“The schoolhouse was a 2-story frame building with a gallery across the entire front,” she resumed.  “After a year together in that school Sam and I went to the school taught by Mrs. Horr.  It was then he used to write notes to me and bring apples to school and put them on my desk.  And once, as a punishment for some prank, he had to sit with the girls and occupied a vacant seat by me.  He didn’t seem to mind the penalty at all,” Mrs. Frazer added with another laugh, “so I don’t know whether it was effective as a punishment or not.

“We hadn’t reached the dancing age then, but we went to many ’play parties’ together and romped through ‘Going to Jerusalem,’ ’King William was King George’s Son’ and ‘Green Grow the Rushes—­O.’

“Judge Clemens, Sam’s father, died and left the family in straitened circumstances, and Sam’s schooling ended there.  He began work in the printing office to help out, and when he was 17 or 18 he left Hannibal to go to work in St. Louis.  He never returned to live, but he visited here often in the years that followed.”

Mrs. Frazer’s own story formed the next chapter of her narrative.  A young physician, Doctor Frazer of Madisonville, which was a little inland village in Ralls County, adjoining, came often to Hannibal and courted pretty Laura Hawkins.  When she was 20 they were married and went to live in the new house Doctor Frazer had built for his bride at Madisonville.  There they reared two sons until they required better school facilities, when they went to Rensselaer, also in Ralls County, but nearer Hannibal.  They lived in Rensselaer until Doctor Frazer’s death, when the mother and younger son moved to the General Canby farm.  This son’s marriage led to Mrs. Frazer’s return to Hannibal twenty-two years ago.  She was offered the position of matron at the Home for the Friendless, and for twenty-two years she has managed it.  The boys and girls who have gone out from it in nearly every case have become useful men and women as a result of her guidance at the critical period of their life, for the girls remain in the home until they are 14 and the boys until they are 12.  The old mansion which houses the score or more of children always there is to be abandoned in the spring for a new and modern building, a gift from a wealthy citizen to the private charity which has conducted the institution so long without aid from city, county or state.

It was given to Mrs. Frazer and Mark Twain to renew their youthful friendship after a lapse of half a century.  In 1908 Mrs. Frazer made a trip East, accepting an invitation to visit Albert Bigelow Paine at Redding, Conn.  Mr. Paine had visited Hannibal two years before in a search for material for his biography of Mark Twain and had made Mrs. Frazer’s acquaintance then.  He mentioned the approaching visit to the great humorist and Mark Twain promptly sat down and wrote Mrs. Frazer that she must be a guest also at Stormfield, his Redding estate.  So it came about that the one-time little Laura Hawkins found herself lifting the knocker at the beautiful country home of Mark Twain in the Connecticut hills.