Mark Twain had been a celebrity for a good many years before he could be persuaded to regard himself as anything more than an accident, a news-writer to whom distinction had come as a matter of good f...

In this Autobiography I shall keep in mind the fact that I am speaking from the grave. I am literally speaking from the grave, because I shall be dead when the book issues from the press. I speak from...

Note.⁠—The various divisions and chapters of this work, in accordance with the author’s wish, are arranged in the order in which they were written, regardless of the chronology of events. I will const...

The monster tract of land which our family own in Tennessee was purchased by my father a little over forty years ago. He bought the enormous area of seventy-five thousand acres at one purchase. The en...

The monster tract of land which our family own in Tennessee was purchased by my father a little over forty years ago. He bought the enormous area of seventy-five thousand acres at one purchase. The en...

I was born the 30th of November, 1835, in the almost invisible village of Florida, Monroe County, Missouri. I suppose Florida had less than three hundred inhabitants. It had two streets, each a couple...

The first time I ever saw General Grant was in the fall or winter of 1866 at one of the receptions at Washington, when he was general of the army. I merely saw and shook hands with him along with the ...

The first time I ever saw General Grant was in the fall or winter of 1866 at one of the receptions at Washington, when he was general of the army. I merely saw and shook hands with him along with the ...

Early in 1884, or late in 1883, if my memory serves me, I called on General Grant with Yung Wing, late Chinese minister at Washington, to introduce Wing and let him lay before General Grant a proposit...

Howells wrote me that his old father, who was well along in the seventies, was in great distress about his poor little consulate up in Quebec. Somebody, not being satisfied with the degree of poverty ...

I want to set down somewhat of a history of General Grant’s Memoirs. By way of preface I will make a remark or two indirectly connected therewith. During the Garfield campaign Grant threw the whole we...

I will make a diversion here, and get back upon my track again later. While I was away with G. W. Cable, giving public readings in the theaters, lecture halls, skating rinks, jails, and churches of th...

July 4, 1885.⁠—General Grant is still living this morning. Many a person between the two oceans lay hours awake last night listening for the booming of the fire bells which should speak to a nation in...

This episode has now spread itself over more than one-fifth of my life⁠—a considerable stretch of time, as I am now fifty-five years old. Ten or eleven years ago, Dwight Buell, a jeweler, called at ou...

… So much for the earlier days, and the New England branch of the Clemenses.12 The other brother settled in the South and is remotely responsible for me. He has collected his reward generations ago, w...

… So much for the earlier days, and the New England branch of the Clemenses.12 The other brother settled in the South and is remotely responsible for me. He has collected his reward generations ago, w...

This was my mother. When she died, in October, 1890, she was well along in her eighty-eighth year, a mighty age, a well-contested fight for life for one who at forty was so delicate of body as to be a...

This was in 1849. I was fourteen years old, then. We were still living in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, in the new “frame” house built by my father five years before. That is, s...

It was back in those far-distant days⁠—1848 or ’49⁠—that Jim Wolf came to us. He was from a hamlet thirty or forty miles back in the country, and he brought all his native sweetnesses and gentlenesses...

When I was turned twenty I wandered to Cincinnati, and was there several months. Our boardinghouse crew was made up of commonplace people of various ages and both sexes. They were full of bustle, friv...

I remember Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby (Locke) very well. When the Civil War began he was on the staff of the Toledo Blade, an old and prosperous and popular weekly newspaper. He let fly a Nasby letter a...

He was a Californian. I probably knew him in San Francisco in the early days⁠—about 1865⁠—when I was a newspaper reporter, and Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Charles Warren Stoddard and Prentice Mulford ...

February 3.⁠—Lectured for the benefit of a charity last night, in the Börsendorfersaal. Just as I was going on the platform a messenger delivered to me an envelope with my name on it, and this written...

I went in the eight-o’clock train to Vienna, to see the procession. It was a stroke of luck, for at the last moment I was feeling lazy and was minded not to go. But when I reached the station, five mi...

May 6.⁠ ⁠… I do not find that the repetition of an important word a few times⁠—say, three or four times⁠—in a paragraph troubles my ear if clearness of meaning is best secured thereby. But tautologica...

