i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good
I WAS AFRAID WHEN YOU WAS BLEEDING YOU
My Boyhoods Home
WOULD DIEgive my respects, etc.
WE TOOK PASSAGE in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and That is all there is of it—simply touch and go—no dwell-St. Paul Packet Company, and started up the river.
ing upon it. Nevertheless it was intended for an eye that When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri would be swift to see it; and it was meant to move a kind River, it was twenty-two or twenty-three miles above St.
heart to try to effect the liberation of a poor reformed and Louis, according to the estimate of pilots; the wear and tear purified fellow lying in the fell grip of consumption.
of the banks have moved it down eight miles since then; and When I for the first time heard that letter read, nine years the pilots say that within five years the river will cut through ago, I felt that it was the most remarkable one I had ever and move the mouth down five miles more, which will bring encountered. And it so warmed me toward Mr. Brown of St.
it within ten miles of St. Louis.
Louis that I said that if ever I visited that city again, I would About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing town seek out that excellent man and kiss the hem of his garment if of Alton, Illinois; and before daylight next morning the town it was a new one. Well, I visited St. Louis, but I did not hunt of Louisiana, Missouri, a sleepy village in my day, but a for Mr. Brown; for, alas! the investigations of long ago had briskrailway center now; however, all the towns out there proved that the benevolent Brown, like “Jack Hunt,” was not are railway centers now. I could not clearly recognize the 285
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain place. This seemed odd to me, for when I retired from the of captivity, and note how curiously the familiar and the rebel army in ’61 I retired upon Louisiana in good order; at strange were mixed together before them. I saw the new least in good enough order for a person who had not yet houses—saw them plainly enough—but they did not affect learned how to retreat according to the rules of war, and had the older picture in my mind, for through their solid bricks to trust to native genius. It seemed to me that for a first and mortar I saw the vanished houses, which had formerly attempt at a retreat it was not badly done. I had done no stood there, with perfect distinctness.
advancing in all that campaign that was at all equal to it.
It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed yet. So I There was a railway bridge across the river here well passed through the vacant streets, still seeing the town as it sprinkled with glowing lights, and a very beautiful sight it was, and not as it is, and recognizing and metaphorically was.
shaking hands with a hundred familiar objects which no At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Missouri, longer exist; and finally climbed Holiday’s Hill to get a com-where my boyhood was spent. I had had a glimpse of it fif-prehensive view. The whole town lay spread out below me teen years ago, and another glimpse six years earlier, but both then, and I could mark and fix every locality, every detail.
were so brief that they hardly counted. The only notion of Naturally, I was a good deal moved. I said, “Many of the the town that remained in my mind was the memory of it as people I once knew in this tranquil refuge of my childhood I had known it when I first quitted it twenty-nine years ago.
are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in the other place.” The That picture of it was still as clear and vivid to me as a pho-things about me and before me made me feel like a boy tograph. I stepped ashore with the feeling of one who re-again—convinced me that I was a boy again, and that I had turns out of a dead-and-gone generation. I had a sort of simply been dreaming an unusually long dream; but my re-realizing sense of what the Bastille prisoners must have felt flections spoiled all that; for they forced me to say, “I see when they used to come out and look upon Paris after years fifty old houses down yonder, into each of which I could 286
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain enter and find either a man or a woman who was a baby or had been living here twenty-eight years. So he had come unborn when I noticed those houses last, or a grandmother after my time, and I had never seen him before. I asked him who was a plump young bride at that time.” various questions; first about a mate of mine in Sunday From this vantage ground the extensive view up and down school—what became of him?
the river, and wide over the wooded expanses of Illinois, is
“He graduated with honor in an Eastern college, wandered very beautiful—one of the most beautiful on the Missis-off into the world somewhere, succeeded at nothing, passed sippi, I think; which is a hazardous remark to make, for the out of knowledge and memory years ago, and is supposed to eight hundred miles of river between St. Louis and St. Paul have gone to the dogs.”
afford an unbroken succession of lovely pictures. It may be
“He was bright, and promised well when he was a boy.” that my affection for the one in question biases my judg-
“Yes, but the thing that happened is what became of it ment in its favor; I cannot say as to that. No matter, it was all.”
satisfyingly beautiful to me, and it had this advantage over I asked after another lad, altogether the brightest in our all the other friends whom I was about to greet again: it had village school when I was a boy.
suffered no change; it was as young and fresh and comely
“He, too, was graduated with honors, from an Eastern and gracious as ever it had been; whereas, the faces of the college; but life whipped him in every battle, straight along, others would be old, and scarred with the campaigns of life, and he died in one of the Territories, years ago, a defeated and marked with their griefs and defeats, and would give me man.”
no upliftings of spirit.
