HOW TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
When writing an autobiography, you focus on three major things: who you are in life, what life means to you and what your outlook on the future is.
"Autobiographies have been written since A.D. 400 when an early Christian leader, Saint Augustine, wrote his." An autobiography is information about one's own life written by that one person. In it, it tells what that person's life is all about. When writing your own autobiography, use interesting facts to explain as much about yourself as you can.
The first things you do when writing an autobiography is start off with a lot of facts about your life; for example, when and where you were born, where you live (city and state), where you go to school and who you live with. You have to give a lot of information so your reader can clearly understand what is going on. Once you have written this introduction, you are ready to start your first paragraph of the autobiography.
Who you are in life?
The best way to start an autobiography is to state your name. When you are writing this paragraph, you usually explain the type of person you are; use facts about yourself such as: have you won any awards? What types of awards have you won? Did you finish school? Do you plan on going to college?
What life means to you?
This is now your second paragraph. In this paragraph you should state how you see life--what does life mean to you. Are you happy or sad? Do you have a lot of friends or just a few? How do you make your school days go by? Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend? What are your favorite places to go on dates? How long have you been dating? If you are involved in a relationship, do you think it will last forever?
What is your outlook on the future?
In this paragraph you should explain what you think the future will be like. Pick a year and explain how it will be but explain it through your eyes. Where will you be? How will you be living? Will you be married? Will there be any kids? Who will you be married to? What is he/she like? How long will you have been together?
Conclusion
The conclusion is the last paragraph of your autobiography and an important one, too. In the conclusion you usually try to re-word the introduction and add some type of closure to bring the whole autobiography together.
AN EXAMPLE OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I was born on a warm, sunny day in June in Sarasota, Florida. I still live in Sarasota, Florida, and I go to school at Booker High School. I live with my mom, Kate; my brother, Jake; and my Aunt Molly. When I was born, my bother was fifteen-months-old and hid under the table from me. Jake is a sweet kid and he would do anything for me, but like all brothers and sisters we fight like cats and dogs. Sometimes when no one was around, Jake would come up to me and bite my toes for no reason. I still love him but only because he is my brother.
Who I am in life.
My name is Sally Friday. I started school when I was six-years-old. I went to kindergarten through fifth grade at Booker Elementary and while I was there, I won an award for perfect attendance. I also won an award for honor roll all four terms. Then I attended Booker Middle School, and there I also won a couple of awards: one for perfect attendance and two for being named Student of the Year--one in sixth grades and the other in eighth grade. I am now a senior at Booker High School. I plan on finishing school and maybe going to a community college.
What life means to me.
Life to me means friends and family who you can trust and who trusts you. I am pretty much on the happy side of life, but like all teens I do I have my "days of." That means I do have some sad days or depressed days. I have a few friends here that sort of look out for me and when I am having a bad day, I have someone here at school to talk to. I make my school days go by thinking of either the next hour or what I will do when I get home or on the weekend. I'm not seeing anyone now but when I did have a boyfriend, our favorite places to go were the movies and out to dinner. Sometimes we went to the beach. Only once we went to an amusement park: Universal Studios. We were together for twenty-nine days and then we broke-up; so no, I don't think it was forever.
What's my outlook on the future?
The year 2018 will make twenty years since I graduated from high school. I think I will probably be still living here in Sarasota. I will be quite comfortable with my living situation, meaning that I will be married to Paul Smith. We will have one child: Linda Teresa Smith, who at that point will be three-years-old and a little devil. Paul is a sweet guy; he will do anything for anyone. He is six feet tall and built well. He has baby blue eyes and blond hair. We will have been together for five years and will be happy together--this is forever.
