hich stood on the floor. Young Brownell from below was passing
upstairs to his room on the fourth floor one night when he heard Sam
Clemens call. The two were great chums by this time, and Brownell poked
his head in at the door.

"What will you have, Sam?" he asked.

"Come in, Ed; Henry's asleep, and I am in trouble. I want somebody to
light my pipe."

"Why don't you get up and light it yourself?" Brownell asked.

"I would, only I knew you'd be along in a few minutes and would do it
for me."

Brownell scratched the necessary match, stooped down, and applied it.

"What are you reading, Sam?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing much--a so-called funny book--one of these days I'll write
a funnier book than that, myself."

Brownell laughed.

"No, you won't, Sam," he said. "You are too lazy ever to write a book."

A good many years later when the name "Mark Twain" had begun to stand
for American humor the owner of it gave his "Sandwich Island" lecture
in Keokuk. Speaking of the unreliability of the islanders, he said: "The
king is, I believe, one of the greatest liars on the face of the earth,
except one; and I am very sorry to locate that one right here in the
city of Keokuk, in the person of Ed Brownell."

The Keokuk episode in Mark Twain's life was neither very long nor
very actively important. It extended over a period of less than
two years--two vital years, no doubt, if all the bearings could be
known--but they were not years of startling occurrence.

Yet he made at least one beginning there: at a printers' banquet he
delivered his first after-dinner speech; a hilarious speech--its
humor of a primitive kind. Whatever its shortcomings, it delighted
his audience, and raised him many points in the public regard. He had
entered a field of entertainment in which he would one day have no
rival. They impressed him into a debating society after that, and there
was generally a stir of attention when Sam Clemens was about to take the
floor.

Orion Clemens records how his brother undertook to teach the German
apprentice music.

"There was an old guitar in the office and Sam taught Fritz a song
beginning:

"Grasshopper sitting on a sweet-potato vine,
Turkey came along and yanked him from behind."

The main point in the lesson was in giving to the word "yanked" the
proper expression and emphasis, accompanied by a sweep of the fingers
across the strings. With serious face and deep earnestness Fritz in his
broken En