Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, as Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Mark Twain was just a pen name acquired from a river boat. On river boats, one member of the crew always stood near the railing measuring the depth of the water with a long cord which had flags spaced six feet apart. When the crewman saw the flags disappear he would call out "Mark One!" for one fathom and for two fathoms he called out "Mark Twain!" Two fathoms meant safe clearance for river boats, so Sam Clemens chose a name which not only recalled his life on the river but which also had a reassuring "all's well" meaning.

The beginning of his life was unpromising. His family was a good one but its circumstances were reduced and its environment was discouraging. His father, John Marshall Clemens, a lawyer by profession and a merchant by vocation, had brought his family to Florida from Jamestown, Tennessee, like the manner of Judge Hawkins in The Gilded Age. Florida was a small town then, a vi

After having children and settling down Clemens devoted himself to writing novels and sketches, and performing the occasional lecture. It was the period of Clemens' greatest literary output.

He remained with Ament until his brother Orion bought out a small paper in Hannibal in 1850. The paper, in time, was moved into a part of the Clemens home, and the two brothers ran it, the younger setting most of the type. A still younger brother, Henry, entered the office as an apprentice. The Hannibal Journal was no great paper from the beginning, and it did not improve with time. Still, it managed to survive -- country papers nearly always manage to survive -- year after year, bringing in some sort of return. It was on this paper that young Sam Clemens began his writings -- burlesque, as a rule, of local characters and conditions -- usually published in his brother's absence; generally resulting in trouble on his return. Yet they made the paper sell, and if Orion had but realized his brother's talent he might have turned it into capital even then.

llage of twenty-one houses located on Salt River, but Judge Clemens, as he was usually called, believed in its future. He believed that Salt River would eventually be made navigable and 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. (Magill, 1991, P 1954)

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 c

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Approximate Word count = 1136
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)