SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.
(MARK TWAIN).
ARK TWAIN has a world wide reputation as the great American humorist, a reputation which has been steadily growing at home and abroad since the publication of “Innocents Abroad” in 1869, and he is undoubtedly one of the most popular authors in the United States. The story of his life is the record of a career which could have been possible in no other country in the world.
He was born in Florida in 1835, though most of his boyhood was passed at [♦]Hannibal, Mo., where he attended the village school until he was thirteen, which was his only opportunity for educational training. At this early age he was apprenticed to a printer and worked at this trade in St. Louis, [♠]Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. During his boyhood his great ambition, his one yearning, had been to become one day a pilot on a Mississippi steamboat. He realized this ambition in 1851 and the experiences of this pilot life are told in his “Life on the Mississippi.” His pen-name was suggested by the expression used in Mississippi navigation where in sounding a depth of two fathoms, the leadsman calls out, “Mark Twain!”
[♦] ‘Hanibal’ replaced with ‘Hannibal’
[♠] ‘Cincinnatti’ replaced with ‘Cincinnati’
After serving in 1861 in Nevada as private secretary to his brother who was at this time secretary of the Territory, he became city editor of the Virginia City “Enterprise,” and here his literary labors began, and the pseudonym now so familiar was first used.
In 1865, he was reporter on the staff of the San Francisco “Morning Call,” though his newspaper work was interspersed with unsuccessful attempts at gold digging and a six months’ trip to Hawaii.