Tears suddenly came into his mother's eyes.
“Poor thing! He is sold away from his home. When he sings it shows maybe he is not remembering. When he's still I am afraid he is thinking, and I can't bear it.”
Yet any one in that day who advanced the idea of freeing the slaves was held in abhorrence. An abolitionist was something to despise, to stone out of the community. The children held the name in horror, as belonging to something less than human; something with claws, perhaps, and a tail.
The money received for the sale of Jennie made judge Clemens easier for a time. Business appears to have improved, too, and he was tided through another year during which he seems to have made payments on an expensive piece of real estate on Hill and Main streets. This property, acquired in November, 1839, meant the payment of some seven thousand dollars, and was a credit purchase, beyond doubt. It was well rented, but the tenants did not always pay; and presently a crisis came—a descent of creditors—and John: Clemens at forty-four found himself without business and without means. He offered everything—his cow, his household furniture, even his forks and spoons—to his creditors, who protested that he must not strip himself. They assured him that they admired his integrity so much they would aid him to resume business; but when he went to St. Louis to lay in a stock of goods he was coldly met, and the venture came to nothing.
He now made a trip to Tennessee in the hope of collecting some old debts and to raise money on the Tennessee land. He took along a negro man named Charlie, whom he probably picked up for a small sum, hoping to make something through his disposal in a better market. The trip was another failure. The man who owed him a considerable sum of money was solvent, but pleaded hard times:
It seems so very hard upon him—[John Clemens wrote home]—to pay
such a sum that I could not have the conscience to hold him to it.
.. I still have Charlie. The highest price I had offered for him
in New Orleans was $50, in Vicksburg $40. After performing the
journey to Tennessee, I expect to sell him for whatever he will
bring.
I do not know what I can commence for a business in the spring. My
brain is constantly on the rack with the study, and I can't relieve
myself of it. The future, taking its completion from the state of
my health or mind, is alternately beaming in sunshine or over-
shadowed with clouds; but mostly cloudy, as you may suppose. I want
bodily exercise—some constant and active employment, in the first
place; and, in the next place, I want to be paid for it, if
possible.
This letter is dated January 7, 1842. He returned without any financial success, and obtained employment for a time in a commission-house on the levee. The proprietor found some fault one day, and Judge Clemens walked out of the premises. On his way home he stopped in a general store, kept by a man named Sehns, to make some purchases. When he asked that these be placed on account, Selms hesitated. Judge Clemens laid down a five-dollar gold piece, the last money he possessed in the world, took the goods, and never entered the place again.
When Jane Clemens reproached him for having made the trip to Tennessee, at a cost of two hundred dollars, so badly needed at this time, he only replied gently that he had gone for what he believed to be the best.
“I am not able to dig in the streets,” he added, and Orion, who records this, adds:
“I can see yet the hopeless expression of his face.”