Childhood
Clara was the second of three daughters born to Samuel Clemens and his wife Olivia Langdon Clemens in Elmira, New York. Her older sister was Susy, who died when Clara was only 22, and her only brother Langdon, died as an infant before she was born. Her younger sister was Jean. Clara had a serious accident as a child, while riding a toboggan she ended up being hurled into a great oak tree. This resulted in a severe leg injury that almost led to amputation.
Read more about this topic: Clara Clemens
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“By contemplation’s help,not sought in vain,
I seem t’ have liv’d my childhood o’er again;
To have renew’d the joys that once were mine,”
—William Cowper (1731–1800)
“The quickness with which all the “stuff” from childhood can reduce adult siblings to kids again underscores the strong and complex connections between brothers and sisters.... It doesn’t seem to matter how much time has elapsed or how far we’ve traveled. Our brothers and sisters bring us face to face with our former selves and remind us how intricately bound up we are in each other’s lives.”
—Jane Mersky Leder (20th century)
“It is as if, to every period of history, there corresponded a privileged age and a particular division of human life: “youth” is the privileged age of the seventeenth century, childhood of the nineteenth, adolescence of the twentieth.”
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)