Mark Twain's Life

Mr. Howells contributes to the September Century a notably clever and sympathetic sketch of Mark Twain, wbicb contains the following authentic account of his farnily and his adventures: ín one form or other, Mr. Samuel L. Clemens has told the story of his life in his book3, and in sketching his career I shall recur to the leading facts rather than to offer fresh information. He was remotely of Virginian origin and more remotely of good English stock. The name was well known before his time in the South, where a senator, a congre3sman and other dignitaries had worn it ; but his branch of the family iled from tbe de3titution of those vast landed possessiotis in Tennessee, celebi-ated in "The Gilded Age," and went very poor to Missouri. Mr. Clemens was born on the 30th of November, 1835, at Florida, in the latter state, but his father removed shortly aftenvards to Ilannibal, a stnall town on the Mississippi. where i':ost of the humorist's boyhood was spent. Hannibal as a name was hopeléssly conf used and ineffective ; but if we can know nothing of Mr. Clemens from Hannibal, we can know much of Hannibal from Mr. Clemens, who, in fact, has studied a loaflng, out-at-elbows, down-at-thelieels, slave-"jo!ding, Mississippi river town of thirty years ago, with such strong reality in his boy's romance of "Tom Sawyer," that we need inquire uothing furthei concerning the type. The original perhaps no longer exists anywhere ; certainly not in Hannibal, which has grown into a ílourishing little city sime Mr. Ciemens sketched it. In his time, the two embattled forces ot civilization and barbarism were encamped at Hannibal, as they are at all times and everywhere ; the morality of the place was the morality of a slave-holdiug comtnunity : flerce, arrogant, one-sided - this virtue for white, and that for black folks ; and the religión was Calvanism in various aliases, with its predestínate aristccracy of saints and its rabble of hopeless sinners. Doubtless, young Clemens escaped neitherof the opposmg influences wholly. His peaple like tbe rest were slaveholders ; but his father, like so many other slave-holders, abhorred sla very - silently, as he must in such a ;ime anü place. If the boy's sense of ustice suffered anything of that perversion which so curiously and pitiably mained the reason of the whole South, t does not appcar In his books, where there is not an ungenerous line, but always, on the contrary, a burning resentment of all manner of cruelty and wrong. The father, an austere and singularly upright man, died baukrupt when Clemens was 12 years old, and the boy had thereafter to make what scramble he could for an edueation. He got very little learning in school, and like so many other Americaiis in whom the literary impulse is native, he turned to the lotal printing office for some of the advantages frou which hewas otherwise cut off. Certain records of the three years spent in the Hannibal "Couritr" oflice are t be found in Mark Twain's book of Sketches ; but I believe there is jetne history anywhere of the wandeijahre, in which he followed the life of a jour-printer, from town to town, and from city, penetratiug even so far into the vague and fabled East as Philadelphia and JNew York. He returned to his own country - his patria - sated, if not satisfled, with travel, nd at seventeen he resolved to learn the river" from St. Louis to New Orleans as a steanboat pilot. Of this period of his life he has given a full account of tbe delightful series of papers, "Piloting on the Mississippi," which he prhited seven years ago in the "Atlantic Monthly." The growth of the railroads and the outbreak of the Civil War put an end to profltable piloting, and at twenty-four he was again open to a vocation. He listened for a moment to the loddly calling drum of that time, and he was actually in camp for three weeks on the rebel side; but the unorganized force to which he belonged was disbanded, and he linally did not "go with his section" either in sentiment or in fact. His brother having been appointed Lieutenant- Governor of Nevada Territory, Mr. Clemens went out with him as his private t,ecretary; but he soon resigned nis office and withdrew to the mines, He f ailed as a winer, in the ordinary sense; but the lifeof the mining-camp yielded him the wealth that the pockets of the raountain denied; he had the Midas-touch, without knowing it, ano all these giotesque experiences have since turned into gold undej hls hand After his failure as a miner naa tecome evident even to hini3elf, he was glac to take the place of a local editor on the Virginia City "Enterprise," a newspaper for which he had amused himself in writing from time to time. He had written for the newspapers before this; few Americans escape that f ate; and as an apprentice in the Hannibal "Courier" office his humor had embroiled some of the leading citizens, and impaired the fortunes of that journal by the alienation of several delinquent 3ubscribers. But it was in the "Enterprise" that he first used his pseudonym of "Mark Twain," which he borrowed from the vernacular of the river, where the man tieaving the lead calis out "Mark twain!" instead of "Mark two!" In 1864, he aecepted, on the San Francisco 'Morning Cali," the same 3ort of place fvhich he had held on the "Enterprise," auu ne soon maue nis nom ae guerre familiar "on that coast"; he not only wrote "local items" in the "Cali," but he printed humorous sketches in varioxis periodicals, and, two jears later, he was sent to the Sandwich Islands as correspondent of a Sacramento paper. i: s'fi % :Jí In 1867, Mr. Clemens made in the Quaker City the excursioa to Europe and the East which he has commemorated in "The Innocents Abroad." Shortly after his return he married, and placed himself at Buffalo, where he jought an interest in one of the city newspapers; later he carne to Elartford, where he has since remained, except for ;he two years spent in a second visit to Europe.