It happened in London; not recently, and yet not very many years ago. An acquaintance had proposed to himself a certain labor of love, and when he told me about it I was interested. His idea was to ha...

Dear Mr. X: I find on my desk the first two pages of Miss Z’s translation, with your emendations marked in them. Thank you for sending them. I have examined the first page of my amended Introduction a...

Finally in Florence, in 1904, I hit upon the right way to do an Autobiography: Start it at no particular time of your life; wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing which...

Finally in Florence, in 1904, I hit upon the right way to do an Autobiography: Start it at no particular time of your life; wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing which...

This villa is situated three or four miles from Florence, and has several names. Some call it the Villa Reale di Quarto, some call it the Villa Principessa, some call it the Villa Granduchessa; this m...

To get to that corner room with its bookcase freighted with twenty dollars’ worth of ancient Blackwood and modern spiritualistic literature, I have passed through⁠—undescribed⁠—a room that is my bedro...

A quarter of a century or so ago I was visiting John Hay, now Secretary of State, at Whitelaw Reid’s house in New York, which Hay was occupying for a few months while Reid was absent on a holiday in E...

I will begin with a note upon the dedication. I wrote the book in the months of March and April, 1868, in San Francisco. It was published in August, 1869. Three years afterward Mr. Goodman of Virginia...

…19 But it was on a bench in Washington Square that I saw the most of Louis Stevenson. It was an outing that lasted an hour or more and was very pleasant and sociable. I had come with him from his hou...

Mr. Rogers has been visiting the witness stand periodically in Boston for more than a year now. For eleven years he has been my closest and most valuable friend. His wisdom and steadfastness saved my ...

Since he passed from life many months have gone by, and still I have not found myself competent to put into words my feelings for him and my estimate of him. For he is as yet too near, the restraint o...

Mr. Clemens (to Mr. Paine): The more I think of this [the biography], the more nearly impossible the project seems. The difficulties of it grow upon me all the time. For instance, the idea of blocking...

Mr. Clemens (to Mr. Paine): The more I think of this [the biography], the more nearly impossible the project seems. The difficulties of it grow upon me all the time. For instance, the idea of blocking...

I have to make several speeches within the next two or three months, and I have been obliged to make a few speeches during the last two months⁠—and all of a sudden it is borne in upon me that people w...

My seventieth birthday arrived recently⁠—that is to say, it arrived on the 30th of November, but Colonel Harvey21 was not able to celebrate it on that date because that date had been preempted by the ...

The piety ending was used also by Franklin and Johnson, and possibly by the rest of the club⁠—most likely by the rest of the club. But I recall that that ending was a custom with Franklin and with Joh...

Reverend Doctor Burton swung his leonine head around, focused me with his eye, and said: “When was it that this happened?” “In June, ’58.” “It is a good many years ago. Have you told it several times ...

Washington, Jan. 10.⁠—Mrs. Minor Morris, who on Thursday was dragged from the White House, is tonight in a critical condition. She seemed to be on the road to recovery on Saturday, and her physicians ...

That incident made a strong impression upon me. I believed I had made a discovery⁠—the discovery already indicated⁠—the discovery of the wide difference in interest between “news” and “history”; that ...

With considerable frequency, since then, I have tried to get publishers to make the experiment of such a magazine, but I was never successful. I was never able to convince a publisher that The Back Nu...

With considerable frequency, since then, I have tried to get publishers to make the experiment of such a magazine, but I was never successful. I was never able to convince a publisher that The Back Nu...

Senator Tillman of South Carolina has been making a speech⁠—day before yesterday⁠—of frank and intimate criticism of the President⁠—the President of the United States, as he calls him; whereas, so far...

In those early days dueling suddenly became a fashion in the new territory of Nevada, and by 1864 everybody was anxious to have a chance in the new sport, mainly for the reason that he was not able to...

There was a great mass meeting at Carnegie Hall last night, in the interest of Booker Washington’s Tuskegee Educational Institute in the South, and the interest which New York people feel in that Inst...

