Mark Twain
Many of the works of Mark Twain deal with or take place near the Mississippi River. One of his first major works, Life on the Mississippi, is in part a history of the river, in part a memoir of Twain's experiences on the river, and a collection of tales that either take place on or are associated with the river. Twain's most famous work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is largely a journey down the river. The novel works as an episodic meditation on American culture with the river having multiple different meanings including independence, escape, freedom, and adventure.
Twain himself worked as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi for a few years. A steamboat pilot needed a vast knowledge of the ever-changing river to be able to stop at any of the hundreds of ports and wood-lots along the river banks. Twain meticulously studied 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of the Mississippi for more than two years before he received his steamboat pilot license in 1859. While training, he convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him. Henry died on June 21, 1858, when the steamboat he was working on, the Pennsylvania, exploded.
Read more about this topic: Steamboats Of The Mississippi
Famous quotes by mark twain:
“A man may have no bad habits and have worse.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world—and never will.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“How empty is theory in the presence of fact!”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Nothing is made in vain, but the fly came near it.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“But that’s always the way; it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.... It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer thinks the same.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)