“I was walking backward,” he said, “not seeing where I stepped.”

In desperation he broke away and made a trip to Tennessee to see if something could not be realized on the land, leaving his brother Sam in charge of the office.  It was a journey without financial results; yet it bore fruit, for it marked the beginning of Mark Twain’s literary career.

Sam, in his brother’s absence, concluded to edit the paper in a way that would liven up the circulation.  He had never done any writing—­not for print—­but he had the courage of his inclinations.  His local items were of a kind known as “spicy”; his personals brought prompt demand for satisfaction.  The editor of a rival paper had been in love, and was said to have gone to the river one night to drown himself.  Sam gave a picturesque account of this, with all the names connected with the affair.  Then he took a couple of big wooden block letters, turned them upside down, and engraved illustrations for it, showing the victim wading out into the river with a stick to test the depth of the water.  When this issue of the paper came out the demand for it was very large.  The press had to be kept running steadily to supply copies.  The satirized editor at first swore that he would thrash the whole journal office, then he left town and did not come back any more.  The embryo Mark Twain also wrote a poem.  It was addressed “To Mary in Hannibal,” but the title was too long to be set in one column, so he left out all the letters in Hannibal, except the first and the last, and supplied their place with a dash, with a startling result.  Such were the early flickerings of a smoldering genius.  Orion returned, remonstrated, and apologized.  He reduced Sam to the ranks.  In later years he saw his mistake.

“I could have distanced all competitors even then,” he said, “if I had recognized Sam’s ability and let him go ahead, merely keeping him from offending worthy persons.”

Sam was subdued, but not done for.  He never would be, now.  He had got his first taste of print, and he liked it.  He promptly wrote two anecdotes which he thought humorous and sent them to the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post.  They were accepted—­without payment, of course, in those days; and when the papers containing them appeared he felt suddenly lifted to a lofty plane of literature.  This was in 1851.

“Seeing them in print was a joy which rather exceeded anything in that line I have ever experienced since,” he said, nearly sixty years later.

Yet he did not feel inspired to write anything further for the Post.  Twice during the next two years he contributed to the Journal; once something about Jim Wolfe, though it was not the story of the cats, and another burlesque on a rival editor whom he pictured as hunting snipe with a cannon, the explosion of which was said to have blown the snipe out of the country.  No contributions of this time have been preserved.  High prices have been offered for copies of the Hannibal