That Hannibal was a pleasant place of residence we may believe,
and what an attractive place for a boy to grow up in!

Little Sam, however, was not yet ready to enjoy the island and the cave.
He was still delicate--the least promising of the family. He was queer
and fanciful, and rather silent. He walked in his sleep and was often
found in the middle of the night, fretting with the cold, in some dark
corner. Once he heard that a neighbor's children had the measles, and,
being very anxious to catch the complaint, slipped over to the house and
crept into bed with an infected playmate. Some days later, Little Sam's
relatives gathered about his bed to see him die. He confessed, long
after, that the scene gratified him. However, he survived, and fell into
the habit of running away, usually in the direction of the river.

"You gave me more uneasiness than any child I had," his mother once said
to him, in her old age.

"I suppose you were afraid I wouldn't live," he suggested.

She looked at him with the keen humor which had been her legacy to him.
"No, afraid you would," she said. Which was only her joke, for she had
the tenderest of hearts, and, like all mothers, had a weakness for the
child that demanded most of her mother's care. It was chiefly on his
account that she returned each year to Florida to spend the summer on
John Quarles's farm.

If Uncle John Quarles's farm was just an ordinary Missouri farm, and his
slaves just average negroes, they certainly never seemed so to Little
Sam. There was a kind of glory about everything that belonged to Uncle
John, and it was not all imagination, for some of the spirit of that
jovial, kindly hearted man could hardly fail to radiate from his
belongings.

The farm was a large one for that locality, and the farm-house was a big
double log building--that is, two buildings with a roofed-over passage
between, where in summer the lavish Southern meals were served, brought
in on huge dishes by the negroes, and left for each one to help himself.
Fried chicken, roast pig, turkeys, ducks, geese, venison just killed,
squirrels, rabbits, partridges, pheasants, prairie-chickens, green corn,
watermelon--a little boy who did not die on that bill of fare would be
likely to get well on it, and to Little Sam the farm proved a life-saver.

It was, in fact, a heavenly place for a little boy. In the corner of the
yard there were hickory and black-walnut trees, and just over the fence
the hill sl