d:

If your memory extends so far back, you will recall a little sandy-
haired boy--[The color of Mark Twain's hair in early life has been
variously referred to as red, black, and brown. It was, in fact, as
stated by McMurry, "sandy" in boyhood, deepening later to that rich,
mahogany tone known as auburn.]--of nearly a quarter of a century
ago, in the printing-office at Hannibal, over the Brittingham
drugstore, mounted upon a little box at the case, pulling away at a
huge cigar or a diminutive pipe, who used to love to sing so well
the expression of the poor drunken man who was supposed to have
fallen by the wayside: "If ever I get up again, I'll stay up--if I
kin." . . . Do you recollect any of the serious conflicts that
mirth-loving brain of yours used to get you into with that
diminutive creature Wales McCormick--how you used to call upon me to
hold your cigar or pipe, whilst you went entirely through him?

This is good testimony, without doubt. When he had been with Ament
little more than a year Sam had become office favorite and chief standby.
Whatever required intelligence and care and imagination was given to Sam
Clemens. He could set type as accurately and almost as rapidly as Pet
McMurry; he could wash up the forms a good deal better than Pet; and he
could run the job-press to the tune of "Annie Laurie" or "Along the Beach
at Rockaway," without missing a stroke or losing a finger. Sometimes, at
odd moments, he would "set up" one of the popular songs or some favorite
poem like "The Blackberry Girl," and of these he sent copies printed on
cotton, even on scraps of silk, to favorite girl friends; also to Puss
Quarles, on his uncle's farm, where he seldom went now, because he was
really grown up, associating with men and doing a man's work. He had
charge of the circulation--which is to say, he carried the papers. During
the last year of the Mexican War, when a telegraph-wire found its way
across the Mississippi to Hannibal--a long sagging span, that for some
reason did not break of its own weight--he was given charge of the extras
with news from the front; and the burning importance of his mission, the
bringing of news hot from the field of battle, spurred him to endeavors
that won plaudits and success.

He became a sort of subeditor. When the forms of the paper were ready to
close and Ament was needed to supply more matter, it was Sam who was
delegated to f