I asked after another of the bright boys.
An old gentleman, out on an early morning walk, came
“He is a success, always has been, always will be, I think.” along, and we discussed the weather, and then drifted into I inquired after a young fellow who came to the town to other matters. I could not remember his face. He said he study for one of the professions when I was a boy.
287
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain
“He went at something else before he got through—went She’s got children scattered around here and there, most from medicine to law, or from law to medicine—then to everywheres.”
some other new thing; went away for a year, came back with The answer to several other inquiries was brief and a young wife; fell to drinking, then to gambling behind the simple—
door; finally took his wife and two young children to her
“Killed in the war.”
father’s, and went off to Mexico; went from bad to worse, I named another boy.
and finally died there, without a cent to buy a shroud, and
“Well, now, his case is curious! There wasn’t a human be-without a friend to attend the funeral.” ing in this town but knew that that boy was a perfect
“Pity, for he was the best-natured, and most cheery and chucklehead; perfect dummy; just a stupid ass, as you may hopeful young fellow that ever was.”
say. Everybody knew it, and everybody said it. Well, if that I named another boy.
very boy isn’t the first lawyer in the State of Missouri to-day,
“Oh, he is all right. Lives here yet; has a wife and chil-I’m a Democrat!”
dren, and is prospering.”
“Is that so?”
Same verdict concerning other boys.
“It’s actually so. I’m telling you the truth.” I named three school-girls.
“How do you account for it?”
“The first two live here, are married and have children;
“Account for it? There ain’t any accounting for it, except the other is long ago dead—never married.” that if you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don’t I named, with emotion, one of my early sweethearts.
tell them he’s a damned fool they’ll never find it out. There’s
“She is all right. Been married three times; buried two one thing sure—if I had a damned fool I should know what husbands, divorced from the third, and I hear she is getting to do with him: ship him to St. Louis—it’s the noblest mar-ready to marry an old fellow out in Colorado somewhere.
ket in the world for that kind of property. Well, when you 288
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain come to look at it all around, and chew at it and think it have some fun! I was a small boy, at the time; and I saw those over, don’t it just bang anything you ever heard of?” giddy young ladies come tiptoeing into the room where
“Well, yes, it does seem to. But don’t you think maybe it Miss —— sat reading at midnight by a lamp. The girl at the was the Hannibal people who were mistaken about the boy, head of the file wore a shroud and a doughface, she crept and not the St. Louis people”
behind the victim, touched her on the shoulder, and she
“Oh, nonsense! The people here have known him from looked up and screamed, and then fell into convulsions. She the very cradle—they knew him a hundred times better than did not recover from the fright, but went mad. In these days the St. Louis idiots could have known him. No, if you have it seems incredible that people believed in ghosts so short a got any damned fools that you want to realize on, take my time ago. But they did.
advice—send them to St. Louis.”
After asking after such other folk as I could call to mind, I I mentioned a great number of people whom I had for-finally inquired about myself: merly known. Some were dead, some were gone away, some
“Oh, he succeeded well enough—another case of damned had prospered, some had come to naught; but as regarded a fool. If they’d sent him to St. Louis, he’d have succeeded dozen or so of the lot, the answer was comforting: sooner.”
“Prosperous—live here yet—town littered with their children.” It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wis-I asked about Miss ——
dom of having told this candid gentleman, in the beginning,
“Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago—never that my name was Smith.
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 289
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain Chapter 54
ready. There was a ferocious thunder-storm, that night, and it raged continuously until near dawn. The winds blew, the Past and Present
windows rattled, the rain swept along the roof in pelting sheets, and at the briefest of intervals the inky blackness of BEING LEFT TO MYSELF, up there, I went on picking out old the night vanished, the houses over the way glared out white houses in the distant town, and calling back their former and blinding for a quivering instant, then the solid darkness inmates out of the moldy past. Among them I presently rec-shut down again and a splitting peal of thunder followed, ognized the house of the father of Lem Hackett (fictitious which seemed to rend everything in the neighborhood to name). It carried me back more than a generation in a mo-shreds and splinters. I sat up in bed quaking and shudder-ment, and landed me in the midst of a time when the hap-ing, waiting for the destruction of the world, and expecting penings of life were not the natural and logical results of it. To me there was nothing strange or incongruous in heaven’s great general laws, but of special orders, and were freighted making such an uproar about Lem Hackett. Apparently it with very precise and distinct purposes—partly punitive in was the right and proper thing to do. Not a doubt entered intent, partly admonitory; and usually local in application.
