The Boys' Life of Mark Twain

eastern Tennessee to eastern Missouri-from a small, unheard-of place called Pall Mall, on Wol

nd John Clemens and his family traveled in an old two-horse barouche, with two extra riding-horses, on

rs old. The time was spring, the period of the Old South, and, while these youngsters did not realize that they were passing throug

nglish Lamptons and the belle of her region. They had left Kentucky for Tennessee, drifting from one small town to another that was always smaller, and with dwindling law-practice John Clemens in time had been obliged to open a poor little store, which in the end had failed to pay. Jennie was t

family hardship and struggle is not overdrawn. The character of Colonel Sellers, who gave the Hawkinses a grand welcome to the new home, was also real. In life he was James Lampton, cousin to Mrs. Clemens, a gentle and radiant merchant of dreams, who believed himself heir to an English earldom and was always on the verg

t may have appeared later. It was the end of a long journey; relatives gathered with fond welcome; prospects seemed bright. Already John Quarles had opened a general store in the li

law's funds, or lack of them, did not matter. The two had married sisters. That was capital enough for his hearty na

of a place that so often has seen the beginning of exalted lives. Christianity began with a babe in a manger; Shakespeare first saw the light in a cottage at Stratford; Lincoln entered the world by way of a leaky c

-welcome in that crowded household. They named him Samuel, after his paternal grandfather, and added Langhorne for an old friend-a goodly burden for

ere cared for by them. They were fond of their black companions and would have felt lost without them. The negro children knew all the best ways of doing things-how to work charms and spells, the best way to c

ide hearth and always plenty of wood, and here after supper the children would gather, with Jennie and Uncle Ned, and the latter would tell hair-lifting tales of "ha'nts," and lonely roads, and witch-work that would make his hearers shiver with terror and deligh

understand most of that fireside talk, and get impressions more vivid than if the understan

e of the children, Margaret, a black-eyed, rosy little girl of nine, suddenly died. This was in August, 1839. A month or two later the saddened family abandoned their Florida home and moved in wagons, with their household