<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTERS_FROM_MY_AUTOBIOGRAPHY_X" id="CHAPTERS_FROM_MY_AUTOBIOGRAPHY_X"></SPAN>CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.—X.</h2>
<h3>BY MARK TWAIN.</h3>
<hr class="smler" />
<div class="sidenote">(1825.)</div>
<div class="sidenote">(1837.)</div>
<p>[<i>Dictated March 28, 1906.</i>] Orion Clemens was born in Jamestown,
Fentress County, Tennessee, in 1825. He was the family's first-born, and
antedated me ten years. Between him and me came a sister, Margaret, who
died, aged ten, in 1837, in that village of Florida, Missouri, where I
was born; and Pamela, mother of Samuel E. Moffett, who was an invalid
all her life and died in the neighborhood of New York a year ago, aged
about seventy-five. Her character was without blemish, and she was of a
most kindly and gentle dis<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></SPAN></span>position. Also there was a brother, Benjamin,
who died in 1848 aged ten or twelve.</p>
<div class="sidenote">(1843.)</div>
<p>Orion's boyhood was spent in that wee little log hamlet of Jamestown up
there among the "knobs"—so called—of East Tennessee. The family
migrated to Florida, Missouri, then moved to Hannibal, Missouri, when
Orion was twelve and a half years old. When he was fifteen or sixteen he
was sent to St. Louis and there he learned the printer's trade. One of
his characteristics was eagerness. He woke with an eagerness about some
matter or other every morning; it consumed him all day; it perished in
the night and he was on fire with a fresh new interest next morning
before he could get his clothes on. He exploited in this way three
hundred and sixty-five red-hot new eagernesses every year of his life.
But I am forgetting another characteristic, a very pronounced one. That
was his deep glooms, his despondencies, his despairs; these had their
place in each and every day along with the eagernesses. Thus his day was
divided—no, not divided, mottled—from sunrise to midnight with
alternating brilliant sunshine and black cloud. Every day he was the
most joyous and hopeful man that ever was, I think, and also every day
he was the most miserable man that ever was.</p>
<p>While he was in his apprenticeship in St. Louis, he got well acquainted
with Edward Bates, who was afterwards in Mr. Lincoln's first cabinet.
Bates was a very fine man, an honorable and upright man, and a
distinguished lawyer. He patiently allowed Orion to bring to him each
new project; he discussed it with him and extinguished it by argument
and irresistible logic—at first. But after a few weeks he found that
this labor was not necessary; that he could leave the new project alone
and it would extinguish itself the same night. Orion thought he would
like to become a lawyer. Mr. Bates encouraged him, and he studied law
nearly a week, then of course laid it aside to try something new. He
wanted to become an orator. Mr. Bates gave him lessons. Mr. Bates walked
the floor reading from an English book aloud and rapidly turning the
English into French, and he recommended this exercise to Orion. But as
Orion knew no French, he took up that study and wrought at it like a
volcano for two or three days; then gave it up. During his
apprenticeship in St. Louis he joined a number of churches, one after
another, and taught in their Sunday-schools—changing his<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></SPAN></span> Sunday-school
every time he changed his religion. He was correspondingly erratic in
his politics—Whig to-day, Democrat next week, and anything fresh that
he could find in the political market the week after. I may remark here
that throughout his long life he was always trading religions and
enjoying the change of scenery. I will also remark that his sincerity
was never doubted; his truthfulness was never doubted; and in matters of
business and money his honesty was never questioned. Notwithstanding his
forever-recurring caprices and changes, his principles were high, always
high, and absolutely unshakable. He was the strangest compound that ever
got mixed in a human mould. Such a person as that is given to acting
upon impulse and without reflection; that was Orion's way. Everything he
did he did with conviction and enthusiasm and with a vainglorious pride
in the thing he was doing—and no matter what that thing was, whether
good, bad or indifferent, he repented of it every time in sackcloth and
ashes before twenty-four hours had sped. Pessimists are born, not made.
Optimists are born, not made. But I think he was the only person I have
ever known in whom pessimism and optimism were lodged in exactly equal
proportions. Except in the matter of grounded principle, he was as
unstable as water. You could dash his spirits with a single word; you
could raise them into the sky again with another one. You could break
his heart with a word of disapproval; you could make him as happy as an
angel with a word of approval. And there was no occasion to put any
sense or any vestige of mentality of any kind into these miracles;
anything you might say would answer.</p>
<p>He had another conspicuous characteristic, and it was the father of
those which I have just spoken of. This was an intense lust for
approval. He was so eager to be approved, so girlishly anxious to be
approved by anybody and everybody, without discrimination, that he was
commonly ready to forsake his notions, opinions and convictions at a
moment's notice in order to get the approval of any person who disagreed
with them. I wish to be understood as reserving his fundamental
principles all the time. He never forsook those to please anybody. Born
and reared among slaves and slaveholders, he was yet an abolitionist
from his boyhood to his death. He was always truthful; he was always
sincere; he was always honest and honorable. But in<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></SPAN></span> light
matters—matters of small consequence, like religion and politics and
such things—he never acquired a conviction that could survive a
disapproving remark from a cat.</p>
<p>He was always dreaming; he was a dreamer from birth, and this
characteristic got him into trouble now and then.</p>
<p>Once when he was twenty-three or twenty-four years old, and was become a
journeyman, he conceived the romantic idea of coming to Hannibal without
giving us notice, in order that he might furnish to the family a
pleasant surprise. If he had given notice, he would have been informed
that we had changed our residence and that that gruff old bass-voiced
sailorman, Dr. G., our family physician, was living in the house which
we had formerly occupied and that Orion's former room in that house was
now occupied by Dr. G.'s two middle-aged maiden sisters. Orion arrived
at Hannibal per steamboat in the middle of the night, and started with
his customary eagerness on his excursion, his mind all on fire with his
romantic project and building and enjoying his surprise in advance. He
was always enjoying things in advance; it was the make of him. He never
