River town the little lad whom the world was to know as Mark Twain spent
his early life. In Tom Sawyer we have a picture of the Hannibal of those
days and the atmosphere of his boyhood there.

His schooling was brief and of a desultory kind. It ended one day in
1847, when his father died and it became necessary that each one should
help somewhat in the domestic crisis. His brother Orion, ten years his
senior, was already a printer by trade. Pamela, his sister; also
considerably older, had acquired music, and now took a few pupils.
The little boy Sam, at twelve, was apprenticed to a printer named Ament.
His wages consisted of his board and clothes--"more board than clothes,"
as he once remarked to the writer.

He remained with Ament until his brother Orion bought out a small paper
in Hannibal in 1850. The paper, in time, was moved into a part of the
Clemens home, and the two brothers ran it, the younger setting most of
the type. A still younger brother, Henry, entered the office as an
apprentice. The Hannibal journal was no great paper from the beginning,
and it did not improve with time. Still, it managed to survive--country
papers nearly always manage to survive--year after year, bringing in some
sort of return. It was on this paper that young Sam Clemens began his
writings--burlesque, as a rule, of local characters and conditions
--usually published in his brother's absence; generally resulting in
trouble on his return. Yet they made the paper sell, and if Orion had
but realized his brother's talent he might have turned it into capital
even then.

In 1853 (he was not yet eighteen) Sam Clemens grew tired of his
limitations and pined for the wider horizon of the world. He gave out to
his family that he was going to St. Louis, but he kept on to New York,