reached that age. Certainly these were disturbing, haunting things. Then
there was the case of the drunken tramp in the calaboose to whom the boys
kind-heartedly enough carried food and tobacco. Sam Clemens spent some
of his precious money to buy the tramp a box of Lucifer matches--a brand
new invention then, scarce and high. The tramp started a fire with the
matches and burned down the calaboose, himself in it. For weeks the boy
was tortured, awake and in his dreams, by the thought that if he had not
carried the man the matches the tragedy could not have happened. Remorse
was always Samuel Clemens's surest punishment. To his last days on earth
he never outgrew its pangs.

What a number of things crowded themselves into a few brief years! It is
not easy to curtail these boyhood adventures of Sam Clemens and his
scapegrace friends, but one might go on indefinitely with their mad
doings. They were an unpromising lot. Ministers and other sober-minded
citizens freely prophesied sudden and violent ends for them, and
considered them hardly worth praying for. They must have proven a
disappointing lot to those prophets. The Bowen boys became fine
river-pilots; Will Pitts was in due time a leading merchant and bank
director; John Briggs grew into a well-to-do and highly respected farmer;
even Huck Finn--that is to say, Tom Blankenship--is reputed to have
ranked as an honored citizen and justice of the peace in a Western town.
But in those days they were a riotous, fun-loving band with little
respect for order and even less for ordinance.




XIII