The Boys' Life of Mark Twain

St. Louis, where his mother made him renew his promise as to drink and cards. Then he was seized with a literary idea, and returned to Keokuk

d place-more than the letters were worth, judged by present standards. The first was dated Cincinnati, November 14, 1856, and was certainly not promising literature. It was written in the

nd pantin', and heavin', and swellin', and chawin' up red-hot coals like they was good. A feller stood in a little house like, feedin' him all the time; but the more he got, the more he wanted and the more he blowed and snorted. After a spell the feller ketched him by the tail, and great Jericho! he set up a yell that split the ground for more'n a mi

e letters were signed "Snodgrass," and there are but two of them. Snodgrass seems to have found them hard work, for it is said he raised on the price, which, fortunately, brought the seri

working for Wrightson & Co., general printers, lodging in a cheap

of a mystery. Sam never could find out what Macfarlane did. His hands were hardened by some sort of heavy labor; he left at six in th

ary by heart. He made but two statements concerning himself: one, that he had acquired his knowledge from reading, and not at school; the other, that he knew every wo

ilar to those in that book. He went further than Darwin. He had startling ideas of the moral evolution of man, and these he would pour into the ears of his young listener until ten o'clock, after which, like the English Sumner

where he would take ship, it being farther south and therefore nearer his destination. Furthermore, he could begin with a lazy trip down the Mississippi, which, next to being a pilot, had been one of his most c

the fiction touch. He had always loved the river, and his boyhood dream of piloting had time and again returned, but it was not uppermost when he

continue not for a week or a fortnight, but for four years-four marvel