The record-union., 1897-07-04
TWAIN'S EvENTFUL LIFE.
SUCCESSES AND VICISSITUDEs
ON TWO CONTINENTS.
Career of the Great Humorist and
His Wanderings Over the
World.


is the greatest American humorlst!
nrobably no one would answer samuel
L. Clemens" but no intelligent Amerl-
can would fail to allot that distinction
TO Mark Twain.
Marks father had been slaVehodder
and had met with reverses; he dled a
bankrupt, and when the boy had
scarcely reached his twelfth year his
mother was a superior and handsome
woman, and it is from her that MARK
inherited some of his most admlraple
qualities. She was intelligent, extreme
2y so, and could write well. She was
also given to dreamy speculauons. one
of the boys kinsfolk once said or hlIl,
He is a perfect little human kaleldo-
scope. Yes" spoke up another, ana
he gets that from his mother Mrs.
Clemens was looked up to in Florida
and in Hannibal as a very obserVant
woman, who was interested in all that
was going around her, and who kept
posted on the news of the day, so far
as one could in Missouri sixty years
ago.
The immediate cause of the failure
of the elder Clemens was a scheme OF
his own to render Salt River navigable;
hence possibly, the well-worn saying
gone up Salt River to imply disaster.
The Clemens family did not travel IN
parlOr cars when they emigrated from
Florida to Hannibal; there were no
railroads in that neck Of the woods
then, and the family and its effects
We're transported across the country IN
prairie schoonerS.
About the modest home which Mark s
father established there were cliffs and
glens and caves, and picturesque
islands in the winding river, and deep
defles. Mark was a mere lad then,
TO be sure, but these things, none OF
which he had ever seen in poor OLD
Florida, fostered his poetic spirit ana
stirred his imaginative powers. If any
one doubts this he has but to pick up
a copy of tom Sawyer" or 'Huckle-
berry Finn" and read almost at ran
dom.
Mark had had a little schooling in
the hamlet of his birth, and his good
mother had aided him to learn, and in
Hannibal his studies were continued in
a little weather-beaten frame school
house, 20x40 feet in dimensions. where
a Miss Lucy Davis taught the young
idea how to shoot. There it was, while
under the administration of Miss Lucy.
that the budding humorist made his
first acquaintance with the persuasive
power of the hickory switch, and he is
on record as saying that he distinctly
remembers that the dressing downs
he got We're no jokes.
BEGINNING TO WORK.
Mark began his serious work in life
shortly after his fathers death as an
apprentice in the local printing office,
that of the Hannibal Courier" which,
/ believe, still lives and flourishes, if
not like a green bay tree, at all events
in a way which enables it to keep up
with the procession. Three years he
served as devil and typo, and at odd
times wrote something for publication.
AT the end of his apprenticeship he
considered himself a competent printer,
reporter and editor. Without compass
or cash he set out on foot for the East
ern country, and id odd jobs at the
ern country, and did odd jobs at the
case and press as he journeyed along.
AT length he reached Philadelphia, but
finding the town too slow for his ideal
he tarried but a while, and continued
his journey to New York.
But the East did not hit his fancy,
and he longed for the old friends and
scenes of the wild and woolly West. p"
At II he turned up again at Hannibal
out of work and out of means.
The Father of Waters" had a fasci-
nation for him about that time, and he
wondered if he were not cut out for a
pilot. He did not ponder this new idea
long, but forthwith looked for a job,
ana quickly found it, as roustabout on
n steamboat plying between st. Louis
and New Orleans. In due time he be-
came pilot, and for seven years he
stuck to his new calling. He has told
how he liked it and all bout it in his
-'Piloting on the Mississippi" His pic
tu~esque life, and the strange and in
teresting people and things he came in
contact with while plotting aroused his
literary faculties, and all the while he
was steering those pine and rosin fed
craft up and down the great river he
scribbled for the papers. Busy as he
was. exacting as were his duties-and
ne was one of the best pilots the old
Mississippi ever knew-he found time to
cultivate the art of writing.
And il was while plotting that he got
the nom de plume by which he has ever
since been known to the world of letters
and to the world at large This is how
il happened: He had been signing his
sketches 'Iosh," a name which came to
him he knows not how, but which he
never cared for. One day while in the
pilot house pondering as to what name
he could substitute for 'Iosh" he heard
a big buck niger" who was taking
soundings of the river call out Mark
Twainl" The phrase caught the young
writer's fancy, and he determined then
ara there that henceforth ne would sign
his stories" with the pen name Mark
Twain
1t was not. however, until 1868, while
acting as city editor of the Virginia City
Enterprise" that the humorist made
use Of his new title.
Mark got his first step in .'Roughing
It" about this time. Besides editing a
lively paper in a rapid town, he acted
as clerk TO his brother, whom President
Lincoln had appointed Secretary of the
Territory of Nevada
Nevada was about as much of q
State then as it is now, save in name.
1t was just beginning to swarm with
reckless people, who had shot off at a
tangent from the established order of
society For a while Mark was happy
in this locality, where the fashionable
toilet consisted of an eight-inch Colts
shooting iron, an Arkansas split tooth
pick. jack boots and an ''insectivorous
shirt; and the amusements were drink
ing "red likker," playing draw poker
and practising at human targets. When
he finally tired of this sort of thing