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Which author is best known for writing about the Mississippi River? If you said Mark Twain, you’re right!
He was born Samuel Clemens in Florida, Missouri, in 1835. When he was four, his family moved to the little town of Hannibal. It sits on the shore of the Mississippi. He left Hannibal at age 18. He went on to be a world-famous author and humorist. But it was Hannibal and the Mississippi that gave him the ideas for his greatest works.
◀ To Sam Clemens, Hannibal was “a boy’s paradise.” He spent his days there fishing, swimming, playing pranks, and hunting for lost treasure. After his father died, Clemens left school at the age of 12. He went to work as a printer. But he really wanted to be a riverboat pilot.
The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.—from Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain
▲ During Twain’s lifetime, steamboats and huge log rafts traveled the Mississippi. Here is a look at the action on the river. There’s Hannibal, by the water’s edge.
Twain later moved to Hartford, Connecticut. In 1876, he published a book based on his happy boyhood. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is set in a town like Hannibal. It is famous for the scene where Tom gets his friends to pay him for the “privilege” of painting a fence. How does he do it? He makes them think he’s having more fun painting than they are watching. ▶
◀ In 1857, Sam Clemens’s dream came true. The captain of the Paul Jones hired him as an apprentice pilot. Clemens soon found himself back at “school.” He had to learn every inch of the Mississippi. That included everything from sandbars, underwater trees, and islands to changing water depths and weather patterns. Clemens did become a pilot. But, on April 12, 1861, the Civil War broke out. It ended his riverboat career.
◀ For a short time, Clemens fought for the Confederate army. Then he headed west. He became a miner in Nevada. He never struck it rich. But he did begin writing the funny stories that later made him famous. In 1863, Clemens took the pen name Mark Twain. It came from a shout that deckhands gave when they measured a river’s depth. They would drop weights into the water. Then they would shout out how deep the weights went. The shout “mark twain” meant two fathoms, or 12 feet. That was a safe depth for a boat.
Tom Sawyer was a big success. But Twain had more to say about his boyhood on the Mississippi. In 1884, he published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this masterpiece, Tom’s friend Huck runs away from home. He escapes his violent father (and civilization) by floating down the Mississippi on a raft. On the way, he is joined by Jim, an enslaved person who has run away. They have lots of adventures. But Huck has to answer a serious question: should he turn his friend Jim in to the law? After all, helping a runaway slave is against the law. Or should he help Jim, whom he has come to love and respect? As Huck works out his answer, he slowly grows from a boy to a man. ▶
Think Piece!
What do you think Huck does? What would you do if you were in his place?
