better than that," she said,
"and school will soon be out, too, and you can go back to Uncle John's
farm."

And so passed and ended Little Sam's first school-days.

X. EARLY VICISSITUDE AND SORROW

Prosperity came laggingly enough to the Clemens household. The year 1840
brought hard times: the business venture paid little or no return;
law practice was not much more remunerative. Judge Clemens ran for the
office of justice of the peace and was elected, but fees were neither
large nor frequent. By the end of the year it became necessary to part
with Jennie, the slave-girl--a grief to all of them, for they were
fond of her in spite of her wilfulness, and she regarded them as "her
family." She was tall, well formed, nearly black, and brought a good
price. A Methodist minister in Hannibal sold a negro child at the same
time to another minister who took it to his home farther South. As the
steamboat moved away from the landing the child's mother stood at the
water's edge, shrieking her anguish. We are prone to consider these
things harshly now, when slavery has been dead for nearly half a
century, but it was a sacred institution then, and to sell a child from
its mother was little more than to sell to-day a calf from its lowing
dam. One could be sorry, of course, in both instances, but necessity or
convenience are matters usually considered before sentiment. Mark Twain
once said of his mother:

"Kind-hearted and compassionate as she was, I think she was not
conscious that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarranted
usurpation. She had never heard it assailed in any pulpit, but had heard
it defended and sanctified in a thousand. As far as her experience
went, the wise, the good, and the holy were unanimous in the belief that
slavery was right, righteous, sacred, the peculiar pet of the Deity,
and a condition which the slave himself ought to be daily and nightly
thankful for."

Yet Jane Clemens must have had qualms at times--vague, unassembled
doubts that troubled her spirit. After Jennie was gone a little black
chore-boy was hired from his owner, who had bought him on the east shore
of Maryland and brought him to that remote Western village, far from
family and friends.

He was a cheery spirit in spite of that, and gentle, but very noisy.
All day he went about singing, whistling, and whooping until his noise
became monotonous, maddening. One day Little Sam said:

"Ma--[that was the Southern term]--make Sand