couple of years. Before the Civil War broke out, both
became St. Louis and New Orleans pilots. Both are dead, long ago.

[Sidenote: (1845.)]

[_Dictated March 16, 1906._] We will return to those schoolchildren of
sixty years ago. I recall Mary Miller. She was not my first sweetheart,
but I think she was the first one that furnished me a broken heart. I
fell in love with her when she was eighteen and I was nine, but she
scorned me, and I recognized that this was a cold world. I had not
noticed that temperature before. I believe I was as miserable as even a
grown man could be. But I think that this sorrow did not remain with me
long. As I remember it, I soon transferred my worship to Artimisia
Briggs, who was a year older than Mary Miller. When I revealed my
passion to her she did not scoff at it. She did not make fun of it. She
was very kind and gentle about it. But she was also firm, and said she
did not want to be pestered by children.

And there was Mary Lacy. She was a schoolmate. But she also was out of
my class because of her advanced age. She was pretty wild and determined
and independent. But she married, and at once settled down and became in
all ways a model matron and was as highly respected as any matron in the
town. Four years ago she was still living, and had been married fifty
years.

Jimmie McDaniel was another schoolmate. His age and mine about tallied.
His father kept the candy-shop and he was the most envied little chap in
the town--after Tom Blankenship ("Huck Finn")--for although we never saw
him eating candy, we supposed that it was, nevertheless, his ordinary
diet. He pretended that he never ate it, and didn't care for it because
there was nothing forbidden about it--there was plenty of it and he
could have as much of it as he wanted. He was the first human being to
whom I ever told a humorous story, so far as I can remember. This was
about Jim Wolfe and the cats; and I gave him that tale the morning after
that memorable episode. I thought he would laugh his teeth out. I had
never been so proud and happy before, and have seldom been so proud and
happy since. I saw him four years ago when I was out there. He wore a
beard, gray and venerable, that came half-way down to his knees, and yet
it was not difficult for me to recognize him. He had been married
fifty-four years. He had many children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, and also even posterity, they all said--
thousands--yet the boy