Many such instances happened in a town like that in those days.  And there were events incident to slavery.  He saw a slave struck down and killed with a piece of slag for a trifling offense.  He saw an abolitionist attacked by a mob, and they would have lynched him had not a Methodist minister defended him on a plea that he must be crazy.  He did not remember, in later years, that he had ever seen a slave auction, but he added: 

“I am suspicious that it is because the thing was a commonplace spectacle, and not an uncommon or impressive one.  I do vividly remember seeing a dozen black men and women chained together lying in a group on the pavement, waiting shipment to a Southern slave-market.  They had the saddest faces I ever saw.”

It is not surprising that a boy would gather a store of human knowledge amid such happenings as these.  They were wild, disturbing things.  They got into his dreams and made him fearful when he woke in the middle of the night.  He did not then regard them as an education.  In some vague way he set them down as warnings, or punishments, designed to give him a taste for a better life.  He felt that it was his own conscience that made these things torture him.  That was his mother’s idea, and he had a high respect for her moral opinions, also for her courage.  Among other things, he had seen her one day defy a vicious devil of a Corsican—­a common terror in the town-who was chasing his grown daughter with a heavy rope in his hand, declaring he would wear it out on her.  Cautious citizens got out of her way, but Jane Clemens opened her door wide to the refugee, and then, instead of rushing in and closing it, spread her arms across it, barring the way.  The man swore and threatened her with the rope, but she did not flinch or show any sign of fear.  She stood there and shamed him and derided him and defied him until he gave up the rope and slunk off, crestfallen and conquered.  Any one who could do that must have a perfect conscience, Sam thought.  In the fearsome darkness he would say his prayers, especially when a thunderstorm was coming, and vow to begin a better life in the morning.  He detested Sunday-school as much as day-school, and once Orion, who was moral and religious, had threatened to drag him there by the collar; but as the thunder got louder Sam decided that he loved Sunday-school and would go the next Sunday without being invited.

Fortunately there were pleasanter things than these.  There were picnics sometimes, and ferry-boat excursions.  Once there was a great Fourth-of-July celebration at which it was said a real Revolutionary soldier was to be present.  Some one had discovered him living alone seven or eight miles in the country.  But this feature proved a disappointment; for when the day came and he was triumphantly brought in he turned out to be a Hessian, and was allowed to walk home.

The hills and woods around Hannibal where, with his playmates, he roamed almost at will were never disappointing.  There was the cave with its marvels; there was Bear Creek, where, after repeated accidents, he had learned to swim.  It had cost him heavily to learn to swim.  He had seen two playmates drown; also, time and again he had, himself, been dragged ashore more dead than alive, once by a slave-girl, another time by a slaveman—­Neal Champ, of the Pavey Hotel.  In the end he had conquered; he could swim better than any boy in town of his age.