Mark Twain
"I AM sorry to know you are smoking so much, Mr. Clemens," remarked a lady in Mark Twain's early days. "This is the second time within the week I have seen you with a box of cigars under your arm." "Don't be disturbed, dear madam," replied Mark, in a confidential tone, "I'm just moving again."
With characteristic humor Samuel Langhorne Clemens indicated the vicissitudes of his early days. He was born in Florida, Missouri, November 30, 1835. The common schools gave him all the formal education he got. He became an expert compositor, wherein he resembled William Dean Howells, with whom he later became linked in a lifelong friendship of deep attachment. In 1851 he became a Mississippi pilot, where he picked up his pen-name from the soundings of the river. He started in to fight for the Confederacy, later drifted to reporting, turned to mining in California, when he made Calaveras County famous by the well-known "Jumping Frog," moved on to the Sandwich Islands, and then made the trip to Europe which resulted in "Innocents Abroad" (1869). In 1871 he married Olivia L. Langdon, and made Hartford his home for many years afterward. "Roughing It," "The Gilded Age" (in conjunction with Charles Dudley Warner), "Tom Sawyer," "A Tramp Abroad," "The Prince and the Pauper," "Huckleberry Finn," "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson," were some of the various books which kept Americans and Europeans laughing for many years. The failure of the publishing venture in which he had engaged led him to repeat the chivalric deed of Sir Walter Scott in repaying debts for which he held his honor responsible; a splendid failure!
Despite the picturesque and never-failing humor of Mark Twain, he had a deep vein of seriousness. In "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" he has described a phase of American life which will become a permanent part of American literature.
He died April 21, 1910.