Mark Twain remembers...

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, "Mark Twain," has been called “the father of American literature.” In his lifetime, he enjoyed great popularity and was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

Born in Missouri on November 30, 1835, Twain was quite familiar with the institution of slavery and explored it in his writing. On the eve of a historic presidential race in which we Americans may surely elect our first black president, let us discover more about Mark Twain and his undeniable worldview.

What follows are three earliest memories from Mark Twain. . . in his own words.

1.
What becomes of the multitudinous photographs which one’s mind takes of people? Out of the million which my camera must have taken of this first and closest friend, only one clear and strongly defined one of early date remains. It dates back forty-seven years; she was forty years old then, and I was eight. She held me by the hand and we were kneeling by the bedside of my brother, two years older than I, who lay dead, and the tears were flowing down her cheeks unchecked. And she was moaning. That dumb sign of anguish was perhaps new to me, since it made upon me a very strong impression – an impression which holds its place still with the picture which it helped to intensify and make memorable.

2.
There [is] …one small incident of my boyhood days …and it must have meant a good deal to me or it would not have stayed in my memory, clear and sharp, vivid and shadowless, all these slow-drifting years. We had a little slave boy whom we hired from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the eastern shore of Maryland and had been brought away from his family and his friends halfway across the American continent and sold. He was a cherry spirit, innocent and gentle, and the noisiest creature that ever was, perhaps. All day long he was singing, whistling, yelling, whooping, laughing – it was maddening, devastating, unendurable. At last, one day, I lost all my temper and went raging to my mother and said Sandy had been singing for an hour without a single break and I couldn’t stand it and wouldn’t she please shut him up. The tears came into her eyes and her lip trembled and she said something like this:

“Poor thing, when he sings it shows that he is not remembering and that comforts me; but when he is still I am afraid he is thinking and I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing I must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older you would understand me; then that friendless child’s noise would make you glad.”

…Sandy’s noise was not a trouble to me any more.

3.
My first visit to the school was when I was seven. A strapping girl of fifteen, in the customary sunbonnet and calico dress, asked me if I “used tobacco” – meaning did I chew it. I said no. It aroused her scorn. She reported me to the crowd and said:

“Here’s a boy seven years old who can't chaw tobacco.”

By the looks and comments which this produced I realized that I was a degraded object; I was cruelly ashamed of myself. I determined to reform. But I only made myself sick; I was not able to learn to chew tobacco. I learned to smoke fairly well but that did not conciliate anybody and I remained a poor thing and characterless. I long to be respected but I was never able to rise.

Taken from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

Please vote for your selection of Mark Twain's worldview in the poll to the right...

1. To love is to change. (37% of voters)

2. To learn is to grow. (12%)

3. To chaw is to spit.

4. To love is to lose. (50%)