could wait for the event, but must build it out of dream-stuff and enjoy
it beforehand—consequently sometimes when the event happened he saw
that it was not as good as the one he had invented in his imagination,
and so he had lost profit by not keeping the imaginary one and letting
the reality go.</p>
<p>When he arrived at the house he went around to the back door and slipped
off his boots and crept up-stairs and arrived at the room of those
elderly ladies without having wakened any sleepers. He undressed in the
dark and got into bed and snuggled up against somebody. He was a little
surprised, but not much—for he thought it was our brother Ben. It was
winter, and the bed was comfortable, and the supposed Ben added to the
comfort—and so he was dropping off to sleep very well satisfied with
his progress so far and full of happy dreams of what was going to happen
in the morning. But something else was going to happen sooner than that,
and it happened now. The maid that was being crowded fumed and fretted
and struggled and presently came to a half-waking condition and
protested against the crowding. That voice paralyzed Orion. He couldn't
move a limb; he couldn't get his breath; and the crowded one discovered
his new whiskers and began to scream. This removed the paralysis,<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></SPAN></span> and
Orion was out of bed and clawing round in the dark for his clothes in a
fraction of a second. Both maids began to scream then, so Orion did not
wait to get his whole wardrobe. He started with such parts of it as he
could grab. He flew to the head of the stairs and started down, and was
paralyzed again at that point, because he saw the faint yellow flame of
a candle soaring up the stairs from below and he judged that Dr. G. was
behind it, and he was. He had no clothes on to speak of, but no matter,
he was well enough fixed for an occasion like this, because he had a
butcher-knife in his hand. Orion shouted to him, and this saved his
life, for the Doctor recognized his voice. Then in those deep-sea-going
bass tones of his that I used to admire so much when I was a little boy,
he explained to Orion the change that had been made, told him where to
find the Clemens family, and closed with some quite unnecessary advice
about posting himself before he undertook another adventure like
that—advice which Orion probably never needed again as long as he
lived.</p>
<p>One bitter December night, Orion sat up reading until three o'clock in
the morning and then, without looking at a clock, sallied forth to call
on a young lady. He hammered and hammered at the door; couldn't get any
response; didn't understand it. Anybody else would have regarded that as
an indication of some kind or other and would have drawn inferences and
gone home. But Orion didn't draw inferences, he merely hammered and
hammered, and finally the father of the girl appeared at the door in a
dressing-gown. He had a candle in his hand and the dressing-gown was all
the clothing he had on—except an expression of unwelcome which was so
thick and so large that it extended all down his front to his instep and
nearly obliterated the dressing-gown. But Orion didn't notice that this
was an unpleasant expression. He merely walked in. The old gentleman
took him into the parlor, set the candle on a table, and stood. Orion
made the usual remarks about the weather, and sat down—sat down and
talked and talked and went on talking—that old man looking at him
vindictively and waiting for his chance—waiting treacherously and
malignantly for his chance. Orion had not asked for the young lady. It
was not customary. It was understood that a young fellow came to see the
girl of the house, not the founder of it. At last Orion got up and made<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></SPAN></span>
some remark to the effect that probably the young lady was busy and he
would go now and call again. That was the old man's chance, and he said
with fervency "Why good land, aren't you going to stop to breakfast?"</p>
<p class="tbrk"> </p>
<p>Orion did not come to Hannibal until two or three years after my
father's death. Meantime he remained in St Louis. He was a journeyman
printer and earning wages. 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. 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, upon my father's death, and placed in the office of
the Hannibal "Courier," as printer's apprentice, and Mr. S., the editor
and proprietor of the paper, 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. S.'s old clothes held out. I was only about half as big as Mr. S.,
consequently his shirts gave me the uncomfortable sense of living in a
circus tent, and I had to turn up his pants to my ears to make them
short enough.</p>
<p>There were two other apprentices. One was Steve Wilkins, seventeen or
eighteen years old and a giant. When he was in Mr. S.'s clothes they
fitted him as the candle-mould fits the candle—thus he was generally in
a suffocated condition, particularly in the summer-time. He was a
reckless, hilarious, admirable creature; he had no principles, and was
delightful company. 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—Steve 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, "Now, Marse Steve, Marse Steve,
can't you behave yourself?" With encouragement like that, Steve would
naturally renew his attentions and emphasize them. It was killingly
funny to Ralph and me. And, to speak truly, the old mother's<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></SPAN></span> distress
about it was merely a pretence. She quite well understood that by the
customs of slaveholding communities it was Steve's 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 Steve's extravagant love-making
in resentful earnest.</p>
<p>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 to the printing-office, where we slept on pallets on the
floor, and cooked them at the stove and had very good times.</p>
<p>As I have indicated, Mr. S.'s 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, Harry H., the economies continued. Mrs. S. was a bride.
She had attained to that distinction very recently, after waiting a good
part of a lifetime for it, and she was the right woman in the right
place, according to the economics of the place, for she did not trust
the sugar-bowl to us, but sweetened our coffee herself. That is, 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 Steve, 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, so that the effect to the eye was a
heaped-up 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
Steve's lies.</p>
<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Mark Twain</span>.</p>
<p class="center">(<i>To be Continued.</i>)</p>
<hr />
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></SPAN></span></p>
<h2>NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW</h2>
<h3>No. DCVIII.</h3>
<hr class="smler" />
<h3>FEBRUARY 1, 1907.</h3>
<hr class="smler" />
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