injured his health in the mean time, and somewhat later, with his mother
and the younger children, removed to Adair County, Kentucky, where the
widow presently married a sweetheart of her girlhood, one Simon Hancock,
a good man. In due course, John Clemens was sent to Columbia, the
countyseat, to study law. When the living heirs became of age he
administered his father's estate, receiving as his own share three negro
slaves; also a mahogany sideboard, which remains among the Clemens
effects to this day.

This was in 1821. John Clemens was now a young man of twenty-three,
never very robust, but with a good profession, plenty of resolution, and
a heart full of hope and dreams. Sober, industrious, and unswervingly
upright, it seemed certain that he must make his mark. That he was
likely to be somewhat too optimistic, even visionary, was not then
regarded as a misfortune.

It was two years later that he met Jane Lampton; whose mother was a Casey
--a Montgomery-Casey whose father was of the Lamptons (Lambtons) of
Durham, England, and who on her own account was reputed to be the
handsomest girl and the wittiest, as well as the best dancer, in all
Kentucky. The Montgomeries and the Caseys of Kentucky had been Indian
fighters in the Daniel Boone period, and grandmother Casey, who had been
Jane Montgomery, had worn moccasins in her girlhood, and once saved her
life by jumping a fence and out-running a redskin pursuer. The
Montgomery and Casey annals were full of blood-curdling adventures, and
there is to-day a Casey County next to Adair, with a Montgomery County
somewhat farther east. As for the Lamptons, there is an earldom in the
English family, and there were claimants even then in the American
branch. All these things were worth while in Kentucky, but it was rare
Jane Lampton herself--gay, buoyant, celebrated for her beauty and her