He did, in fact, achieve the first of his “nine narrow escapes from drowning” about this time, and was pulled out of the river one afternoon and brought home in a limp and unpromising condition.  When with mullein tea and castor-oil she had restored him to activity, she said:  “I guess there wasn’t much danger.  People born to be hanged are safe in water.”

She declared she was willing to pay somebody to take him off her hands for a part of each day and try to teach him manners.  Perhaps this is a good place to say that Jane Clemens was the original of Tom Sawyer’s “Aunt Polly,” and her portrait as presented in that book is considered perfect.  Kind-hearted, fearless, looking and acting ten years older than her age, as women did in that time, always outspoken and sometimes severe, she was regarded as a “character” by her friends, and beloved by them as, a charitable, sympathetic woman whom it was good to know.  Her sense of pity was abnormal.  She refused to kill even flies, and punished the cat for catching mice.  She, would drown the young kittens, when necessary, but warmed the water for the purpose.  On coming to Hannibal, she joined the Presbyterian Church, and her religion was of that clean-cut, strenuous kind which regards as necessary institutions hell and Satan, though she had been known to express pity for the latter for being obliged to surround himself with such poor society.  Her children she directed with considerable firmness, and all were tractable and growing in grace except Little Sam.  Even baby Henry at two was lisping the prayers that Sam would let go by default unless carefully guarded.  His sister Pamela, who was eight years older and always loved him dearly, usually supervised these spiritual exercises, and in her gentle care earned immortality as the Cousin Mary of Tom Sawyer.  He would say his prayers willingly enough when encouraged by sister Pamela, but he much preferred to sit up in bed and tell astonishing tales of the day’s adventure—­tales which made prayer seem a futile corrective and caused his listeners to wonder why the lightning was restrained so long.  They did not know they were glimpsing the first outcroppings of a genius that would one day amaze and entertain the nations.  Neighbors hearing of these things (also certain of his narrations) remonstrated with Mrs. Clemens.

“You don’t believe anything that child says, I hope.”

“Oh yes, I know his average.  I discount him ninety per cent.  The rest is pure gold.”  At another time she said:  “Sammy is a well of truth, but you can’t bring it all up in one bucket.”

This, however, is digression; the incidents may have happened somewhat later.

A certain Miss E. Horr was selected to receive the payment for taking charge of Little Sam during several hours each day, directing him mentally and morally in the mean time.  Her school was then in a log house on Main Street (later it was removed to Third Street), and was of the primitive old-fashioned kind, with pupils of all ages, ranging in advancement from the primer to the third reader, from the tables to long division, with a little geography and grammar and a good deal of spelling.  Long division and the third reader completed the curriculum in that school.  Pupils who decided to take a post-graduate course went to a Mr. Cross, who taught in a frame house on the hill facing what is now the Public Square.