“Your hens won’t lay, eh?  Tell your maw to feed ’em parched corn and drive ’em uphill,” and this was always a splendid stroke of humor to his small hearers.

Also, he knew how to mimic with his empty hands the peculiar patting and tossing of a pone of corn-bread before placing it in the oven.  He would make the most fearful threats to his own children, for disobedience, but never executed any of them.  When they were out fishing and returned late he would say: 

“You—­if I have to hunt you again after dark, I will make you smell like a burnt horn!”

Nothing could exceed the ferocity of this threat, and all the children, with delightful terror and curiosity, wondered what would happen—­if it ever did happen—­that would result in giving a child that peculiar savor.  Altogether it was a curious early childhood that Little Sam had—­at least it seems so to us now.  Doubtless it was commonplace enough for that time and locality.

V

THE WAY OF FORTUNE

Perhaps John Quarles’s jocular, happy-go-lucky nature and general conduct did not altogether harmonize with John Clemens’s more taciturn business methods.  Notwithstanding the fact that he was a builder of dreams, Clemens was neat and methodical, with his papers always in order.  He had a hearty dislike for anything resembling frivolity and confusion, which very likely were the chief features of John Quarles’s storekeeping.  At all events, they dissolved partnership at the end of two or three years, and Clemens opened business for himself across the street.  He also practised law whenever there were cases, and was elected justice of the peace, acquiring the permanent title of “Judge.”  He needed some one to assist in the store, and took in Orion, who was by this time twelve or thirteen years old; but, besides his youth, Orion—­all his days a visionary—­was a studious, pensive lad with no taste for commerce.  Then a partnership was formed with a man who developed neither capital nor business ability, and proved a disaster in the end.  The modest tide of success which had come with John Clemens’s establishment at Florida had begun to wane.  Another boy, Henry, born in July, 1838, added one more responsibility to his burdens.

There still remained a promise of better things.  There seemed at least a good prospect that the scheme for making Salt River navigable was likely to become operative.  With even small boats (bateaux) running as high as the lower branch of the South Fork, Florida would become an emporium of trade, and merchants and property-owners of that village would reap a harvest.  An act of the Legislature was passed incorporating the navigation company, with Judge Clemens as its president.  Congress was petitioned to aid this work of internal improvement.  So confident was the company of success that the hamlet was thrown into a fever of excitement by the establishment of a boatyard and, the actual construction of a bateau; but a Democratic Congress turned its back on the proposed improvement.  No boat bigger than a skiff ever ascended Salt River, though there was a wild report, evidently a hoax, that a party of picnickers had seen one night a ghostly steamer, loaded and manned, puffing up the stream.  An old Scotchman, Hugh Robinson, when he heard of it, said: