Those early days seem to have been full of gruesome things. In "The
Innocents Abroad," the author tells how he once spent a night in his
father's office and discovered there a murdered man. This was a true
incident. The man had been stabbed that afternoon and carried into the
house to die. Sam and John Briggs had been playing truant all day and
knew nothing of the matter. Sam thought the office safer than his home,
where his mother was probably sitting up for him. He climbed in by a
window and lay down on the lounge, but did not sleep. Presently he
noticed what appeared to be an unusual shape on the floor. He tried to
turn his face to the wall and forget it, but that would not do. In agony
he watched the thing until at last a square of moonlight gradually
revealed a sight that he never forgot. In the book he says:
"I went away from there. I do not say that I went in any sort of
hurry, but I simply went--that is sufficient. I went out of the
window, and I carried the sash along with me. I did not need the
sash, but it was handier to take it than to leave it, and so I took
it. I was not scared, but I was considerable agitated."
Sam was not yet twelve, for his father was no longer living when the boy
had reached that age.
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