th century
down into the sixth century and observe the consequences."

The reading tour continued during the first two months of the new year
and carried them as far west as Chicago. They read in Hannibal and
Keokuk, and Clemens spent a day in the latter place with his mother, now
living with Orion, brisk and active for her years and with her old-time
force of character. Mark Twain, arranging for her Keokuk residence, had
written:

Ma wants to board with you, and pay her board. She will pay you $20
a month (she wouldn't pay a cent more in heaven; she is obstinate on
this point), and as long as she remains with you and is content I
will add $25 a month to the sum Perkins already sends you.

Jane Clemens attended the Keokuk reading, and later, at home, when her
children asked her if she could still dance, she rose, and at eighty-one
tripped as lightly as a girl. It was the last time that Mark Twain ever
saw his mother in the health and vigor which had been always so much a
part of her personality.

Clemens saw another relative on that trip; in St. Louis, James Lampton,
the original of Colonel Sellers, called.

He was become old and white-headed, but he entered to me in the same old
breezy way of his earlier life, and he was all there, yet--not a detail
wanting: the happy light in his eye, the abounding hope in his heart, the
persuasive tongue, the miracle-breeding imagination--they were all there;
and before I could turn around he was polishing up his Aladdin's lamp and
flashing the secret riches of the world before me. I said to myself: "I
did not overdraw him by a shade, I set him down as he was; and he is the
same man to-day. Cable will recognize him."

Clemens opened the door into Cable's room and allowed the golden
dream-talk to float in. It was of a "small venture" which the caller had
undertaken through his son.

"Only a little thing--a mere trifle--a bagatelle. I suppose there's a
couple of millions in it, possibly three, but not more, I think; still,
for a boy, you know----"

It was the same old Cousin Jim. Later, when he had royally accepted some
tickets for the reading and bowed his exit, Cable put his head in at the
door.

"That was Colonel Sellers," he said.

CLIII

HUCK FINN COMES INTO HIS OWN

In the December Century (1884) appeared a chapter from 'The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn', "The Grangerford-Shepherdson Feud," a piece of writing
which Edmund Clarence Stederian