who gave the Hawkinses a grand welcome to the new home, was also real.  In life he was James Lampton, cousin to Mrs. Clemens, a gentle and radiant merchant of dreams, who believed himself heir to an English earldom and was always on the verge of colossal fortune.  With others of the Lampton kin, he was already settled in Missouri and had written back glowing accounts; though perhaps not more glowing than those which had come from another relative, John Quarles, brother-in-law to Mrs. Clemens, a jovial, whole-hearted optimist, well-loved by all who knew him.

It was a June evening when the Clemens family, with the barouche and the two outriders, finally arrived in Florida, and the place, no doubt, seemed attractive enough then, however it may have appeared later.  It was the end of a long journey; relatives gathered with fond welcome; prospects seemed bright.  Already John Quarles had opened a general store in the little town.  Florida, he said, was certain to become a city.  Salt River would be made navigable with a series of locks and dams.  He offered John Clemens a partnership in his business.

Quarles, for that time and place, was a rich man.  Besides his store he had a farm and thirty slaves.  His brother-in-law’s funds, or lack of them, did not matter.  The two had married sisters.  That was capital enough for his hearty nature.  So, almost on the moment of arrival in the new land, John Clemens once more found himself established in trade.

The next thing was to find a home.  There were twenty-one houses in Florida, and none of them large.  The one selected by John and Jane Clemens had two main rooms and a lean-to kitchen—­a small place and lowly—­the kind of a place that so often has seen the beginning of exalted lives.  Christianity began with a babe in a manger; Shakespeare first saw the light in a cottage at Stratford; Lincoln entered the world by way of a leaky cabin in Kentucky, and into the narrow limits of the Clemens home in Florida, on a bleak autumn day—­November 30, 1835—­there was born one who under the name of Mark Twain would live to cheer and comfort a tired world.

The name Mark Twain had not been thought of then, and probably no one prophesied favorably for the new-comer, who was small and feeble, and not over-welcome in that crowded household.  They named him Samuel, after his paternal grandfather, and added Langhorne for an old friend—­a goodly burden for so frail a wayfarer.  But more appropriately they called him “Little Sam,” or “Sammy,” which clung to him through the years of his delicate childhood.

It seems a curious childhood, as we think of it now.  Missouri was a slave State—­Little Sam’s companions were as often black as white.  All the children of that time and locality had negroes for playmates, and were cared for by them.  They were fond of their black companions and would have felt lost without them.  The negro children knew all the best ways of doing things—­how to work charms and spells, the best way to cure warts and heal stone-bruises, and to make it rain, and to find lost money.  They knew what signs meant, and dreams, and how to keep off hoodoo; and all negroes, old and young, knew any number of weird tales.