short writings were the only pieces of Twain’s writing to find its way into public print during his years on the river. The Civil War brought an abrupt end to Twain’s career as a riverboat pilot. His very last trip up the river from New Orleans to St. Louis was on the Uncle Sam (24). He left the ship at St. Louis on April 19, 1861, one week after the firing on Fort Sumter (24). Twain went back to Hannibal and joined the Confederate Marion Rangers, his service lasting between one and three weeks. After leaving the war Twain and his brother Orion set out to the Nevada Territory. While in Nevada Twain didn’t take to the mining craze instead he was going to make his fortune in timber claims. During Twain’s stay in Nevada he wrote a letter to his sister: “In the bright lexicon of youth, there’s no such word as Fail, and I’ll prove it” (25). But his failure in mining forced him to the one field of activity which was, in the not too distant future, to give him more wealth than he could have extracted from the richest vein – the field of writing (26). Now, at thirty years of age, he was established in the profession in which he would gain fame and fortune (28). His editorials and articles had been printed in the leading papers on the Pacific Coast and received some notice in the Eastern journals (28). Here at this moment in time Samuel Langhorne Clemens adopted the pen name that was to become famous the world over “Mark Twain” (28). As the Alta California predicted, Mark Twain’s greatest work still lay ahead (Twain 10). But by the time he left Nevada, he had already experienced most of what was to go into Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Gilded Age, Life on the Mississippi, Roughing It, and many of his sketches and stories (Foner 32). May 1, 1867, an important date in American literature – the date of Twain’s first book, published in New York by C. H. Webb.Duri...
