud and started for Miss Wormly's about eleven at night, with a lot of young people trailing after her to see the fun; and she tiptoed in, and Miss Wormly was sitting by her lamp sort of half dozing, and she crept up behind her and bent around and looked her in the face, still and solemn and awful. Miss Wormly turned white likeⒶalteration in the MS a dead person, and stared and gasped for a second, then she begun to scream and shriek, and jumped up and started to run, but fainted and fell on the floor. She was gone mad, poor old harmless lady, and never got over it. Spent all her days in the sylum, and was always moaning and crying, and many a time jumping out of her bed in the night, thinking the ghost was after her again. Poor Miss Rowena's life was spoilt, too, she never got up any more jokes and couldn't ever laugh at anything any more.