would have seen how I was treated and would have cried 'Shame!'"

This incident, noted and remembered, long after became curiously confused
with another, in Mark Twain's mind. In an autobiographical chapter
published in The North American Review he tells of the move to Hannibal
and relates that he himself was left behind by his absentminded family.
The incident of his own abandonment did not happen then, but later, and
somewhat differently. It would indeed be an absent-minded family if the
parents, and the sister and brothers ranging up to fourteen years of age,
should drive off leaving Little Sam, age four, behind.

--[As mentioned in the Prefatory Note, Mark Twain's memory played him
many tricks in later life. Incidents were filtered through his vivid
imagination until many of them bore little relation to the actual
occurrence. Some of these lapses were only amusing, but occasionally
they worked an unintentional injustice. It is the author's purpose in
every instance, so far as is possible, to keep the record straight.]




VII

THE LITTLE TOWN OF HANNIBAL

Hannibal in 1839 was already a corporate community and had an atmosphere
of its own. It was a town with a distinct Southern flavor, though rather
more astir than the true Southern community of that period; more Western
in that it planned, though without excitement, certain new enterprises
and made a show, at least, of manufacturing. It was somnolent (a slave