MARK TWAIN - YEARS IN THE MAKING

[CROWN COUNCIL]

One of the things that was years in the making was changing the name of famous author and entertainer, Samuel Clemens, to Mark Twain. The process of this contains many inspiring lessons.

Sam was number four in a family of five children and was born frail and undernourished in a frontier town on the Missouri River. The year was 1835. As was the custom in those days, he was sent at age 12 to work as a live-in newspaper apprentice. In the process, he developed an interest in writing and by age 16 he was writing articles for the Boston and Philadelphia newspapers. He had several opportunities to settle into a career as a typesetter, printer, and even as a licensed pilot of river boats. All the while, however, he found his greatest interest in writing.

He often used pen names to go with the articles he submitted to newspapers. One such name was Mark Twain which was a term he heard often as a river boat pilot. It identified a river water depth of 12 feet which was as shallow as the river boat could tolerate without being grounded. On the occasion when he signed Mark Twain to a newsy article which appeared in the local newspaper, it stuck. Sam liked the name and decided to adopted it. It was soon the only name he used for his writings.

After working in Hawaii as a correspondent for a Sacramento newspaper, he discovered that his writings were being resold around the country. Seeing this as an opportunity, he organized a very successful lecture series and took it across the country. As if that were not occupation enough, he spent endless hours writing, and published Tom Sawyer and The Prince and the Pauper. When he felt as if his imagination was going dry, he would travel and his brain would regenerate. One regeneration produced Huckelbury Finn which was the first book published by the publishing company he founded.

Along the way he fell in love and married Olivia Langdon. Next was a move to England that started a world tour where he received a celebrity welcome wherever he went. Interestingly, he was known ever after as Mark Twain even while receiving a Doctor of Letters from Oxford University.

Mark Twain left us with an outstanding example of discovering a talent, developing it with determination, and using it to entertain and bring joy to endless numbers throughout the world. He surely made the best of his early years in the making.