第14章

I got your letter at Memphis as I went down.That is the best place to write me at.The post office here is always out of my route, somehow or other.Remember the direction: "S.L.C., Steamer Pennsylvania Care Duval & Algeo, Wharfboat, Memphis." I cannot correspond with a paper, because when one is learning the river, he is not allowed to do or think about anything else.

I am glad to see you in such high spirits about the land, and I hope you will remain so, if you never get richer.I seldom venture to think about our landed wealth, for "hope deferred maketh the heart sick."I did intend to answer your letter, but I am too lazy and too sleepy now.

We have had a rough time during the last 24 hours working through the ice between Cairo and Saint Louis, and I have had but little rest.

I got here too late to see the funeral of the 10 victims by the burning of the Pacific hotel in 7th street.Ma says there were 10 hearses, with the fire companies (their engines in mourning--firemen in uniform,) the various benevolent societies in uniform and mourning, and a multitude of citizens and strangers, forming, altogether, a procession of 30,000persons! One steam fire engine was drawn by four white horses, with crape festoons on their heads.

Well I am--just--about--asleep--

Your brother SAM.

Among other things, we gather from this letter that Orion Clemens had faith in his brother as a newspaper correspondent, though the two contributions from Cincinnati, already mentioned, were not promising.Furthermore, we get an intimation of Orion's unfailing confidence in the future of the "land"--that is to say, the great tract of land in Eastern Tennessee which, in an earlier day, his father had bought as a heritage for his children.It is the same Tennessee land that had "millions in it" for Colonel Sellers--the land that would become, as Orion Clemens long afterward phrased it, "the worry of three generations."The Doctor Kane of this letter is, of course, Dr.Elisha Kent Kane, the American Arctic explorer.Any book of exploration always appealed to Mark Twain, and in those days Kane was a favorite.

The paragraph concerning Henry, and his employment on the Pennsylvania, begins the story of a tragedy.The story has been fully told elsewhere,--[Mark Twain: A Biography, by same author.]--and need only be sketched briefly here.Henry, a gentle, faithful boy, shared with his brother the enmity of the pilot Brown.Some two months following the date of the foregoing letter, on a down trip of the Pennsylvania, an unprovoked attack made by Brown upon the boy brought his brother Sam to the rescue.Brown received a good pummeling at the hands of the future humorist, who, though upheld by the captain, decided to quit the Pennsylvania at New Orleans and to come up the river by another boat.The Brown episode has no special bearing on the main tragedy, though now in retrospect it seems closely related to it.Samuel Clemens, coming up the river on the A.T.Lacey, two days behind the Pennsylvania, heard a voice shout as they approached the Greenville, Mississippi, landing:

"The Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis, at Ship Island!

One hundred and fifty lives lost!"

It was a true report.At six o'clock of a warm, mid-June morning, while loading wood, sixty miles below Memphis, the Pennsylvania's boilers had exploded with fearful results.Henry Clemens was among the injured.He was still alive when his brother reached Memphis on the Lacey, but died a few days later.Samuel Clemens had idolized the boy, and regarded himself responsible for his death.The letter that follows shows that he was overwrought by the scenes about him and the strain of watching, yet the anguish of it is none the less real.

To Mrs.Onion Clemens:

MEMPHIS, TENN., Friday, June 18th, 1858.

DEAR SISTER MOLLIE,--Long before this reaches you, my poor Henry my darling, my pride, my glory, my all, will have finished his blameless career, and the light of my life will have gone out in utter darkness.

(O, God! this is hard to bear.Hardened, hopeless,--aye, lost--lost--lost and ruined sinner as I am--I, even I, have humbled myself to the ground and prayed as never man prayed before, that the great God might let this cup pass from me--that he would strike me to the earth, but spare my brother--that he would pour out the fulness of his just wrath upon my wicked head, but have mercy, mercy, mercy upon that unoffending boy.The horrors of three days have swept over me--they have blasted my youth and left me an old man before my time.Mollie, there are gray hairs in my head tonight.For forty-eight hours I labored at the bedside of my poor burned and bruised, but uncomplaining brother, and then the star of my hope went out and left me in the gloom of despair.Men take me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me "lucky" because I was not on the Pennsylvania when she blew up! May God forgive them, for they know not what they say.

Mollie you do not understand why I was not on that boat--I will tell you.

I left Saint Louis on her, but on the way down, Mr.Brown, the pilot that was killed by the explosion (poor fellow,) quarreled with Henry without cause, while I was steering.Henry started out of the pilot-house--Brown jumped up and collared him--turned him half way around and struck him in the face!--and him nearly six feet high--struck my little brother.I was wild from that moment.I left the boat to steer herself, and avenged the insult--and the Captain said I was right--that he would discharge Brown in N.Orleans if he could get another pilot, and would do it in St.

Louis, anyhow.Of course both of us could not return to St.Louis on the same boat--no pilot could be found, and the Captain sent me to the A.T.

Lacey, with orders to her Captain to bring me to Saint Louis.Had another pilot been found, poor Brown would have been the "lucky" man.