Los Angeles herald., 1910-04-22

racier, ruddier speech for more stall
wart masculine ears. 1t is a legend
that he was vastly proud of his famous
| mop of white hair and used to spend
! the pains of a court ladv in getting it
to just the proper stage of artistic dis
array.
Last summer the walks began to fall
ter, last fall they ceased for good. The
death of H. II. Rogers, a close friend,
was a severe blow. The death of his
| daughter, Jeanne, who was seized with
an attack of epilepsy last fall while
! in her bath, was another blow from
| which he never recovered. 1t was then
that the stabbing pains in the heart
| began.
Mark Twain died, as truly as it can
be said of any man, of a broken heart.
The mere chronology of Mark Twains
life is soon told. Like most dwellers
in the imagination, his significance to
posterity lies, not as with men of ac
| ton, in how he wrought upon events,
| but rather in how events wrought upon
him; for from such actions resulted his
| imaginative output-one of the most
| considerable of his time. and, as it
| now seems, one Of the most secure.
WAS BORN IN MISSOURI
Briefly, then, Mark Twain was born
Samuel Langhorn Clemens, in Florida,
Mo-, Nov. 30, 1895.
MY parents" he writes in his own
burlesque autobiography, were neith-
er very poor nor conspicuously honest
The earliest ancestor the Twains have
any recollection of was friend of the
| family by the name of Higgins"
The county chronicles have 1t that
the elder Clemens failed in business
and died, leaving his son the ample
| world to make his fortune in.
Accordingly, Mark Twains acquaint-
ance with literature began in putting
words into type, not ideas into words.
Educated only in public schools, he
was apprenticed to a printer at 49, and
worked at his trade in st. Louis, Gin
cinnati, Philadelphia and New York,
until. at IS, he could crafty boyish
ambition to become a cub to q MiSSiS
sippi river pilot.
Both these happenings, reacted pro-
foundly in his later life. His knowl
edge of river life, acquired when he
was a pilot, took form in tom Saw
on the Mississippi River" regarded
abroad as his first title to fame.
1t even suggested his pseudonyn, for
MARK Twain" is a leadman's cry to
the pilot in shallow stages.
And his familiarity with printing
turned him naturally first into news
paper work, then into creative writing,
and finally into the publishing busi-
ness, wherein, like Sir Walter Scott,
he suffered a bankruptcy disastrous to
| everything but his honor, and, like Sir
Walter again, paid off with his pen
debts not of his own making.
BECOMES FULL PLEDGED PILOT
In due time Mark Twain became
full hedged pilot. He tells the rest of
it himself in a chapter of Life on the
Mississippi, "by and by the war came,
commerce was suspended, my occupa-
tion was gone.
II had to seek another livelihood So
l became a silver miner in Nevada, a
gold miner in California; next a re-
porter in San Francisco; next special
correspondent in the Sandwich islands;
next a rowing correspondent in Europe
and the east; next an instructional
torchbearer on the PLATFORM and, final
ly, I became a scribbler of books and
an immovable fixture among the other
rocks of New England"
| This was in 1872, two years after he
had married olivia L. Langdon of Ell
mira, N. Y, who brought him an in
dependent fortune. At that time his
writings We're in great demand, he had
an assured income, his own home and
seemed independent. But in 1876 his
| popularity as an author and his ac-
uuaintance with the mechanics of the
publishing trade-besides being a prac-
tical printer he had been part owner of
! the Buffalo Press before his marriage
drew him into the firm of G. L. Web
ster 6, Co., publishers.
The firm brought out the memoirs of
| Gen. Grant and paid his widow $780,,
900, but its prosperity was short lived,
and it failed with liabilities of 100000,
The failure had already taken $e5,O00
of Mark Twain's cash, but he deter
mined, also to shoulder the debts, and
to pay them off undertook in 1856
lecture trip around the world.
GAVE COINS TO BE LET ALONE
Mark Twain was an inveterate
smoker and one of the most leisurely
men in the world. An old pressman
who was printers devil'' in an office
where Mark was an editorial writer
tells this anecdote of his habits of
work:
zone of my duties was to sweep the
room where editors worked. Every day
Mark would give me a nickel to get
away from him. He would rather die
in the dust than uncross his legs. one
day he gave me a nickel to dot an Il
in his copy for him. He certainly did
enjoy life, that man did"
Yet this ieasygoing scribbler ac-
quilted himself of a prodigious amount
of work in his life and bound himself
voluntarily to pay off debts that he