“Mark Twain”was the name used by Samuel Langhome Clemens. He was born in 1834 and died in 1910. His father was a lawyer,but a very poor one. The family was so poor that Samuel did not have much schooling. He had to learn all that he could from the people he met. His father died when Samuel was very young,and then there was even less money than before.
      Many of the men in this part of America worked in the ship on the great River Mississippi,and he did this himself at one time. Where did he get the name“Mark Twain”? It came from the great river itself. It was actually part of the cries used by men working in the ship. When a man shouted to his fellow workers“By the mark twain!”,he meant that the river was“two marks deep”there. Samuel often heard these words when he was young,and he used them as a pen name all his life.
      During his work on the Mississippi he met travelers of all kinds,and this helped him a great deal when he started writing. When the war started,Samuel left there for Nevada with his brother. Later,he became a gold miner,but he never made much money at the time. He soon saw that life in the gold mines was not for him. He then tried writing for the newspapers in Nevada,and this seemed more hopeful. He found that he could write.
      Samuel went to Europe in 1867 and later got married there. He then spent most of his time writing. He is now always known as Mark Twain,and many people do not even know that his family name was Clemens. He became the greatest American writer of the time,because he could make his readers laugh—a thing which few writers can do.