I want bodily exercise--some constant and active employment, in the first place; and, in the next place, I want to be paid for it, if possible.
This letter is dated January 7, 1842. He returned without any financial success, and obtained employment for a time in a commission-house on the levee. The proprietor found some fault one day, and Judge Clemens walked out of the premises. On his way home he stopped in a general store, kept by a man named Sehns, to make some purchases. When he asked that these be placed on account, Selms hesitated. Judge Clemens laid down a five- dollar gold piece, the last money he possessed in the world, took the goods, and never entered the place again.
When Jane Clemens reproached him for having made the trip to Tennessee, at a cost of two hundred dollars, so badly needed at this time, he only replied gently that he had gone for what he believed to be the best.
"I am not able to dig in the streets," he added, and Orion, who records this, adds:
"I can see yet the hopeless expression of his face."
During a former period of depression, such as this, death had come into the Clemens home. It came again now. Little Benjamin, a sensitive, amiable boy of ten, one day sickened, and died within a week, May 12, 1842. He was a favorite child and his death was a terrible blow. Little Sam long remembered the picture of his parents' grief; and Orion recalls that they kissed each other, something hitherto unknown.
Judge Clemens went back to his law and judicial practice. Mrs. Clemens decided to take a few boarders. Orion, by this time seventeen and a very good journeyman printer, obtained a place in St. Louis to aid in the family support.
The tide of fortune having touched low-water mark, the usual gentle stage of improvement set in. Times grew better in Hannibal after those first two or three years; legal fees became larger and more frequent. Within another two years judge Clemens appears to have been in fairly hopeful circumstances again--able at least to invest some money in silkworm culture and lose it, also to buy a piano for Pamela, and to build a modest house on the Hill Street property, which a rich St. Louis cousin, James Clemens, had preserved for him. It was the house which is known today as the "Mark Twain Home."--['This house, in 1911, was bought by Mr. and Mrs. George A. Mahan, and presented to Hannibal for a memorial museum.]--Near it, toward the corner of Main Street, was his office, and here he dispensed law and justice in a manner which, if it did not bring him affluence, at least won for him the respect of the entire community. One example will serve:
Next to his office was a stone-cutter's shop. One day the proprietor, Dave Atkinson, got into a muss with one "Fighting" MacDonald, and there was a tremendous racket. Judge Clemens ran out and found the men down, punishing each other on the pavement.
"I command the peace!" he shouted, as he came up to them.
No one paid the least attention.
"I command the peace!" he shouted again, still louder, but with no result.
A stone-cutter's mallet lay there, handy. Judge Clemens seized it and, leaning over the combatants, gave the upper one, MacDonald, a smart blow on the head.
"I command the peace!" he said, for the third time, and struck a considerably smarter blow.
That settled it. The second blow was of the sort that made MacDonald roll over, and peace ensued. Judge Clemens haled both men into his court, fined them, and collected his fee. Such enterprise in the cause of justice deserved prompt reward.
XI
DAYS OF EDUCATION
The Clemens family had made one or two moves since its arrival in Hannibal, but the identity of these temporary residences and the period of occupation of each can no longer be established. Mark Twain once said:
"In 1843 my father caught me in a lie. It is not this fact that gives me the date, but the house we lived in. We were there only a year."
We may believe it was the active result of that lie that fixed his memory of the place, for his father seldom punished him.