Mark Twain

Hello there! You might know me by my pen name, Mark Twain, but I was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30th, 1835. My first home was a tiny cabin in Florida, Missouri, but the place I truly call my childhood home is Hannibal, a bustling town right on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River. That river was my playground and my school. I spent countless hours watching the great steamboats paddle by, imagining all the adventures one could have on the water, traveling to distant and exciting places. My world changed dramatically in 1847 when my father passed away. I was just 11 years old, and my school days came to an end. I had to go to work to help my family, so I became a printer's apprentice, where I learned the important skill of setting type for newspapers.

Even while I was working in a print shop, I never stopped dreaming of the river. My greatest ambition was to become a steamboat pilot, which was one of the most respected and exciting jobs on the entire Mississippi. In 1857, my dream started to become a reality when I finally got the chance to apprentice under a seasoned pilot named Horace E. Bixby. Learning the river was harder than I ever could have imagined. I had to memorize every single twist, turn, sandbar, and landmark of that long and unpredictable river, day and night. By 1859, I had proven myself and earned my pilot's license. For a few wonderful years, I felt like the king of my own floating palace, but that all came to a sudden stop in 1861 when the Civil War began and closed the river to most commercial traffic.

With my river career over, I needed a new path. In 1861, I headed west with my brother Orion to the Nevada Territory, a wild and rugged place full of hopeful prospectors. I tried my hand at silver mining, but let's just say I was much better at telling stories about the experience than I was at actually finding any silver. I soon found a job that suited me better as a reporter for a newspaper. It was there, in 1863, that I first signed an article with the name 'Mark Twain.' It's an old river term I remembered from my piloting days, a call that means the water is two fathoms, or twelve feet, deep—a safe depth for a steamboat to pass. The name felt right, connecting me back to my beloved river. My big break came in 1865 when a quirky story I wrote, 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,' was published and became a surprise hit all across the country. It seemed people really enjoyed my sense of humor.

That little frog story opened up the world for me. I began to travel, and my adventures in Europe and the Middle East became the subject of my first bestselling book, 'The Innocents Abroad,' which was published in 1869. The next year was also a wonderful one, because in 1870, I married the love of my life, Olivia Langdon. We eventually settled down in Hartford, Connecticut, in a beautiful home where I would do my most famous work. I dipped my pen back into my memories of Hannibal and the Mississippi River to create the characters that many people still know today. In 1876, I published 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,' a story about a mischievous boy and his life in a river town. A few years later, in 1884, his best friend got his own book, 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.' I wanted to write stories that sounded like real people talking, capturing the unique spirit and the difficult challenges of America.

My life wasn't all successful adventures and funny stories. I had a great passion for inventing things, but I made some very bad investments that cost me dearly. I lost a lot of money on a complicated machine called the Paige Compositor, which was meant to set type automatically but never worked properly. I was determined to pay back every single person I owed money to, so my family and I set off on a worldwide lecture tour in 1895. It was a long and difficult journey, but I succeeded in clearing my debts. My later years also brought great personal sadness with the loss of my dear wife, Olivia, and two of my beloved daughters. It was during this period of my life that I started wearing my famous white suit all year round. Some people thought it was odd, but I found it to be cheerful and comfortable.

I was born in 1835, not long after Halley's Comet blazed across the sky. I always had a feeling that the comet and I were connected in some way, and I once said, 'I came in with Halley's Comet... It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.' And that is just what happened. The comet returned to the skies in 1910, and I passed from this world on April 21st of that year. I lived to be 74 years old. Today, people remember me as one of America's greatest storytellers. I used humor not just to make people laugh, but also to make them think about important ideas like fairness, justice, and what is right and wrong. My greatest hope is that my stories, like the Mississippi River itself, will just keep rolling along, inspiring new adventures and new ideas for many years to come.