e that summer of 1877. John T. Lewis
(colored), already referred to as the religious antagonist of Auntie
Cord, by great presence of mind and bravery saved the lives of Mrs.
Clemens's sister-in-law, Mrs. Charles ("Charley") Langdon, her little
daughter Julia, and her nurse-maid. They were in a buggy, and their
runaway horse was flying down East Hill toward Elmira to certain
destruction, when Lewis, laboring slowly homeward with a loaded wagon,
saw them coming and turned his team across the road, after which he
leaped out and with extraordinary strength and quickness grabbed the
horse's bridle and brought him to a standstill. The Clemens and Crane
families, who had seen the runaway start at the farm gate, arrived half
wild with fear, only to find the supposed victims entirely safe.

Everybody contributed in rewarding Lewis. He received money ($1,500) and
various other presents, including inscribed books and trinkets, also,
what he perhaps valued more than anything, a marvelous stem-winding gold
watch. Clemens, writing a full account to Dr. Brown of the watch, says:

And if any scoffer shall say, "behold this thing is out of
character," there is an inscription within which will silence him;
for it will teach him that this wearer aggrandizes the watch, not
the watch the wearer.

In another paragraph he says:

When Lewis arrived the other evening, after having saved those lives
by a feat which I think is the most marvelous I can call to mind,
when he arrived hunched up on his manure-wagon and as grotesquely
picturesque as usual, everybody wanted to go and see how he looked.
They came back and said he was beautiful. It was so, too, and yet
he would have photographed exactly as he would have done any day
these past seven years that he has occupied this farm.

Lewis acknowledged his gifts in a letter which closed with a paragraph of
rare native loftiness:

But I beg to say, humbly, that inasmuch as divine Providence saw fit
to use me as an instrument for the saving of those preshious lives,
the honner conferd upon me was greater than the feat performed.

Lewis lived to enjoy his prosperity, and the honor of the Clemens and
Langdon households, for twenty-nine years. When he was too old to work
there was a pension, to which Clemens contributed; also Henry H. Rogers.
So the simple-hearted, noble old negro closed his days in peace.

Mrs. Crane, in a letter, late in Ju