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He was lodging in a mechanics' cheap boarding-house in Duane Street,
and we may imagine the bareness of his room, the feeble poverty of
his lamp.
"
Tell Ma my promises are faithfully kept." It was the day when he
had left Hannibal. His mother, Jane Clemens, a resolute, wiry woman
of forty-nine, had put together his few belongings. Then, holding
up a little Testament:
"
I want you to take hold of the end of this, Sam," she said, "and
make me a promise. I want you to repeat after me these words:
I do solemnly swear that I will not throw a card, or drink a drop
'
of liquor while I am gone.'"
It was this oath, repeated after her, that he was keeping
faithfully. The Will Bowen mentioned is a former playmate, one of
Tom Sawyer's outlaw band. He had gone on the river to learn
piloting with an elder brother, the "Captain." What the bad news
was is no longer remembered, but it could not have been very
serious, for the Bowen boys remained on the river for many years.
"
Ella" was Samuel Clemens's cousin and one-time sweetheart, Ella
Creel. "Jim" was Jim Wolfe, an apprentice in Orion's office, and
the hero of an adventure which long after Mark Twain wrote under the
title of, "Jim Wolfe and the Cats."
There is scarcely a hint of the future Mark Twain in this early
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