1. Understanding Mark Twain: The Life of Samuel L. Clemens

2. Sure…
You could call me
“Rags to Riches”

3. Died: Born: 04/21/1910 11/30/1835 Halley’s Comet Redding, Connecticut
Florida, Missouri

4. “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835
“I came in with Halley’s Comet in It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet.”
-Mark Twain, a Biography In 1910, Halley’s Comet reached perihelion on April 20th, Twain died on the 21st.

5. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born in this cabin in the small frontier settlement of Florida, Missouri.

6. Interior of Florida, Missouri home

7. He was the sixth child of John and Jane Clemens.
Samuel L. Clemens was born two months premature, on November 30th 1835.
He was the sixth child of John and Jane Clemens.
Hearing develops more quickly in premature babies and he did exhibit an unusual ability to retain sounds, which may explain his unique gift of transforming spoken language into literature.

8. Other Talented Premature Babies:
Pablo Picasso
Isaac Newton
Albert Einstein
Charles Darwin
Renoir
John Keats
Franklin Roosevelt
Stevie Wonder

9. Twain with John T. Lewis
Of this photo Twain said:
“The colored man… is John
T. Lewis, a friend of mine.
These many years- 34 in
fact. I have not known an
honester man nor a more
respect-worthy-one.
27 years ago, by the prompt
and intelligent exercise of
his courage, presence of
mind and extraordinary
strength, he saved the lives
of 3 relatives of mine…
Naturally I hold him in high
and grateful regard.”

10. Now… back to
my life story.

11. Sam’s family moved to nearby Hannibal, Missouri in 1839, where he’d enjoy his boyhood in the presence of the broad Mississippi River.

12. Many of Twain’s characters were a product of
his childhood experiences in Hannibal.

13. “When I find a well-drawn
character in fiction or
biography I generally take a
warm personal interest in
him, for the reason that I
have known him before…
met him on the river.”
-Mark Twain, Life on the
Mississippi

14. Understanding Huckleberry Finn
In Following the Equator, he says:
“When I was ten years old I saw a man fling a lump of iron-ore at a slave-man in anger, for merely doing something awkwardly- as if that were a crime. It bounded from the man’s skull, and the man fell and never spoke again. He was dead in an hour… Nobody in the village approved of that murder, but of course no one said much about it.” (Chapter 38)

15. Location, Location, Location
Hannibal was the center of America at a time when America was making the transition from East to West. Sam had a very unique, front row seat to civilization… Immigrants, Merchants, Speculators, Gamblers, Thieves, Politicians, Preachers, Runaways & Indians… he saw it all on the river front and he soaked it all in.
Because of this, Sam would experience a very diverse group of individuals or as Ron Powers’ noted in Mark Twain, a Life: “…a continuing vaudeville of floating humanity.”

16. The Great Frontier
United States in 1835

17. Visiting his Boyhood Home

18. Twain’s Boyhood Home in the present day. Note the window sizes.

19. -Mark Twain’s Autobiography
In the summer months, Sam was sent to his Uncle’s farm in Florida, Missouri. There he continued to interact with the Slaves and their children:
“All the Negroes were friends of ours, and with those of our own age we were in effect comrades. I say, in effect, using the phrase as a modification. We were comrades, and yet not comrades; color and condition interposed a subtle line which both parties were conscious of, and which rendered complete fusion impossible.”
-Mark Twain’s Autobiography

20. In addition to his unique life experiences, Sam would also be exposed to the power of public speaking at a young age. In that timeframe, Hannibal hosted many great orators & Sam would absorb & later commander their techniques.

21. The Role Death Played in Twain’s Life
“Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.” - Following the Equator
Enduring the untimely deaths of loved ones was a theme throughout Twain’s life. It began with the death of his brother when he was 4, followed by his father when he was 11 and it would continue straight-on-up to the final year of his life when he lost his youngest daughter Jean. Jean was only 28 years old. On that day he wrote: “Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart.”