There was a great mass meeting at Carnegie Hall last night, in the interest of Booker Washington’s Tuskegee Educational Institute in the South, and the interest which New York people feel in that Inst...

Concerning Man⁠—he is too large a subject to be treated as a whole; so I will merely discuss a detail or two of him at this time. I desire to contemplate him from this point of view⁠—this premise: tha...

It is plain, I think, that this old article was written about twenty-two years ago, and that it followed by about three or four months the defeat of James G. Blaine for the Presidency and the election...

Joe was not quite present. It was not etiquette for him to be within hearing of the business talks concerning the church’s affairs. He remained in the seclusion of the church parlor, ready to be consu...

Tomorrow will be the thirty-sixth anniversary of our marriage. My wife passed from this life one year and eight months ago, in Florence, Italy, after an unbroken illness of twenty-two months’ duration...

It explained that Susy was slightly ill⁠—nothing of consequence. But we were disquieted and began to cable for later news. This was Friday. All day no answer⁠—and the ship to leave Southampton next da...

His was a sweet and winning face⁠—as beautiful a face as I have ever known. Reposeful, gentle, benignant⁠—the face of a saint at peace with all the world and placidly beaming upon it the sunshine of l...

When Susy was twelve and a half years old, I took to the platform again, after a long absence from it, and raked the country for four months in company with George W. Cable. Early in November we gave ...

When Susy was thirteen, and was a slender little maid with plaited tails of copper-tinged brown hair down her back, and was perhaps the busiest bee in the household hive, by reason of the manifold stu...

Along one side of the library, in the Hartford home, the bookshelves joined the mantelpiece⁠—in fact, there were shelves on both sides of the mantelpiece. On these shelves, and on the mantelpiece, sto...

Susy’s remark about my strong language troubles me, and I must go back to it. All through the first ten years of my married life I kept a constant and discreet watch upon my tongue while in the house,...

From Susy’s Biography Clara and I are sure that papa played the trick on Grandma, about the whipping, that is related in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”: “Hand me that switch.” The switch hovered in th...

I recall several of them without much difficulty. In Hannibal, when I was about fifteen, I was for a short time a Cadet of Temperance, an organization which probably covered the whole United States du...

From Susy’s Biography Soon papa came back East and papa and mamma were married. It sounds easy and swift and unobstructed, but that was not the way of it. It did not happen in that smooth and comforta...

From Susy’s Biography Papa wrote mamma a great many beautiful love letters when he was engaged to mamma, but mamma says I am too young to see them yet; I asked papa what I should do for I didn’t (know...

From Susy’s Biography While Langdon was a little baby he used to carry a pencil in his little hand, that was his great plaything; I believe he was very seldom seen without one in his hand. When he was...

It is death notices like this that enable me to realize in some sort how long I have lived. They drive away the haze from my life’s road and give me glimpses of the beginning of it⁠—glimpses of things...

But I am wandering far from Susy’s Biography. I remember that I was about to explain a remark which I had been making about Susy’s grandfather Langdon having just barely escaped once the good luck⁠—or...

I have wandered far from Susy’s chat about her grandfather, but that is no matter. In this autobiography it is my purpose to wander whenever I please and come back when I get ready. I have now come ba...

During the previous year or year and a half, Mr. Langdon had suffered some severe losses through a relative, an annex of the family by marriage, who had paved Memphis, Tennessee, with the wooden pavem...

From Susy’s Biography Papa made arrangements to read at Vassar College the 1st of May, and I went with him. We went by way of New York City. Mamma went with us to New York and stayed two days to do so...

I was always heedless. I was born heedless, and therefore I was constantly, and quite unconsciously, committing breaches of the minor proprieties, which brought upon me humiliations which ought to hav...

I was very anxious to keep him in his place, but at first I could not think of any way to help him, for I was a mugwump. We, the mugwumps, a little company made up of the unenslaved of both parties, t...

From Susy’s Biography The next day mamma planned to take the four-o’clock car back to Hartford. We rose quite early that morning and went to the Vienna Bakery and took breakfast there. From there we w...

For thirty years, I have received an average of a dozen letters a year from strangers who remember me, or whose fathers remember me as boy and young man. But these letters are almost always disappoint...