my mind that all the angels were grouped together, discuss-When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned—on ing this boy’s case and observing the awful bombardment of a Sunday. He fell out of an empty flat-boat, where he was our beggarly little village with satisfaction and approval. There playing. Being loaded with sin, he went to the bottom like was one thing which disturbed me in the most serious way; an anvil. He was the only boy in the village who slept that that was the thought that this centering of the celestial inter-night. We others all lay awake, repenting. We had not needed est on our village could not fail to attract the attention of the the information, delivered from the pulpit that evening, that observers to people among us who might otherwise have Lem’s was a case of special judgment—we knew that, al-escaped notice for years. I felt that I was not only one of 290
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain those people, but the very one most likely to be discovered.
words than any other boy in the village, he probably intends That discovery could have but one result: I should be in the to repent—though he has never said he would. And whilst fire with Lem before the chill of the river had been fairly it is a fact that John Jones did fish a little on Sunday, once, warmed out of him. I knew that this would be only just and he didn’t really catch anything but only just one small use-fair. I was increasing the chances against myself all the time, less mud-cat; and maybe that wouldn’t have been so awful if by feeling a secret bitterness against Lem for having attracted he had thrown it back—as he says he did, but he didn’t. Pity this fatal attention to me, but I could not help it—this sinful but they would repent of these dreadful things—and maybe thought persisted in infesting my breast in spite of me. Ev-they will yet.”
ery time the lightning glared I caught my breath, and judged But while I was shamefully trying to draw attention to I was gone. In my terror and misery, I meanly began to sug-these poor chaps—who were doubtless directing the celes-gest other boys, and mention acts of theirs which were tial attention to me at the same moment, though I never wickeder than mine, and peculiarly needed punishment—
once suspected that—I had heedlessly left my candle burn-and I tried to pretend to myself that I was simply doing this ing. It was not a time to neglect even trifling precautions.
in a casual way, and without intent to divert the heavenly There was no occasion to add anything to the facilities for attention to them for the purpose of getting rid of it myself.
attracting notice to me—so I put the light out.
With deep sagacity I put these mentions into the form of It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most distressful sorrowing recollections and left-handed sham-supplications one I ever spent. I endured agonies of remorse for sins which that the sins of those boys might be allowed to pass unno-I knew I had committed, and for others which I was not ticed— “Possibly they may repent.” “It is true that Jim Smith certain about, yet was sure that they had been set down against broke a window and lied about it—but maybe he did not me in a book by an angel who was wiser than I and did not mean any harm. And although Tom Holmes says more bad trust such important matters to memory. It struck me, by 291
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain and by, that I had been making a most foolish and calamitous The storm subsided toward daybreak, and I dozed gradu-mistake, in one respect: doubtless I had not only made my ally to sleep with a sense of obligation to Lem Hackett for own destruction sure by directing attention to those other going to eternal suffering in that abrupt way, and thus pre-boys, but had already accomplished theirs!—Doubtless the venting a far more dreadful disaster—my own loss.
lightning had stretched them all dead in their beds by this But when I rose refreshed, by and by, and found that those time! The anguish and the fright which this thought gave me other boys were still alive, I had a dim sense that perhaps the made my previous sufferings seem trifling by comparison.
whole thing was a false alarm; that the entire turmoil had Things had become truly serious. I resolved to turn over a been on Lem’s account and nobody’s else. The world looked new leaf instantly; I also resolved to connect myself with the so bright and safe that there did not seem to be any real church the next day, if I survived to see its sun appear. I occasion to turn over a new leaf. I was a little subdued, dur-resolved to cease from sin in all its forms, and to lead a high ing that day, and perhaps the next; after that, my purpose of and blameless life for ever after. I would be punctual at church reforming slowly dropped out of my mind, and I had a peace-and Sunday-school; visit the sick; carry baskets of victuals to ful, comfortable time again, until the next storm.
the poor (simply to fulfil the regulation conditions, although That storm came about three weeks later; and it was the I knew we had none among us so poor but they would smash most unaccountable one, to me, that I had ever experienced; the basket over my head for my pains); I would instruct for on the afternoon of that day, ‘Dutchy’ was drowned.
