The Keokuk episode in Mark Twain’s life was neither very long nor very actively important.  It extended over a period of less than two years —­two vital years, no doubt, if all the bearings could be known—­but they were not years of startling occurrence.

Yet he made at least one beginning there:  at a printers’ banquet he delivered his first after-dinner speech; a hilarious speech—­its humor of a primitive kind.  Whatever its shortcomings, it delighted his audience, and raised him many points in the public regard.  He had entered a field of entertainment in which he would one day have no rival.  They impressed him into a debating society after that, and there was generally a stir of attention when Sam Clemens was about to take the floor.

Orion Clemens records how his brother undertook to teach the German apprentice music.

“There was an old guitar in the office and Sam taught Fritz a song beginning: 

    “Grasshopper sitting on a sweet-potato vine,
    Turkey came along and yanked him from behind.”

The main point in the lesson was in giving to the word “yanked” the proper expression and emphasis, accompanied by a sweep of the fingers across the strings.  With serious face and deep earnestness Fritz in his broken English would attempt these lines, while his teacher would bend over and hold his sides with laughter at each ridiculous effort.  Without intending it, Fritz had his revenge.  One day his tormentor’s hand was caught in the press when the German boy was turning the wheel.  Sam called to him to stop, but the boy’s mind was slow to grasp the situation.  The hand was badly wounded, though no bones were broken.  In due time it recovered, its power and dexterity, but the trace of the scars remained.

Orion’s printing-office was not a prosperous one; he had not the gift of prosperity in any form.  When he found it difficult to pay his brother’s wages, he took him into partnership, which meant that Sam got no wages at all, barely a living, for the office could not keep its head above water.

The junior partner was not disturbed, however.  He cared little for money in those days, beyond his actual needs, and these were modest enough.  His mother, now with Pamela, was amply provided for.  Orion himself tells how his business dwindled away.  He printed a Keokuk directory, but it did not pay largely.  He was always too eager for the work; too low in his bid for it.  Samuel Clemens in this directory is set down as “an antiquarian” a joke, of course, though the point of it is now lost.

Only two of his Keokuk letters have been preserved.  The first indicates the general disorder of the office and a growing dissatisfaction.  It is addressed to his mother and sister and bears date of June 10, 1856.