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Mark Twain The Man The Myth The Legend

ing the Equator: “all that goes to make me in me was in a Missourian village, on the other side of the globe” (21).After leaving Hannibal, Twain traveled about America as a printer, setting type in composing rooms in St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Keokuk and Muscantine, Iowa (22). Twain’s letters to his family during this period, his correspondence to the Muscatine Journal, and the Snodgrass letter reveal his social and political thinking at this stage (22). As in Hannibal, his work as a printer kept him in touch with the literature that went into the newspapers as “fillers” (22). On April 15, 1857, the Paul Jones, piloted by Horace Bixby, set off for New Orleans from Cincinnati (23). On board was a young Mark Twain. From the gulf port he planned to sail for the Amazon to make a fortune in cocoa (23). But when he walked up the gang plank, he was headed not for South America but for a new career – the profession of piloting (23). This is the beginning of Twain’s life on the muddy Mississippi River and many experiences that would be put into text. On April 9, 1859, he was granted his pilot’s license, and became a co-pilot with the veteran where it all began Horace Bixby (23). The influence of the greatest of American rivers permeates every phase of Mark Twain’s development (23). As Twain observed himself he wrote: “I got personally and familiarly acquainted with about all the different types of the human nature that are to be found in fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the reason that I have met him before – met him on the river.” “Sam was always scribblin’ when not at the wheel,” Horace Bixby recalled. These writings consisted of personal letters, river notebooks, a burlesque of Captain Isaiah Sellers and his river reports, published in New Orleans Daily Crescent of May 17, 1859 (24). These ...

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