I am talking of a time sixty years ago and upward. I remember the names of some of those schoolmates, and, by fitful glimpses, even their faces rise before me for a moment⁠—only just long enough to be...

We will stop talking about my schoolmates of sixty years ago, for the present, and return to them later. They strongly interest me, and I am not going to leave them alone permanently. Strong as that i...

The ominous paralysis continues. There has been a slight sprinkle⁠—an exceedingly slight sprinkle⁠—in the correspondence columns, of angry rebukes of the President for calling this cowardly massacre a...

Yesterday, in the afternoon, I talked to the West Side Young Men’s Christian Association in the Majestic Theater. The audience was to have been restricted to the membership, or at least to the members...

We will return to those school children of sixty years ago. I recall Mary Miller. She was not my first sweetheart, but I think she was the first one that furnished me a broken heart. I fell in love wi...

Certainly mental telegraphy is an industry which is always silently at work⁠—oftener than otherwise, perhaps, when we are not suspecting that it is affecting our thought. A few weeks ago when I was di...

From Susy’s Biography I stopped in the middle of mamma’s early history to tell about our tripp to Vassar because I was afraid I would forget about it, now I will go on where I left off. Some time afte...

A good many years ago Mrs. Clemens used to keep as curiosities some of the odd and strange superscriptions that decorated letters that came to me from strangers in out-of-the-way corners of the earth....

Baby Advice in a Car Old Man Got It, Five-year-old Gave It, Mother Said, “Shut Up” A benevolent-looking old man clung to a strap in a crowded Broadway car bound uptown Saturday afternoon. In a corner ...

I have allowed Higbie to assist the Herald man’s spelling and make it harmonize with his own. He has done it well and liberally and without prejudice. To my mind he has improved it, for I have had an ...

My brother’s experience was another conspicuous example of my scheme’s efficiency. I will talk about that by and by. But for the moment my interest suddenly centers itself upon his personality, moved ...

But I am in error. Orion did not come to Hannibal until two or three years after my father’s death. He remained in St. Louis. He was a journeyman printer and earning wages. Out of his wage he supporte...

I will drop Orion for the present and return and pick him up by and by. For the moment I am more interested in the matters of today than I am in Orion’s adventures and mine of forty-five years ago. Th...

Promotion For Barnes, Whom Tillman Berated Had Woman Ejected from White House; to be Postmaster. Merritt Gets New Place Present Postmaster at Washington to be Made Collector at Niagara⁠—Platt Not Cons...

Mrs. Morris Case in Senate. Nomination of Barnes Opens Way for an Inquiry. (Special to The New York Times.) Washington, April 3.⁠—Criticism of the appointment of Mr. Roosevelt’s Assistant Secretary, B...

The other day I furnished a sentiment in response to a man’s request⁠—to wit: “The noblest work of God?” Man. “Who found it out?” Man. I thought it was very good, and smart, but the other person didn’...

There were several candidates for all the offices in the gift of the new State of Nevada save two⁠—United States Senator (Governor Nye) and Secretary of State (Orion Clemens). Nye was certain to get a...

This house is No. 21 Fifth Avenue, and stands on the corner of Ninth Street within a couple of hundred yards of Washington Square. It was built fifty or sixty years ago by Renwick, the architect of th...

I think the poultry experiment lasted only a year, possibly two years. It had then cost me six thousand dollars. It is my impression that Orion was not able to give the farm away, and that his father-...

This morning’s mail brings me from France a letter from a French friend of mine, enclosing this New York cablegram: Mark Twain Interdit New York, 27 mars. (Par dépêche de notre correspondant particuli...

When Huck Finn was flung out of the Concord Public Library twenty-one years ago, a number of letters of sympathy and indignation reached me⁠—mainly from children, I am obliged to admit⁠—and I kept som...

I am not glancing through my books to find out what I have said in them. I refrain from glancing through those books for two reasons: first⁠—and this reason always comes first in every matter connecte...

Most of Mark Twain’s work up to this time, Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, etc., had been of an autobiographical nature. Also, as early as 1870 he had jotted down an occasional remin...