other boys in right ways, and take the resulting trouncings Dutchy belonged to our Sunday-school. He was a German meekly; I would subsist entirely on tracts; I would invade lad who did not know enough to come in out of the rain; the rum shop and warn the drunkard—and finally, if I es-but he was exasperatingly good, and had a prodigious caped the fate of those who early become too good to live, I memory. One Sunday he made himself the envy of all the would go for a missionary.
youth and the talk of all the admiring village, by reciting 292
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain three thousand verses of Scripture without missing a word; vacant, nobody there to applaud. They were ‘so full of laugh’
then he went off the very next day and got drowned.
with the idea, that they were continually exploding into Circumstances gave to his death a peculiar impressiveness.
muffled cackles. Time swept on, and presently one who was We were all bathing in a muddy creek which had a deep hole peeping through the briers, said, with surprise—
in it, and in this hole the coopers had sunk a pile of green
“Why, he hasn’t come up, yet!”
hickory hoop poles to soak, some twelve feet under water.
The laughing stopped.
We were diving and ‘seeing who could stay under longest.’
“Boys, it ‘s a splendid dive,” said one.
We managed to remain down by holding on to the hoop
“Never mind that,” said another, “the joke on him is all poles. Dutchy made such a poor success of it that he was the better for it.”
hailed with laughter and derision every time his head ap-There was a remark or two more, and then a pause. Talking peared above water. At last he seemed hurt with the taunts, ceased, and all began to peer through the vines. Before long, and begged us to stand still on the bank and be fair with him the boys’ faces began to look uneasy, then anxious, then terri-and give him an honest count— “be friendly and kind just fied. Still there was no movement of the placid water. Hearts this once, and not miscount for the sake of having the fun of began to beat fast, and faces to turn pale. We all glided out, laughing at him.” Treacherous winks were exchanged, and silently, and stood on the bank, our horrified eyes wandering all said “All right, Dutchy—go ahead, we’ll play fair.” back and forth from each other’s countenances to the water.
Dutchy plunged in, but the boys, instead of beginning to
“Somebody must go down and see!”
count, followed the lead of one of their number and scam-Yes, that was plain; but nobody wanted that grisly task.
pered to a range of blackberry bushes close by and hid be-
“Draw straws!”
hind it. They imagined Dutchy’s humiliation, when he should So we did—with hands which shook so, that we hardly rise after a superhuman effort and find the place silent and knew what we were about. The lot fell to me, and I went 293
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain down. The water was so muddy I could not see anything, must be some mistake. The elements were turned loose, and but I felt around among the hoop poles, and presently grasped they rattled and banged and blazed away in the most blind a limp wrist which gave me no response—and if it had I and frantic manner. All heart and hope went out of me, and should not have known it, I let it go with such a frightened the dismal thought kept floating through my brain, “If a suddenness.
boy who knows three thousand verses by heart is not satis-The boy had been caught among the hoop poles and en-factory, what chance is there for anybody else?” tangled there, helplessly. I fled to the surface and told the Of course I never questioned for a moment that the storm awful news. Some of us knew that if the boy were dragged was on Dutchy’s account, or that he or any other inconse-out at once he might possibly be resuscitated, but we never quential animal was worthy of such a majestic demonstra-thought of that. We did not think of anything; we did not tion from on high; the lesson of it was the only thing that know what to do, so we did nothing—except that the smaller troubled me; for it convinced me that if Dutchy, with all his lads cried, piteously, and we all struggled frantically into our perfections, was not a delight, it would be vain for me to clothes, putting on anybody’s that came handy, and getting turn over a new leaf, for I must infallibly fall hopelessly short them wrong-side-out and upside-down, as a rule. Then we of that boy, no matter how hard I might try. Nevertheless I scurried away and gave the alarm, but none of us went back did turn it over—a highly educated fear compelled me to do to see the end of the tragedy. We had a more important that—but succeeding days of cheerfulness and sunshine came thing to attend to: we all flew home, and lost not a moment bothering around, and within a month I had so drifted backin getting ready to lead a better life.
ward that again I was as lost and comfortable as ever.
The night presently closed down. Then came on that tre-Breakfast time approached while I mused these musings mendous and utterly unaccountable storm. I was perfectly and called these ancient happenings back to mind; so I got dazed; I could not understand it. It seemed to me that there me back into the present and went down the hill.
