RK TWAIN--A BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS, for nearly half a century known and celebrated
as "Mark Twain," was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835.
He was one of the foremost American philosophers of his day; he was the
world's most famous humorist of any day. During the later years of his
life he ranked not only as America's chief man of letters, but likewise
as her best known and best loved citizen.

The beginnings of that life were sufficiently unpromising. The
family was a good one, of old Virginia and Kentucky stock, but its
circumstances were reduced, its environment meager and disheartening.
The father, John Marshall Clemens--a lawyer by profession, a merchant
by vocation--had brought his household to Florida from Jamestown,
Tennessee, somewhat after the manner of judge Hawkins as pictured in The
Gilded Age. Florida was a small town then, a mere village of twenty-one
houses located on Salt River, but judge Clemens, as he was usually
called, optimistic and speculative in his temperament, believed in
its future. Salt River would be made navigable; Florida would become
a metropolis. He established a small business there, and located his
family in the humble frame cottage where, five months later, was born a
baby boy to whom they gave the name of Samuel--a family name--and added
Langhorne, after an old Virginia friend of his father.

The child was puny, and did not make a very sturdy fight for life.
Still he weathered along, season after season, and survived two stronger
children, Margaret and Benjamin. By 1839 Judge Clemens had lost faith
in Florida. He removed his family to Hannibal, and in this Mississippi
River town the little lad whom the world was to know as Mark Twain spent
his early life. In Tom Sawyer we have a picture of the Hannibal of those
days and the atmosphere of his boyhood there.

His schooling was brief and of a desultory kind. It ended one day in
1847, when his father died and it became necessary that each one should
help somewhat in the domestic crisis. His brother Orion, ten years
his senior, was already a printer by trade. Pamela, his sister; also
considerably older, had acquired music, and now took a few pupils. The
little boy Sam, at twelve, was apprenticed to a printer named Ament. His
wages consisted of his board and clothes--"more board than clothes," as
he once remarked to the writer.

He remained with Ament until his brother Orion bought out a small paper