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Mark Twain….a la Shmoop If you really want to know about Mark Twain, [Huckleberry Finn wearing a straw hat]

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I figure I’m the best one to tell you.

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I warrant me and Tom Sawyer, we’re probably the finest things he ever done thunk up, anyways.

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And Tom said he had better things to do than sit around all day, talkin’ about Mr. Twain. [Tom watching someone paint a fence]

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So I reckoned if it was between this and the Aunt Sally tryin’ to learn me about Moses,

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Noah, and all those other dead people, I may as well do this. [A mom talking to her kid in bed]

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I don’t take no stock in dead people.

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...‘Ceptin Mr. Twain, there anyways.

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The first thing you need to know about Mr. Twain is he’s a darned liar.

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His name ain’t Mark Twain at all. [Birth certificate for Samuel Langhorn Clemens]

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He was actually called Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

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He only started callin’ himself Mark Twain because that’s what steamboat pilots would

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holler out when the river was safe to navigate. [Clemens looking at a steam boat]

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Seems silly to me, but I ‘spose I’m called Huckleberry, so I ain’t got no room to talk... [Huckleberry wearing a straw hat]

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Anyway.

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Mr. Twain was born on November 30th, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, but him and his family

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moved to Hannibal, Missouri right about three years after. [Hannibal circled on a map]

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Hannibal’s right there on the Mississippi River, so Mr. Twain would see all sorts of

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steamboats comin’ and a-goin’.

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Reckon you could say it’s there that Mr. Twain first fell in love with the mighty Mississippi. [Mark Twain looking out onto the Mississippi]

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When he was twenty-two, he decided to make a livin’ on the river, and I reckon he heard

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so many good yarns from travellin’ folk that he stayed put ‘til the Civil War put

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him out of the job.

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Mr. Twain up and lit out for the West, settlin’ first in Nevada, then in San Francisco. [Mark Twain's head moving across the map to San Fransisco]

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All that movin’ around gave him an idea for a story, “Jim Smiley and his Jumping

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Frog”, and it proved to be a mighty success. [The Celebrated Jumping Frog book]

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Matter of fact, some folks started believin’ that Mr. Twain was a first-rate storyteller

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and that he was definin’ the “American sense of humor”, whatever that means. [Three smartly dressed men talking]

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I ain’t a-gonna disagree with the storyteller part, though.

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He did a right good job tellin’ ‘bout me and Tom.

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Sure, there were things that he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

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Anyway.

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Writing success ain’t the only thing that came out of Mr. Twain’s travels. [Mark Twain telling someone a story]

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On one of this wanderings, he saw a photograph of a Miss Olivia “Livy” Langdon and got [Mark Twain looking at the picture]

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a powerful need to meet her.

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Well, he did, they took a mighty liking to each other.

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By 1870 they had run off and got married, which I reckon is sweet, if you care for that [Mark Twain getting married to the picture of Miss Langdon]

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sort of thing, anyway.

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Now that I done and got all that romantical stuff out of the way…

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I reckon Mr. Twain was just as popular in his day as he is now, on account of his books [Mark Twain taking a class]

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and lectures.

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And after he went and wrote his first book in 1869, The Innocents Abroad, people started

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talkin’.

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See, folks thought Mr. Twain was right funny, and that made him something of a celebrity. [Mark Twain on stage in front of a microphone]

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And in 1876, he wrote a book about my friend Tom called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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‘Spose it was warm-up for the real interestin’ story to come.

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Anyway, Tom was meant to be like Mr. Twain, and all the adventures we got up to was meant [Mark Twain looking at a drawing of Tom Sawyer]

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to be like his childhood.

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And turns out, people liked reading about our adventures.

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Readin’ about an idyllic American town tickled folks fancies and made Mr. Twain even more [Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer stood in front of river]

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famous.

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Widow Douglas learned me the word idyllic, by the way, and I warn’t be sorry for it,

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since I gone and used it now.

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which Mr. Twain wrote in 1885, was a mighty-big [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn book]

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success.

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Folks were real impressed with the way Mr. Twain done and tackled big issues, like racism

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and bigotry, which pretty near means “not getting along with folks who are different [Man in a segregated bathroom]

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than us”, or so the Widow Douglas said.

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I reckon I don’t see what the fuss was––Jim and me were just two fellows drifting down [Huckleberry Finn and Jim on a raft]

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the river.

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Ain’t nothing much more than that.

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And best part is, Mr. Twain warn’t the type to sermonize, so The Adventures of...well….Me,

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argued for equality without any preachin’, no sir. [Picture of older Mark Twain]

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Folks started callin’ it the “Great American Novel”, and I won’t lie, that made me

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feel happy and light as a feather, right off.

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And while folks still have some trouble with Mr. Twain usin’ the n-word, I reckon he [Jim in front of the Mississipp looking confused]

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done it so often to show folks how powerful bad a word it was.

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Kinda like holdin’ a look’n’glass up to someone who’s always frowning something

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horrible and showing them how right miserable ugly they look. [Woman looking miserably at a mirror]

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Aunt Sally says that ain’t a nice comparison, but I warn’t be sorry for it.

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I reckon you’re thinkin’ Mr. Twain had a right easy life, but that ain’t the case.

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Mr. Twain had some hardships with money.

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I hain’t got a lot of it, but Mr. Twain, I reckon he had less. [Mark Twain begging in an alley]

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He made some business investments that I warrant were as bad as a body could make, and because

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of it, ended up owing folks.

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But Mr. Twain was a right-good type, and he started lecturin’ again to pay off some debts.

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Things got considerable sad for Mr. Twain in 1896, when his 24 year old daughter, Susy, [Mark Twain next to his daughter's grave]

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died of meningitis.

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Mr. Twain was real close with her, so I ain’t a-going to try and imagine how hard that was, [Family picture of Susy's eyes crossed out]

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‘specially seeing as he had already lost his two year old boy, Langon back in 1872.

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In 1904, Mr. Twain’s lovely wife, Livy, died, and I still ain’t a-going to imagine [Livy's picture with her eyes crossed out]

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it, ‘cause I don’t think I can stand it.

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And if things warn’t hard enough, Mr. Twain’s 19 year old daughter Jean died in 1909 after [Mark Twain next to all his family's graves]

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a havin’ a seizure.

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On account of the fact I’m writin’ this, I ain’t a-going to allow no such miserable [Family picture with only one person still alive]

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doings to go no further.

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Even though all that loss made Mr. Twain a powerful lonely man, he did his best to keep

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cheerful, and still made public appearances now and again.

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But on April 9th, 1910, Mr. Twain died of heart failure.

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I reckon I can’t say nothin’ for sure, but I’ve come to think that maybe it was [Mark Twain collapses]

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a broken heart.

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I reckon Mr. Twain wouldn’t like it much if I ended on such sad stuff, so before I

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go and end this, I got something to say.

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A body don’t meet many men who knowed America as well as Mr. Twain did. [Mark Twain stood in front of a map of the US]

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He knowed what made folks laugh and he knowed how to tackle problems without sermonizing, [Preacher at the front of a church]

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which I’m right grateful for––I ain’t one for sermonizing.

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But what Mr. Twain did best was tell stories.

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And I reckon that’s how folks will remember him, and that does a body good. [Mark Twain telling a story to a man]

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‘Suppose there ain’t nothing more to write, and I’m rotten glad of it.

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If I’d a knowed what a trouble this would be, I wouldn’t a tackled it.

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Tom always did get out of things mighty easy. [Tom smiling]

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