Day Six

Inside of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum 3

マーク・トウェイン少年期ミュージアムの内部　その３

[Note] If this page is too small to be readable, please enlarge it to 120-125%. Thank you.

The museum consists of two parts: the main building of the museum and Mark Twain's boyhood home. The inside of the main building was fairly dark. And there were tons of description boards. But when we moved to Mark Twain's boyhood home, we had enough sunlight coming through the windows. I took some photos there. What you have below is part of them. I hope they would help you have some idea on what this boyhood home really is.

This is the dining room. Do you see a bottle on the near side of the dining table just next to the description plate? That is a replica of the bottle for the very bitter liquid medicine of a kind that Aunt Polly formulated as a pain killer. Tom didn't want to take any of it, so he threw it away into a small crack on the wooden floor everytime his aunt gave it to him.

Then one day Peter, the yellow house cat, came to Tom and "begged for a taste of it" while Tom was discarding it as usual. Tom asked Peter if he really wanted it. And Peter made it sure. So Tom "pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-Killer." Peter instantly got crazy, ran all over the room bumping tons of things, and finally got out of the room through an open window with all flower pots taken away with him!

Now, this is a good episode for letting us know how many suspicious remedies had been spread among people in the Wild West. Still people had to use such things because in any easy way were people not able to access any reliable form of modern medical treatment.

The beautiful sunlight is coming into the kitchen. The description board in the back reads: "There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, a tragedy." This was the motto of Mark Twain as a storyteller.

Mark Twain as boyhood stands by the window. He is probably getting out of the window to join his friends. This reminds everyone of one scene in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, where Tom sneaked out of the window at midnight, moved on the roof on his four feet mimicking a cat's cry, jumped onto the ground, and joined Huck Finn. They went to the town graveyard, and witnessed Injun Joe's murder of Doc Robinson! Click on the photo for enlargement.

This is a painting of Anna Laura Hawkins, who was the first girlfriend of young Mark Twain. She became the model of Becky Thatcher, the first girlfriend of Tom Sawyer when Mark Twain later wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Laura Hawkins was born in Kentucky, and moved to Hannibal at the age of three. The Hawkins family lived on Hill Street, just across from the home of Sam Clemens a.k.a. Mark Twain. Laura Hawkins and Sam became playmates, classmates, and eventually sweathearts.

The painting of Laua Hawkins at the age of 70 displayed on the wall of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home. Anna Laura Hawkins got married with Dr. James W. Frazer in 1858 and became Laua Hawkins Frazer. By this marriage she moved to Rensselaer, Missouri, a town eight miles west of Hannibal. In 1875 Dr. James Frazer died and Laura moved back to Hannibal and lived with one of his sons. She became the matron of an orphanage in 1896 and dedicated her later life to this institution until 1926.

Laura kept in life-long touch with Sam Clemens a.k.a. Mark Twain. She kept involved in events and ceremonies relating to Mark Twain. Laura even visited Mark Twain's home in Redding, Connecticut, in 1908. Her friendship with Mark Twain continued until his death in 1910. Laura closed her own life in Hannibal in 1928. "Becky Thatcher," the name of her character in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, was inscribed on her tombstone along with Laura Hawkins Frazer, her real name. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Day Six continues to the nexts page.

六日目は次のページに続きます。