of that time, and have staged
him in books under his own name and as "Jim," and carted him all
around--to Hannibal, down the Mississippi on a raft, and even across the
Desert of Sahara in a balloon--and he has endured it all with the
patience and friendliness and loyalty which were his birthright. It was
on the farm that I got my strong liking for his race and my appreciation
of certain of its fine qualities. This feeling and this estimate have
stood the test of sixty years and more and have suffered no impairment.
The black face is as welcome to me now as it was then.

In my schoolboy days I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware that
there was anything wrong about it. No one arraigned it in my hearing;
the local papers said nothing against it; the local pulpit taught us
that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and that the doubter
need only look in the Bible if he wished to settle his mind--and then
the texts were read aloud to us to make the matter sure; if the slaves
themselves had an aversion to slavery they were wise and said nothing.
In Hannibal we seldom saw a slave misused; on the farm, never.

There was, however, one small incident of my boyhood days which touched
this matter, and it must have meant a good deal to me or it would not
have stayed in my memory, clear and sharp, vivid and shadowless, all
these slow-drifting years. We had a little slave boy whom we had hired
from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of
Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends,
half-way across the American continent, and sold. He was a cheery
spirit, innocent and gentle, and the noisiest creature that ever was,
perhaps. All day long he was singing, whistling, yelling, whooping,
laughing--it was maddening, devastating, unendurable. At last, one day,
I lost all my temper, and went raging to my mother, and said Sandy had
been singing for an hour without a single break, and I couldn't stand
it, and _wouldn't_ she please shut him up. The tears came into her eyes,
and her lip trembled, and she said something like this--

"Poor thing, when he sings, it shows that he is not remembering, and
that comforts me; but when he is still, I am afraid he is thinking, and
I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing, I
must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older, you would
understand me; then that friendless child's noise would make you glad."

It