in St. Louis, where he
remained until the following year, rooming with a youth named Burrough, a
journeyman chair-maker with literary taste, a reader of the English
classics, a companionable lad, and for Samuel Clemens a good influence.

By spring, Orion Clemens had married and had sold out in Muscatine. He
was now located in Keokuk, Iowa. When presently Brother Sam came
visiting to Keokuk, Orion offered him five dollars a week and his board
to remain. He accepted. Henry Clemens, now seventeen, was also in
Orion's employ, and a lad named Dick Hingham. Henry and Sam slept in the
office; Dick and a young fellow named Brownell, who roomed above, came in
for social evenings.

They were pretty lively evenings. A music-teacher on the floor below did
not care for them--they disturbed his class. He was furious, in fact,
and assailed the boys roughly at first, with no result but to make
matters worse. Then he tried gentleness, and succeeded. The boys
stopped their capers and joined his class. Sam, especially, became a
distinguished member of that body. He was never a great musician, but
with his good nature, his humor, his slow, quaint speech and originality,
he had no rival in popularity. He was twenty now, and much with young
ladies, yet he was always a beau rather than a suitor, a good comrade to
all, full of pranks and pleasantries, ready to stop and be merry with any
that came along. If they prophesied concerning his future, it is not
likely that they spoke of literary fame. They thought him just
easy-going and light-minded. True, they noticed that he often carried a
book under his arm--a history, a volume of Dickens, or the tales of Poe.

He read more than any one guessed. At night, propped up in bed--a habit
continued until his death--he was likely to read until a late hour. He
enjoyed smoking at such times, and had made himself a pipe with a large
bowl which stood on the floor and had a long rubber stem, something like
the Turkish hubble-bubble. He liked to fill the big bowl and smoke at
ease through the entire evening. But sometimes the pipe went out, which
meant that he must strike a match and lean far over to apply it, just
when he was most comfortable. Sam Clemens never liked unnecessary
exertion. One night, when the pipe had gone out for the second time, he
happened to hear the young book-clerk, Brownell, passing up to his room
on the top floor. Sam called to him:

"Ed, come here!"

Brownell poked his head in t