294
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain On my way through town to the hotel, I saw the house the places, of boys and girls some of whom I had loved to which was my home when I was a boy. At present rates, the love, and some of whom I had loved to hate, but all of whom people who now occupy it are of no more value than I am; were dear to me for the one reason or the other, so many but in my time they would have been worth not less than years gone by—and, Lord, where be they now!
five hundred dollars apiece. They are colored folk.
I was mightily stirred, and would have been grateful to be After breakfast, I went out alone again, intending to hunt allowed to remain unmolested and look my fill; but a bald-up some of the Sunday-schools and see how this generation summited superintendent who had been a tow-headed Sun-of pupils might compare with their progenitors who had sat day-school mate of mine on that spot in the early ages, recog-with me in those places and had probably taken me as a nized me, and I talked a flutter of wild nonsense to those model—though I do not remember as to that now. By the children to hide the thoughts which were in me, and which public square there had been in my day a shabby little brick could not have been spoken without a betrayal of feeling that church called the ‘Old Ship of Zion,’ which I had attended would have been recognized as out of character with me.
as a Sunday-school scholar; and I found the locality easily Making speeches without preparation is no gift of mine; enough, but not the old church; it was gone, and a trig and and I was resolved to shirk any new opportunity, but in the rather hilarious new edifice was in its place. The pupils were next and larger Sunday-school I found myself in the rear of better dressed and better looking than were those of my time; the assemblage; so I was very willing to go on the platform a consequently they did not resemble their ancestors; and con-moment for the sake of getting a good look at the scholars.
sequently there was nothing familiar to me in their faces.
On the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old Still, I contemplated them with a deep interest and a yearn-idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when I ing wistfulness, and if I had been a girl I would have cried; was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it would for they were the offspring, and represented, and occupied have given me time and excuse to dawdle there and take a 295
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain long and satisfying look at what I feel at liberty to say was an Chapter 55
array of fresh young comeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size. As I talked merely to get a A Vendetta
chance to inspect; and as I strung out the random rubbish and Other Things
solely to prolong the inspection, I judged it but decent to confess these low motives, and I did so.
DURING MY THREE DAYS’ STAY in the town, I woke up every If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday-schools, I morning with the impression that I was a boy—for in my did not see him. The Model Boy of my time—we never had dreams the faces were all young again, and looked as they but the one—was perfect: perfect in manners, perfect in dress, had looked in the old times—but I went to bed a hundred perfect in conduct, perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior years old, every night—for meantime I had been seeing those godliness; but at bottom he was a prig; and as for the con-faces as they are now.
tents of his skull, they could have changed place with the Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first, before I contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse off had become adjusted to the changed state of things. I met for it but the pie. This fellow’s reproachlessness was a stand-young ladies who did not seem to have changed at all; but ing reproach to every lad in the village. He was the admira-they turned out to be the daughters of the young ladies I tion of all the mothers, and the detestation of all their sons.
had in mind—sometimes their grand-daughters. When you I was told what became of him, but as it was a disappoint-are told that a stranger of fifty is a grandmother, there is ment to me, I will not enter into details. He succeeded in nothing surprising about it; but if, on the contrary, she is a life.
person whom you knew as a little girl, it seems impossible.
You say to yourself, “How can a little girl be a grandmother.” It takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that 296
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain while you have been growing old, your friends have not been was able to make of it, before strangers, as he went flying standing still, in that matter.
down the street struggling with his fluttering coat.
I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with But there was a carpenter who was my chiefest hero. He the women, not the men. I saw men whom thirty years had was a mighty liar, but I did not know that; I believed every-changed but slightly; but their wives had grown old. These thing he said. He was a romantic, sentimental, melodramatic were good women; it is very wearing to be good.
fraud, and his bearing impressed me with awe. I vividly re-There was a saddler whom I wished to see; but he was member the first time he took me into his confidence. He gone. Dead, these many years, they said. Once or twice a was planing a board, and every now and then he would pause day, the saddler used to go tearing down the street, putting and heave a deep sigh; and occasionally mutter broken sen-on his coat as he went; and then everybody knew a steam-tences—confused and not intelligible—but out of their midst boat was coming. Everybody knew, also, that John Stavely an ejaculation sometimes escaped which made me shiver and was not expecting anybody by the boat—or any freight, ei-did me good: one was, “O God, it is his blood!” I sat on the ther; and Stavely must have known that everybody knew tool-chest and humbly and shudderingly admired him; for I this, still it made no difference to him; he liked to seem to judged he was full of crime. At last he said in a low voice—
himself to be expecting a hundred thousand tons of saddles
“My little friend, can you keep a secret?” by this boat,