Part 17 (1/2)

Then there was the river, the broad Mississippi.

”It was the river that meant more to him than all the rest. Its charm was permanent. It was the path of adventure, the gateway to the world.

The river with its islands, its great slow moving rafts, its marvelous steamboats that were like fairyland, and its stately current going to the sea. How it held him! He would sit by it for hours and dream. He would venture out on it in a surrept.i.tiously borrowed boat, when he was barely strong enough to lift an oar out of the water.”

We are told that when Sam Clemens was only nine years of age he managed to board one of the river steamers. He hid under a boat on the upper deck. After the steamer started he sat watching the sh.o.r.e slip past. Then came a heavy rain and a wet, s.h.i.+vering, little boy was found by one of the crew. At the next stop he was put ash.o.r.e and relatives, who lived there, took him home, and so ended his first journey upon the river.

Years later he became a pilot on a Mississippi river boat and made many trips from New Orleans up the river and back. Such a trip required thirty-five days.

While acting as a river pilot, Samuel Clemens heard the name, ”Mark Twain.” An old riverman had used it as an a.s.sumed name, taking the term from the cry of the boatmen as they tested the depth of the river. Samuel Clemens had an intense love of joking and fun, so when he first began to write, he suddenly thought it would be amusing to sign some name other than his own. Therefore, he signed his articles ”Mark Twain.” This name clung to him, and many persons forgot or never knew that his real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

Accordingly, in the river of his boyhood love, he found the name by which the world knows today one of the foremost American authors. Yet, in those early days in Hannibal, he had no idea of writing. Indeed, his days were so busy it is not likely he thought much of the future at all. He was the leader of a band of boys that played Bandit, Pirate and Indian. Sam Clemens was always chief. He led the way to the caves whose chambers reached far back under the cliffs and even, perhaps, under the river itself.

When he was a man, Mr. Clemens wrote two books telling of these early days in Hannibal. ”The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and ”Huckleberry Finn.” ”Tom Sawyer” was himself, and the incidents in the book all had their foundation in the days of his boyhood. The cave, as you may know, plays an important part in the latter story. In ”Tom Sawyer,”

Indian Joe dies in the cave. There was an Indian Joe in Hannibal and while he did not die in the cave, he was lost there for days and was living on bats when found. This incident made a strong impression on young Samuel Clemens and he never forgot it. It was in the Clemen's house that Tom gave the cat pain-killer; there, too, that he induced a crowd of boys to white-wash the fence all one Sat.u.r.day morning. It was at the Clemens' home, too, that a small boy in his night clothes came tumbling down from an over-hung trellis upon the merry crowd cooling taffy in the snow.

Such happenings were part of young Sam's life. He lived the out-of-doors and, when grown to manhood, he could recall all the sports and pleasures of those days. He cherished the memory of his boyhood friends and so wrote of ”Huck” Finn, making him like Tom Blakens.h.i.+p, one of the riotous, freedom-loving members of Sam Clemens'

band.

These boys crowded many adventures into a few years. Hannibal was the scene of stormy times. Black slaves were sold in the open market.

Desperadoes roamed the streets. Lawlessness was everywhere and it was not strange that the residents of Hannibal did not think Sam Clemens amounted to much and prophesied that he would never grow up to follow a respectable calling.

Yet when his father died, Sam went to work in his brother's printing shop. Printed matter began to interest him. Then one day, in the dusty street of Hannibal, this half-grown, lively boy picked up a sc.r.a.p of paper. A leaf torn from a history! Where did it come from? No one knows.

Books were not plentiful then in that little town. Yet, on this paper the fun-loving Sam Clemens read for the first time of Joan of Arc, the wondrous maid who led the French to victory. He had never heard of her. He had read no history, nor had he had an active interest in books. Studying there in the village street, reading the few lines of the marvelous story of the Maid of Orleans, there was created in him an interest that went with him throughout life.

He was by turn a printer, a pilot, a pioneer, a soldier, a miner, a newspaper reporter, a lecturer, but at last he found his true place.

He became a writer and wrote books that continue to delight thousands upon thousands of readers. His life went into his books. Just as he drew upon his early days in Hannibal for the material in ”Huckleberry Finn” and The ”Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” so he used all of his experiences. He wrote ”Life Upon The Mississippi,” a record of his days as a pilot; ”Roughing It,” a story of a mining camp; ”The Jumping Frog,” a western story that made his fame throughout the United States; ”Innocents Abroad,” a tale of his experiences abroad, and ”The Life Of Joan Of Arc,” a beautiful story that was always the author's favorite.

During the last years of his life, Mark Twain pa.s.sed the winters in Bermuda and there he was, as ever, the friend of children. There was a pretty, little girl at his hotel named Margaret, who was twelve years old. She and Mr. Clemens went everywhere together and, on one excursion, he found a beautiful, little sh.e.l.l. The two halves came apart in his hand. He gave one of them to Margaret and said, ”Now dear, sometime or other in the future, I shall run across you somewhere, and it may turn out that it is not you at all, but will be some girl that only resembles you. I shall be saying to myself, 'I know that this is Margaret by the look of her, but I don't know for sure whether this is my Margaret or somebody else's;' but, no matter, I can soon find out, for I shall take my half sh.e.l.l out of my packet and say, 'I think you are my Margaret, but I am not certain; if you are my Margaret you can produce the other half of the sh.e.l.l.'”

After that Margaret played the new game often and she tried to catch him without his half of the sh.e.l.l, but Mark Twain writes, ”I always defeated that game, wherefore, she came to recognize, at last, that I was not only old, but very smart.”

Mark Twain had lived 74 years when the close of his life here came April 20, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut. Once he wrote in one of his humorous moments, ”Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” When his life here ended, tributes were received from every land. He was mourned as few men have ever been. Why? Because he knew people; he loved them and interested them. Because, in his most famous days he still remained at heart the boy who played beside the river and loved the surging, restless flow of the mighty current.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EX-PRESIDENT WARREN G. HARDING]

WARREN G. HARDING

On the Sat.u.r.day morning after election day in November, 1920, a crowd of people stood waiting in the railway station in Marion, Ohio. They were there to say goodbye to President-elect and Mrs. Harding, who were starting on a vacation journey; for, after the stirring times of the long campaign, they needed rest.

When the conductor of the train asked Mr. Harding if he should make fast time, the President-elect replied: ”Go slow; I have been going too fast for the past two weeks.”

It was not at all strange that so many should meet to say a fond farewell, for nearly everyone in Marion seems to like Mr. Harding. As we asked his fellow townsmen the reason for this affection, we were surprised that nearly all gave the same reason. They said: ”We like him because he is genuine, frank, fair.” ”He is generous, considerate, and knows how to be a good neighbor.” Indeed this spirit of neighborliness was shown clearly during the campaign preceding his election, when Mr. Harding decided to remain in Marion and meet his friends on the front porch of his own home. Because of this decision the Republican campaign of 1920 will long be known as ”The Front Porch Campaign.” To this front porch came many thousand men and women from every section of our broad land to meet Mr. and Mrs. Harding.

Had you been one of these pilgrims, you would have met a man over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a deep chest. Though he is not bald, his hair is exceptionally gray for a man of his age. He has the rare faculty of making you comfortable in his presence. While, with his deep blue eyes, he looks you squarely in the face as he talks to you, his look is so kindly that you feel at ease.