![]() ![]() You have to know it just like A B C." Clemens received this advice from Horace Bixby, the river pilot who "learned" him the river. ![]() ![]() There's only one way to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. And he visited a number of times, most notably in 1882 as he prepared to write Life on the Mississippi, his fullest and most autobiographical account of the region and its inhabitants, and again in 1902 when he made his final visit to the scenes of his childhood.Īpril-July 1857 "My boy, you must get a little memorandum-book, and every time I tell you a thing, put it down right away. Although Clemens never again lived in the Mississippi valley, he returned to the river in his writing throughout his life. The Civil War ended that career four years later by halting all river traffic. In 1857, at the age of twenty-one, he became a "cub" steamboat pilot. ![]() "Mark Twain" (meaning "Mark number two") was a Mississippi River term: the second mark on the line that measured depth signified two fathoms, or twelve feetsafe depth for the steamboat. Clemens first signed his writing with the name in February 1863, as a newspaper reporter in Nevada. | The Mark Twain Papers | The Bancroft Library | The Mississippi River "Half twain! Quarter twain! M-a-r-k twain!"įor most people, the name "Mark Twain" is virtually synonymous with the life along the Mississippi River immortalized in the author's writing. | Previous Section | Top of Exhibit | Next Section | Mark Twain at Large: The Mississippi River ![]()
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