"Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water. You got to go all
by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a
spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the
stump and jam your hand in it and say:
"Barley-corn, Barley-corn, Injun meal shorts,
"Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts,"
and then walk away quick eleven steps, with your eyes shut and then
turn round three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.
Because if you do speak, the charm's busted.
"I've took off thousands of warts that way, Huck. I play with frogs so
much that I've always got considerable warts. Sometimes I take 'em off
with a bean."
"Yes, a bean's good. I've done that."
"But say, Huck, how do you cure 'em with dead cats?"
By this time, doubtless you are saying, "Oh, I know from what book you
are quoting. I have Tom Sawyer at home and Huckleberry Finn, too. I
read them over and over."
But would you not like to know something about the man, who could
write so understandingly of boys? Suppose we read the story of his
life and see if we can decide what gave him his wide knowledge of
games and adventures, of boyish larks and youthful troubles.
We must go for his earliest experiences to a town on the Mississippi,
one hundred miles from St. Louis. In the year 1839, the Clemens family
moved to Hannibal from a still smaller town in Missouri, named
Florida. The youngest child in the Clemens family was four years old.
He was named Samuel Langhorne Clemens. For eight years this boy roved
over the hills and through the woods with his playmates. There was a
cave near Hannibal. Many strange creatures were said to hide in its
depths. Also, there was Bear Creek where the boys went swimming. Young
Sam tried hard to learn to swim. Several times he was dragged ashore
just in time to save his life, but at last he learned to swim better
than any of his friends.
Then there was the river, the broad Mississippi.
"It was the river that meant more to him than all the rest. Its charm
was permanent. It was the path of adventure, the gateway to the world.
The river with its islands, its great slow moving rafts, its marvelous
steamboats that were like fairyland, and its stately current going to
the sea. How it held him! He would sit by it for hours and dream. He
would venture out on it in a surreptitiously borrowed boat, when he
was barely strong enough to lift an oar out of the water."
We are told that when Sam Clemens was only nine years of age he
managed to board one of the river steamers. He hid under a boat on the
upper deck. After the steamer started he sat watching the shore slip
past. Then came a heavy rain and a wet, shivering, little boy was
found by one of the crew. At the next stop he was put ashore and
relatives, who lived there, took him home, and so ended his first
journey upon the river.
Years later he became a pilot on a Mississippi river boat and made
many trips from New Orleans up the river and back. Such a trip
required thirty-five days.
While acting as a river pilot, Samuel Clemens heard the name, "Mark
Twain." An old riverman had used it as an assumed name, taking the
term from the cry of the boatmen as they tested the depth of the
river. Samuel Clemens had an intense love of joking and fun, so when
he first began to write, he suddenly thought it would be amusing to
sign some name other than his own. Therefore, he signed his articles
"Mark Twain." This name clung to him, and many persons forgot or never
knew that his real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
Accordingly, in the river of his boyhood love, he found the name by
which the world knows today one of the foremost American authors. Yet,
in those early days in Hannibal, he had no idea of writing. Indeed,
his days were so busy it is not likely he thought much of the future
at all. He was the leader of a band of boys that played Bandit, Pirate
and Indian. Sam Clemens was always chief. He led the way to the caves
whose chambers reached far back under the cliffs and even, perhaps,
under the river itself.
When he was a man, Mr. Clemens wrote two books telling of these early
days in Hannibal. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry
Finn." "Tom Sawyer" was himself, and the incidents in the book all had
their foundation in the days of his boyhood. The cave, as you may
know, plays an important part in the latter story. In "Tom Sawyer,"
Indian Joe dies in the cave. There was an Indian Joe in Hannibal and
while he did not die in the cave, he was lost there for days and was
living on bats when found. This incident made a strong impression on
young Samuel Clemens and he never forgot it. It was in the Clemen's
house that Tom gave the cat pain-killer; there, too, that he induced a
crowd of boys to white-wash the fence all one Saturday morning. It was
at the Clemens' home, too, that a small boy in his night clothes came
tumbling down from an over-hung trellis upon the merry crowd cooling
taffy in the snow.
Such happenings were part of young Sam's life. He lived the
out-of-doors and, when grown to manhood, he could recall all the
sports and pleasures of those days. He cherished the memory of his
boyhood friends and so wrote of "Huck" Finn, making him like Tom
Blakenship, one of the riotous, freedom-loving members of Sam Clemens'
band.
These boys crowded many adventures into a few years. Hannibal was the
scene of stormy times. Black slaves were sold in the open market.
Desperadoes roamed the streets. Lawlessness was everywhere and it was
not strange that the residents of Hannibal did not think Sam Clemens
amounted to much and prophesied that he would never grow up to follow
a respectable calling.
Yet when his father died, Sam went to work in his brother's printing
shop. Printed matter began to interest him. Then one day, in the dusty
street of Hannibal, this half-grown, lively boy picked up a scrap of
paper. A leaf torn from a history! Where did it come from? No one
knows.
Books were not plentiful then in that little town. Yet, on this paper
the fun-loving Sam Clemens read for the first time of Joan of Arc, the
wondrous maid who led the French to victory. He had never heard of
her. He had read no history, nor had he had an active interest in
books. Studying there in the village street, reading the few lines of
the marvelous story of the Maid of Orleans, there was created in him
an interest that went with him throughout life.
He was by turn a printer, a pilot, a pioneer, a soldier, a miner, a
newspaper reporter, a lecturer, but at last he found his true place.
He became a writer and wrote books that continue to delight thousands
upon thousands of readers. His life went into his books. Just as he
drew upon his early days in Hannibal for the material in "Huckleberry
Finn" and The "Adventures of Tom Sawyer," so he used all of his
experiences. He wrote "Life Upon The Mississippi," a record of his
days as a pilot; "Roughing It," a story of a mining camp; "The Jumping
Frog," a western story that made his fame throughout the United
States; "Innocents Abroad," a tale of his experiences abroad, and
"The Life Of Joan Of Arc," a beautiful story that was always the
author's favorite.
During the last years of his life, Mark Twain passed the winters in
Bermuda and there he was, as ever, the friend of children. There was a
pretty, little girl at his hotel named Margaret, who was twelve years
old. She and Mr. Clemens went everywhere together and, on one
excursion, he found a beautiful, little shell. The two halves came
apart in his hand. He gave one of them to Margaret and said, "Now
dear, sometime or other in the future, I shall run across you
somewhere, and it may turn out that it is not you at all, but will be
some girl that only resembles you. I shall be saying to myself, 'I
know that this is Margaret by the look of her, but I don't know for
sure whether this is my Margaret or somebody else's;' but, no matter,
I can soon find out, for I shall take my half shell out of my packet
and say, 'I think you are my Margaret, but I am not certain; if you
are my Margaret you can produce the other half of the shell.'"
After that Margaret played the new game often and she tried to catch
him without his half of the shell, but Mark Twain writes, "I always
defeated that game, wherefore, she came to recognize, at last, that I
was not only old, but very smart."
Mark Twain had lived 74 years when the close of his life here came
April 20, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut. Once he wrote in one of his
humorous moments, "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to
die even the undertaker will be sorry." When his life here ended,
tributes were received from every land. He was mourned as few men have
ever been. Why? Because he knew people; he loved them and interested
them. Because, in his most famous days he still remained at heart the
boy who played beside the river and loved the surging, restless flow
of the mighty current.
[Illustration: EX-PRESIDENT WARREN G. HARDING]