From 1847 until 1853 Sam Clemens served as apprentice and typesetter for various Hannibal newspapers, finally ending up as assistant to his brother, Orion, whose failures were as persistent as John Marshall's. As Orion bankrupted journalism along the Mississippi-with his ownership of the Hannibal Western Union and Journal, the Muscatine Journal, and the Keokuk Daily Post— Sam absorbed that brand of frontier humor called the humor of the Old Southwest, a staple as filler for small newspapers along the river. Sam's own first, inept, comic story, "The Dandy Frightening the Squatter," an amateurish version of such humor, appeared in the Carpet-Bag in May 1852.
In 1853 Sam Clemens, not yet eighteen, broke loose from the family ties that Jane Clemens struggled to preserve. That year he went to St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia; in 1854 he visited Washington, D.C.; in 1855 and 1856 he lived in St. Louis; and in 1857 he lived briefly in Cincinnati. He recorded his compulsive wanderings in travel letters, which Orion published in whatever newspaper he owned at the time.
This is a free page. This page contains 172 words. This
biography contains 12,083 words (approx. 40 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Mark Twain Access Pass.
