The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1910-04-26

4 Iii WIS iDf mora than fifty
years an InNeterate smoker. Dr.. Hal
SeE said tonight thai he was unable II
predicate that the angina pectoric
from which Mark Twain died was in
any way q sequel Of nicotine poison
ms. some constitutions, he said.
seem fnmun from the effect OF to-
oacco, TINS was one of them. Since
ms illness began. however. the DOCTORS
llad cut down Mark Twains daily al
oWanc OF twenty cigars and countless
pipes to four cigars a day.
NO deprivation was a greater sor-
row TO him. He tried to smoke on
the steamer While returning from
Bermuda and only gave it IN because
he was too feeble to draw on his pipe.
Ever on his death-bed, when he had
passed the point Of speech and II
was no longer certain that his ideas
were lucid he would make the motion
OF WalFinS a cigar and smiling. cxpel
empty air from under the mousiache
still stained with smoke.
Where Mark Twain chose to snend
his declining years was the first out
post OF MethOdism in New England
and it was among the hills of Red
ding that Gen. IZaiel Putnam, of Rev
dictionary fame, mustered his sparse
ranks. Putnam Park now encloses
the emo of his camp.
Mark Twain first heard OF it at
the dinner given him on his 10Th
birthday when a fellow guest who
lived there mentioned it's beauties and
added that there was a vacant house
adjoining his own. Il think YOU may
buy that old house for me- said Mark
Twain.
Sherwood Place was the delectaDle
name Of that old house and where it
stood Mark Twain reared the White
walls Of the italian villa he first
named Innocence at Home" but a
first experience OF What New Eng
land winter storm can be in its
whitest fury quickly caused him to
christen it anew "~Stormfield.'
Through the lanes about his place
the innocent at Home, loVed TO wan
der in his white ianHels for hoInely
gossip With the neigthors. They re-
M him best as one who above
all things loved a good listener, for
Mark was Il mighty taiker. stored with
fairy tales for the little maids he
adored and racier, ruder speech for
more ~StalHart, masculine ears.
Last summer the walks began to
f~alter; last fail they ceased for good.
The death Of II. Fl. Rogers, q close
friend. was d severe blow. The
death of his daughter. Josln. last fall,
while III her bath, was an added blow
from which he never recovered. 1t
was then that the stabbing pains IN
the heart began. Mark Twain died
dis truly Us II cdh DC Sdld oI dIH Iiidii
Of q broken heart.
Sketch OF Mark Twain"
The mere chronology Of Mark
Twain'S life is soon told. Like most
dWellers in the imagination, his sig
~nificance to posterity lies not, as with
men of action, in how he wrought
upon events but rather in how events
wrought upon him; for from such re-
actions resulted his ima Imaginative out
mt ana of the most cOnSidpr3 BILE of
his time and. as it now seems, one OF
the SecureSt.
Briefly, then, Mark Twain was born
Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Flor
ida. Mo. on November 80, 1850. My
parents" he writes, in his own Bur
lesdue Autobiography, were neither
very poor nor c~onspicuously honest.
The earliest ancestor the TWalns
have any record Of was q friend OF
the family by the name Of Higgins
The county chronicles have it that
the elder clemens failed in business
and died leaving his son the ample
world to make his fortune in.
Accordingly, Mark Twain's &C
abundance with literature began III
putting words into type, not ideas INTO
words. Educated only in the public
schools. he was apprenticed to a prin-
ter at thirteen and worked at his trade
:, in ST Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia,
and New York, until at eighteen he
could crafty a boyish ambition to
become cub to a MISSISSIPPI River
> pilot. Both these ~disparate ppe
: ings reacted profoundly on his later
: life. Varied and eventful as that life
: was, it might almost be said that only
. two things happened to Mark Twain
: he learned the river and he learned
to set type.
His knowledge of river life, ac-
r ouired when he was a pilot, took form
in Tom Sawyer. Huckleberry Finn,
| and Life on the Mississippi, regarded
abroad as his surest title to fame. 1t
: even suggested his pseudonymn, Tor
l "Mark 2 <-ain'' is a linesnan cry to
2 the pilot in shallow stages. And his
f familiarity with printing turned MN
t naturally first into WORK,
tbaD into creative writing, and finally