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[201] The riverboatman's cry was "mark twain" or, more fully, "by the mark twain", meaning "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]"; that is, "The water is 12 feet (3.7 m) deep and it is safe to pass." Twain said that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In Life on the Mississippi, Twain wrote:
The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim's Progress is a travel book by American author Mark Twain. [2] Published in 1869, it humorously chronicles what Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered steamship Quaker City (formerly USS Quaker City) through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American travelers in 1867.
A Tramp Abroad is a work of travel literature, including a mixture of autobiography and fictional events, by American author Mark Twain, published in 1880.The book details a journey by the author, with his friend Harris (a character created for the book, and based on his closest friend, Joseph Twichell), through central and southern Europe.
To Twain, there was no reason for concepts such as a fish's scale having a feminine gender but a fishwife, an actual female, lacking any. When Twain translates the "Tale of the Fishwife and its Sad Fate", he expresses feelings of anger that result from his attempt to learn the language: [10] It is a bleak Day.
In 1880, George Gebbie suggested to Mark Twain that he publish an anthology of humorous works. The idea evolved into a project financed by Clemens to produce an anthology of American humor with himself as editor and Howells and Clark assisting. Clemens did the least work on the project but remained in control and had the final say in everything.
Twain was practically bankrupt in 1894 due to investing heavily into the failed Paige Compositor. In an attempt to extricate himself from debt of $100,000 (equivalent of about $2,975,000 in 2020) he undertook a tour of the British Empire in 1895 at age 60, a route chosen to provide numerous opportunities for lectures in English.
In this chapter, Twain recounts having his word discounted since he was young. Somewhere between the ages of 7 and 12, he believes his mother learned the art of interpreting his stories. Twain quotes her by saying, "I discount him thirty percent for embroidery, and what is left is perfect and priceless truth, without a flaw in it anywhere."
James Fenimore Cooper in an 1822 portrait. Everett Emerson (in Mark Twain: A Literary Life) wrote that the essay is "possibly the author's funniest". [6] Joseph Andriano, in The Mark Twain Encyclopedia, argued that Twain "Imposed the standards of Realism on Romance" and that this incongruity is a major source of the humor in the essay.