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point. If we may judge by those that have survived, her prophecy of
literary distinction for him was hardly warranted by anything she
could have known of his past performance. These letters of his
youth have a value to-day only because they were written by the man
who later was to become Mark Twain. The squibs and skits which he
sometimes contributed to the New Orleans papers were bright,
perhaps, and pleasing to his pilot associates, but they were without
literary value. He was twenty-five years old. More than one author
has achieved reputation at that age. Mark Twain was of slower
growth; at that age he had not even developed a definite literary
ambition: Whatever the basis of Madame Caprell's prophecy, we must
admit that she was a good guesser on several matters, "a right smart
little woman," as Clemens himself phrased it.
She overlooked one item, however: the proximity of the Civil War.
Perhaps it was too close at hand for second sight. A little more
than two months after the Caprell letter was written Fort Sumter was
fired upon. Mask Twain had made his last trip as a pilot up the
river to St. Louis--the nation was plunged into a four years'
conflict.
There are no letters of this immediate period. Young Clemens went
to Hannibal, and enlisting in a private company, composed mainly of
old schoolmates, went soldiering for two rainy, inglorious weeks,
by the end of which he had had enough of war, and furthermore had
discovered that he was more of a Union abolitionist than a
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