was the end of a long journey; relatives gathered with fond welcome;
prospects seemed bright. Already John Quarles had opened a general store
in the little town. Florida, he said, was certain to become a city.
Salt River would be made navigable with a series of locks and dams. He
offered John Clemens a partnership in his business.

Quarles, for that time and place, was a rich man. Besides his store he
had a farm and thirty slaves. His brother-in-law's funds, or lack of
them, did not matter. The two had married sisters. That was capital
enough for his hearty nature. So, almost on the moment of arrival in the
new land, John Clemens once more found himself established in trade.

The next thing was to find a home. There were twenty-one houses in
Florida, and none of them large. The one selected by John and Jane
Clemens had two main rooms and a lean-to kitchen--a small place and
lowly--the kind of a place that so often has seen the beginning of
exalted lives. Christianity began with a babe in a manger; Shakespeare
first saw the light in a cottage at Stratford; Lincoln entered the world
by way of a leaky cabin in Kentucky, and into the narrow limits of the
Clemens home in Florida, on a bleak autumn day--November 30, 1835--there
was born one who under the name of Mark Twain would live to cheer and
comfort a tired world.

The name Mark Twain had not been thought of then, and probably no one
prophesied favorably for the new-comer, who was small and feeble, and not
over-welcome in that crowded household. They named him Samuel, after his
paternal grandfather, and added Langhorne for an old friend--a goodly
burden for so frail a wayfarer. But more appropriately they called him
"Little Sam," or "Sammy," which clung to him through the years of his
delicate childhood.