Wilson's Fourteen Points
...the family should help somewhat in the crises. At the age of twelve, he worked as an apprentice to a printer named Ament, where he remained until his brother Orion bought a small paper in Hannibal in 1850. The Hannibal Journal was no great paper from the start and did not improve with time. By1853, Sam Clemens grew tired and yearned for the wider horizon of the world. He told his family that he was going to St. Louis, but kept on to New York. There he found work at his trade. Sam Clemens had become restless in this profession. In April 1857, at the age of twenty-one, he boarded the steamer Paul Jones at Cincinnati. Before he reached New Orleans on his way to South America, he persuaded the steamer pilot, Horace Bixby, to take him on as his cub. He ended up working as a riverboat pilot for two and a half years. When the Civil War broke out, Clemens’ boat was put into the Confederate service and sent up the Red River. Faced with no occupation, he took a steamer headed for the North, the last one before the blockade closed. With nothing to do, Clemens decided to go to Nevada with his brother, Orion. There he supported himself as a journalist and lecturer. On one of his assignments he was sent to report that the Legislature convened at Carson City. This would be the first time he began signing his articles “Mark Twain.” This river term was used in making soundings, which he recalled from his steamer piloting days. In 1864, Twain left for California, and worked in San Francisco as a reporter. While employed there he visited Hawaii as a correspondent for the Sacramento Union, publishing letters on his trip and giving lectures. Twain wrote “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” in 1865, which made him an international celebrity. The year 1868 was special for Mark Twain. While on a trip to Elmira, New York he met a young man by the name of Charles Langdon. One day he saw a picture of this young man’s sister, Olivia Langdon, then a girl of twenty-two. He instantly fell in love with the picture. His love for her deepened when he met her in New York on a return trip. He would later adventure out on a world tour, traveling in France and Italy. These experiences were recorded in 1869 in The Innocents Abroad, which gained him yet more popularity as well as poked fun at both American and European prejudices and manners. This wonderful success as a writer finally gave Twain enough financial security to marry Olivia Langdon. They were wed on February 2, 1870. They moved the next year to Hartford, Connecticut, which would become Twains’ home for the rest of his life. Their first year of marriage was a bit unhappy. Their first child, Langdon Clemens, came along in November, but he was never a strong child. In 1872 the child died. In the meantime, Twain had written a second book for the American Publishing Company, Roughing It, published in 1872. In August of the same year he alone made a trip to London, to gather material for a book on England, but he was too much sought after and too continuously feted to do any work. Then, in November, he returned with the purpose of taking Mrs. Clemens and their new baby, Susy, to England the following spring. They sailed in April, 1873, and spent a good portion of the year in England and Scotland. The three returned to America in November. Twain hurried back to London alone to deliver a notable series of lectures under the management of George Dolby, the former managing agent for Charles Dickens. For two months Mark Twain lectured steadily to London audiences – the big Hanover Square rooms always filled. He returned to his family in January 1874. Busily from the years 1876-1884, Twain wrote and published several masterpieces, which would entertain the world, and inspire it with admiration and love for their author. Such books were, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Two of the books during this time, which would become huge favorites among readers, were The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn; both were based off of experiences from his childhood. In 1891 the Hartford house was again closed, this time indefinitely, and the family, now five in number, took up residence in Berlin. Mark Twain now found himself bankrupt, and nearly one hundred thousand dollars in debt (Hoffman, 1997). In an attempt to recover from the bankruptcy, he started a world lecture tour. The tour was one of triumph. High prices and crowded houses prevailed everywhere. Twain visited Australia, New Zealand, India, Ceylon, South Africa, and England. But in that hour of triumph came a heavy blow. Susy Clemens, w...