same. Becky Thatcher in the book was Laura Hawkins in reality.
The acquaintance of these two had begun when the Hawkins family moved
into the Virginia house on the corner of Hill and Main streets.--[The
Hawkins family in real life bore no resemblance to the family of that
name in The Gilded Age. Judge Hawkins of The Gilded Age, as already
noted, was John Clemens. Mark Twain used the name Hawkins, also the
name of his boyhood sweetheart, Laura, merely for old times' sake, and
because in portraying the childhood of Laura Hawkins he had a picture
of the real Laura in his mind.]--The Clemens family was then in the
new home across the way, and the children were soon acquainted. The boy
could be tender and kind, and was always gentle in his treatment of the
other sex. They visited back and forth, especially around the new house,
where there were nice pieces of boards and bricks for play-houses. So
they played "keeping house," and if they did not always agree well,
since the beginning of the world sweethearts have not always agreed,
even in Arcady. Once when they were building a house--and there may have
been some difference of opinion as to its architecture--the boy happened
to let a brick fall on the little girl's finger. If there had been any
disagreement it vanished instantly with that misfortune. He tried to
comfort her and soothe the pain; then he wept with her and suffered most
of the two, no doubt. So, you see, he was just a little boy, after
all, even though he was already chief of a red-handed band, the "Black
Avengers of the Spanish Main."

He was always a tender-hearted lad. He would never abuse an animal,
unless, as in the Pain-killer incident, his tendency to pranking ran
away with him. He had indeed a genuine passion for cats; summers when
he went to the farm he never failed to take his cat in a basket. When
he ate, it sat in a chair beside him at the table. His sympathy included
inanimate things as well. He loved flowers--not as the embryo botanist
or gardener, but as a personal friend. He pitied the dead leaf and the
murmuring dried weed of November because their brief lives were ended,
and they would never know the summer again, or grow glad with another
spring. His heart went out to them; to the river and the sky, the sunlit
meadow and the drifted hill. That his observation of all nature was
minute and accurate is shown everywhere in his writing; but it was
never the observation of a young naturalist it was