ihood, they agreed that he should be
apprenticed to Joseph P. Ament, who had lately moved from Palmyra to
Hannibal and bought a weekly Democrat paper, the Missouri Courier. The
apprentice terms were not over-liberal. They were the usual thing for
that time: board and clothes--"more board than clothes, and not much of
either," Mark Twain used to say.

"I was supposed to get two suits of clothes a year, like a nigger, but
I didn't get them. I got one suit and took the rest out in Ament's old
garments, which didn't fit me in any noticeable way. I was only about
half as big as he was, and when I had on one of his shirts I felt as if
I had on a circus tent. I had to turn the trousers up to my ears to make
them short enough."

There was another apprentice, a young fellow of about eighteen, named
Wales McCormick, a devilish fellow and a giant. Ament's clothes were
too small for Wales, but he had to wear them, and Sam Clemens and Wales
McCormick together, fitted out with Ament's clothes, must have been a
picturesque pair. There was also, for a time, a boy named Ralph; but he
appears to have presented no features of a striking sort, and the memory
of him has become dim.

The apprentices ate in the kitchen at first, served by the old
slave-cook and her handsome mulatto daughter; but those printer's
"devils" made it so lively there that in due time they were promoted
to the family table, where they sat with Mr. and Mrs. Ament and the one
journeyman, Pet McMurry--a name that in itself was an inspiration. What
those young scamps did not already know Pet McMurry could teach them.
Sam Clemens had promised to be a good boy, and he was, by the standards
of boyhood. He was industrious, regular at his work, quick to learn,
kind, and truthful. Angels could hardly be more than that in a
printing-office; but when food was scarce even an angel--a young printer
angel--could hardly resist slipping down the cellar stairs at night for
raw potatoes, onions, and apples which they carried into the office,
where the boys slept on a pallet on the floor, and this forage they
cooked on the office stove. Wales especially had a way of cooking a
potato that his associate never forgot.

It is unfortunate that no photographic portrait has been preserved of
Sam Clemens at this period. But we may imagine him from a letter which,
long years after, Pet McMurry wrote to Mark Twain. He said:

If your memory extends so far back, you will recall a little sa