Jane Lampton (The Mother of Samuel Clemens) sounds much like my Mom Sally Casey

        In my last post I wrote about receiving a copy of The Autobiography of Mark Twain for Christmas. I have read a couple of chapters each night before going to bed, and Chapter 7 of the book has Clemens recalling his relationship with his own Mother.  When my Mom died, I was told I gave a touching eulogy, but I have never found quite the words to describe my Mom, and how she related to the world around her. I found the very words I was searching for on page 33 of the Autobiography.

   "She had a slender, small body but a large heart ---a heart so large that everybody's grief and everybody's joys found welcome in it and hospitable accomodation."

    Further on Clemens writes:

     Her interest in people and other animals was warm, personal, friendly. She always found something to excuse, and as a rule to love, in the toughest of them --even if she had to put it there herself."

       Those words make me think of all the hard cases like me that Sally Casey took in as a Foster Parent and turned something good out of.  Sally Casey would have turned 94 last Wednesday, and it has been 10 years since her death in 2000.

        It took ten years, but Samuel Clemens, in describing his own Mother, Jane Lampton of Kentucky, is just as easily describing my Mom, Sally Casey, 100 years after HIS death. Thanks Mark Twain, for reaching across the century and doing it for me.

       I highly recommend The Autobiography of Mark Twain as edited by Charles Neider to all my friends out there. It is a wonderful, glimpse into an America before, during, and after the Civil War, and into the early 20th century. Clemens recounting of his childhood and an 19th century American society built on everyone knowing their proper place in social stature is a must read.