ne, and was full of knowledge for his years. Not
that he was old in spirit or manner--he was never that, even to his
death--but he had learned a great number of things, mostly of a kind not
acquired at school.

They were not always of a pleasant kind; they were likely to be of a
kind startling to a boy, even terrifying. Once Little Sam--he was
still Little Sam, then--saw an old man shot down on the main street, at
noonday. He saw them carry him home, lay him on the bed, and spread on
his breast an open family Bible which looked as heavy as an anvil. He
though, if he could only drag that great burden away, the poor, old
dying man would not breathe so heavily. He saw a young emigrant
stabbed with a bowie-knife by a drunken comrade, and noted the spurt of
life-blood that followed; he saw two young men try to kill their uncle,
one holding him while the other snapped repeatedly an Allen revolver
which failed to go off. Then there was the drunken rowdy who proposed
to raid the "Welshman's" house one dark threatening night--he saw that,
too. A widow and her one daughter lived there, and the ruffian woke the
whole village with his coarse challenges and obscenities. Sam Clemens
and a boon companion, John Briggs, went up there to look and listen. The
man was at the gate, and the warren were invisible in the shadow of the
dark porch. The boys heard the elder woman's voice warning the man that
she had a loaded gun, and that she would kill him if he stayed where
he was. He replied with a ribald tirade, and she warned that she would
count ten-that if he remained a second longer she would fire. She began
slowly and counted up to five, with him laughing and jeering. At six he
grew silent, but he did not go. She counted on: seven--eight--nine--The
boys watching from the dark roadside felt their hearts stop. There was
a long pause, then the final count, followed a second later by a gush
of flame. The man dropped, his breast riddled. At the same instant the
thunderstorm that had been gathering broke loose. The boys fled wildly,
believing that Satan himself had arrived to claim the lost soul.

Many such instances happened in a town like that in those days. And
there were events incident to slavery. He saw a slave struck down
and killed with a piece of slag for a trifling offense. He saw an
abolitionist attacked by a mob, and they would have lynched him had not
a Methodist minister defended him on a plea that he must be crazy. He
did not r