uri (pop 450)(Sanderlin 11), a small town on the Mississippi River. As a young boy, he enjoyed skipping school to go fishing on the nearby island; playing with the off-limits Tom Blackenship, the son of the town drunk; or spending time with his sweetheart Laura Hawkins (Thayer 5). Twain once had a harrowing experience as a child when he got lost in a local cave with Laura. Living in the small river town, whose only commerce was from the steamboat trade, he witnessed at least four murders (Sanderlin 13). When he was eleven, his father died (Meltzer 23). He quit school in fifth grade (twelve years old) and then became an apprentice in a printing shop, where he began to write down stories his overactive imagination created. Twain had an ideal life in Hannibal. Even though he was poor (Roberts 5), he went to school and Sunday School where he got some education and made many friends, and caused much mischief. He and his friends had exiting experiences together, some of which jolted him out of his innocence. Once Twain and his friends were playing in the creek and a clumsy German boy, who makes an appearance in TAOTS, dived into the creek and drowned. The boy had memorized 3000 verses of the Bible for Sunday school, so Twain had a hard time figuring out how God could be that cruel. Or, for that matter, how people could be cruel. He once saw a master brutally murder his slave: not a rare occurrence in Missouri, a slave state. As a result, Twain underwent ups and downs in his mood as a child had bad dreams and sleep-walked (Sanderlin 13). All, or most, of the experiences and feelings Twain had growing up in Hannibal are mirrored in Tom Sawyer's story. In fact, at the beginning of the novel, Twain tells the reader that Tom's adventures were the same as the ones he and his friends had, albeit exaggerated. Tom grew up in a small river town in the 1840s, just like Twain. It was essentially Hannibal, renamed St. Petersburg, Missour...
