Dream of being a knight-errant in armor in the Middle Ages.  Have the notions and habits, though, of the present day mixed with the necessities of that.  No pockets in the armor.  No way to manage certain requirements of nature.  Can’t scratch.  Cold in the head and can’t blow.  Can’t get a handkerchief; can’t use iron sleeve; iron gets red-hot in the sun; leaks in the rain; gets white with frost and freezes me solid in winter; makes disagreeable clatter when I enter church.  Can’t dress or undress myself.  Always getting struck by lightning.  Fall down and can’t get up.

Twenty-one years later, discussing the genesis of the story, he said: 

“As I read those quaint and curious old legends I suppose I naturally contrasted those days with ours, and it made me curious to fancy what might be the picturesque result if we could dump the nineteenth century down into the sixth century and observe the consequences.”

The reading tour continued during the first two months of the new year and carried them as far west as Chicago.  They read in Hannibal and Keokuk, and Clemens spent a day in the latter place with his mother, now living with Orion, brisk and active for her years and with her old-time force of character.  Mark Twain, arranging for her Keokuk residence, had written: 

Ma wants to board with you, and pay her board.  She will pay you $20 a month (she wouldn’t pay a cent more in heaven; she is obstinate on this point), and as long as she remains with you and is content I will add $25 a month to the sum Perkins already sends you.

Jane Clemens attended the Keokuk reading, and later, at home, when her children asked her if she could still dance, she rose, and at eighty-one tripped as lightly as a girl.  It was the last time that Mark Twain ever saw his mother in the health and vigor which had been always so much a part of her personality.

Clemens saw another relative on that trip; in St. Louis, James Lampton, the original of Colonel Sellers, called.

He was become old and white-headed, but he entered to me in the same old breezy way of his earlier life, and he was all there, yet—­not a detail wanting:  the happy light in his eye, the abounding hope in his heart, the persuasive tongue, the miracle-breeding imagination—­they were all there; and before I could turn around he was polishing up his Aladdin’s lamp and flashing the secret riches of the world before me.  I said to myself:  “I did not overdraw him by a shade, I set him down as he was; and he is the same man to-day.  Cable will recognize him.”

Clemens opened the door into Cable’s room and allowed the golden dream-talk to float in.  It was of a “small venture” which the caller had undertaken through his son.

“Only a little thing—­a, mere trifle—­a bagatelle.  I suppose there’s a couple of millions in it, possibly three, but not more, I think; still, for a boy, you know——­”