printer's trade and assisted the family with his wages.
Mrs. Clemens took a few boarders. In the midst of this time of hardship
little Benjamin Clemens died. He was ten years old. It was the darkest
hour.

Then conditions slowly improved. There was more law practice and better
justice fees. By 1844 Judge Clemens was able to build the house
mentioned above--a plain, cheap house, but a shelter and a home. Sam
Clemens--he was hardly "Little Sam" any more--was at this time nine years
old. His boyhood had begun.

Heretofore he had been just a child--wild and mischievous, often
exasperating, but still a child--a delicate little lad to be worried
over, mothered, or spanked and put to bed. Now at nine he had acquired
health, with a sturdy ability to look out for himself, as boys in such a
community will. "Sam," as they now called him, was "grown up" at nine
and wise for his years. Not that he was old in spirit or manner--he was
never that, even to his death--but he had learned a great number of
things, many of them of a kind not taught at school.

He had learned a good deal of natural history and botany--the habits of
plants, insects, and animals. Mark Twain's books bear evidence of this
early study. His plants, bugs, and animals never do the wrong things.
He was learning a good deal about men, and this was often less pleasant
knowledge. Once Little Sam--he was still Little Sam then--saw an old man
shot down on Main Street at noon day. He saw them carry him home, lay
him on the bed, and spread on his breast an open family Bible, which
looked as heavy as an anvil. He thought if he could only drag that great
burden away the poor old dying man would not breathe so heavily.

He saw a young emigrant stabbed with a bowie-knife by a drunken comrade,
and two young men try to kill their uncle, one holding him while the
other snapped repeatedly an Allen revolver, which failed to go off. Then
there was the drunken rowdy who proposed to raid the "Welshman's" house,
one sultry, threatening evening--he saw that, too. With a boon
companion, John Briggs, he followed at a safe distance behind. A widow
with her one daughter lived there. They stood in the shadow of the dark
porch; the man had paused at the gate to revile them. The boys heard the
mother's voice warning the intruder that she had a loaded gun and would
kill him if he stayed where he was. He replied with a tirade, and she
warned him that she would count ten--that if he remained a