22. After the death of his Father, Sam went to work as a Printer’s Devil
After the death of his Father, Sam went to work as a Printer’s Devil. A printer’s devil was an apprentice or young assistant to a printer.

23. Sam at 15

24. When he was 16 (1851), Sam began contributing humorous pieces, and occasionally stood in as Editor when his brother Orion was away.
In 1852, Sam gained interest East of the Mississippi via articles in a Boston magazine and The Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post.

25. Invigorated by the possibilities that existed for him outside of Missouri. Sam left Hannibal in June of 1853, three weeks after his seventeenth birthday, working initially in St. Louis as a typesetter before heading to the World's Fair in New York City.

26. Young Sam Travels to New York City

27. The next three and half years found him moving between New York, Philadephia, Washington D.C., Muscatine (Iowa), St. Louis, Keokuk (Iowa), and Cincinnati.

28. Sam at 18

29. Sam’s teenage travels… 2,000+ miles

30. He was just twenty-one years old.
In February of 1857, he took passage from Cincinnati to New Orleans, with the intention of embarking on the Amazon River to seek his fortune in the then thriving coca trade.
He was just twenty-one years old. 
His plans changed quickly when he met Riverboat pilot Horace Bixby. Sam's boyhood dream to become a steamboat pilot was revived.

31. In April of 1861, when the Civil War caused the suspension of civilian river traffic on the Mississippi, Sam's career as a steamboat pilot came to an abrupt end.
In the summer of 1861 he found himself on a stagecoach heading west with his older brother Orion, who had been appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory.

32. Sam’s travels by his mid-twenties

33. Sam at 23

34. Your thoughts and ideas are appreciated.
More to Come Soon. The next revision will explore his talents as a writer and public speaker.
Your thoughts and ideas are appreciated.
-Brent M. Colley
(cell number)

35. Understanding Huckleberry Finn
In many ways Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is autobiographical.
Twain was holding a mirror up at post-Civil War America and screaming:
“What we did was wrong!”

36. Understanding Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took Twain 8 years to write and between manuscript 1 and 2, he made more than 1,700 revisions. 88 percent of these revisions being: word changes, spelling, punctuation and adding emphasis. He used the words he used for a reason.
Twain scholar Dr. Cindy Lovell said it best:
“Twain pokes us with a sharp stick, makes us squirm, makes us highly uncomfortable. And it’s effective.”

37. Understanding Huckleberry Finn
Although the Missouri he grew up in never joined the Confederacy, it was a world in which slavery was taken for granted by most whites, defended by all public institutions, including the churches; Even Sam's own parents owned slaves.

38. Understanding Huckleberry Finn
This history left Sam a legacy of guilt, guilt that he tried to lessen through acts of charity. He donated money and made special appearances at fundraising events for numerous African American Churches, Institutes, and Associations. He also supported individuals, most notably Warner T. McGuinn, a struggling African American law student at Yale Law School who Sam anonymously paid tuition for.
He noted: “We have ground the manhood out of them, & the shame is ours, not theirs, & we should pay for it.”

39. Understanding Huckleberry Finn
One of the slaves that influenced Sam’s life was a middle aged slave known to him as “Uncle Dan’l” He’d later recall the “privileged nights” he, his cousins & slave children clustered at Dan’l’s feet to hear him tell his thunderous stories.
“He has served me well, these many, many years…spiritually I have had his welcome company… & have staged him in books as his own name and as “Jim”…It was on the farm that I got my strong liking for his race and my appreciation of… its fine qualities.”

40. Understanding Huckleberry Finn
In his Notebook #35 he writes:
“In those slave-holding days the whole community was agreed as to one thing- the awful sacredness of slave property.”
“It shows that that strange thing, the conscience - the unerring monitor - can be trained to approve any wild thing you want it to approve if you begin its education early & stick to it.”