Conclusion
As I said in the beginning, I was born here in Florida and I've lived here my whole life. I would like to see more of the USA but unfortunately, I don't have any money to leave Florida to go anywhere right now. I hope you have enjoyed reading my life story as much as I have enjoyed writing it for you. Try to get as much as you can out of school; you're only there for twelve years and when you graduate, you're home free. Here's a tip for you to live or try to live by: If you think it, it can be done.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
1.NEWS
Mark Twain play to appear on Broadway03-22-2007Is Mark Twain ready for Broadway? You better believe it. According to producer Bob Boyett, the recently discovered Twain-written play, “Is He Dead?” is scheduled for an October opening on Broadway. In an article featured on Playbill.com, Boyett told reporter Zachary Pincus-Roth that rehearsals are set to begin in September with the play opening at the end of October. This past February, Boyett, along with co-producer Bill Haber, brought on David Ives to rework the long lost Twain play and hired Michael Blakemore to direct. According to the Playbill.com article, the 1898 play was unearthed by scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Professor of English and Director of American Studies at Stanford University, while looking in an archive of Twain's papers at the University of California. The article goes on to state that Boyett obtained rights to the play in the spring of 2003 and it was published that fall.
2.BIOGRAPHY
On Nov. 30, 1835, the small town of Florida, Mo. witnessed the birth of its most famous son. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was welcomed into the world as the sixth child of John Marshall and Jane Lampton Clemens. Little did John and Jane know, their son Samuel would one day be known as Mark Twain - America's most famous literary icon. Approximately four years after his birth, in 1839, the Clemens family moved 35 miles east to the town of Hannibal. A growing port city that lies along the banks of the Mississippi, Hannibal was a frequent stop for steam boats arriving by both day and night from St. Louis and New Orleans. Samuel's father was a judge, and he built a two-story frame house at 206 Hill Street in 1844. As a youngster, Samuel was kept indoors because of poor health. However,
by age nine, he seemed to recover from his ailments and joined the rest of the town's children outside. He then attended a private school in Hannibal.
When Samuel was 12, his father died of pneumonia, and at 13, Samuel left school to become a printer's apprentice. After two short years, he joined his brother Orion's newspaper as a printer and editorial assistant. It was here that young Samuel found he enjoyed writing. At 17, he left Hannibal behind for a printer's job in St. Louis. While in St. Louis, Clemens became a river pilot's apprentice. He became a licensed river pilot in 1858. Clemens' pseudonym, Mark Twain, comes from his days as a river pilot. It is a river term which means two fathoms or 12-feet when the depth of water for a boat is being sounded. "Mark twain" means that is safe to navigate. Because the river trade was brought to a stand still by the Civil War in 1861, Clemens began working as a newspaper reporter for several newspapers all over the United States. In 1870, Clemens married Olivia Langdon, and they had four children, one of whom died in infancy and two who died in their twenties. Their surviving child, Clara, lived to be 88, and had one daughter. Clara's daughter died without having any children, so there are no direct descendants of Samuel Clemens living. Twain began to gain fame when his story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County" appeared in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. Twain's first book, "The Innocents Abroad," was published in 1869, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" in 1876, and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in 1885. He wrote 28 books and numerous short stories, letters and sketches. Mark Twain passed away on April 21, 1910, but has a following still today. His childhood home is open to the public as a museum in Hannibal, and Calavaras County in California holds the Calavaras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee every third weekend in May. Walking tours are given in New York City of places Twain visited near his birthday every year.
3.Works
· fiction
o A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
o A Double Barrelled Detective Story
o A Horse's Tale
o Huckleberry Finn
o Letters from the Earth
o Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
o The $30,000 Bequest
o The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
o The American Claimant
o The Gilded Age
o The Mysterious Stranger
o The Prince and the Pauper
o
o The Tragedy of Pudd'Nhead Wilson
o Tom Sawyer Abroad
o Tom Sawyer, Detective
o
· Non-Fiction
o A Tramp Abroad
o Chapters from My Autobiography
o Christian Science
o Editorial Wild Oats
o Following the Equator
o Is Shakespeare Dead?
o Life on the Mississippi
o Roughing It
o The Innocents Abroad
o
· Short Stories
o A Burlesque Biography
o The Californian's Tale
o A Dog's Tale
o Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale
o The First Writing Machines
o The Five Boons of Life
o A Helpless Situation
o Italian with Grammar
o Italian without a Master
o A Telephonic Conversation
o Was it Heaven? Or Hell?
o 1601
o The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
o A Burlesque Autobiography
o The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut
o How to Tell a Story
o Extracts from Adam's Diary
o Eve's Diary
o The Loves Of Alonzo Fitz Clarence And Rosannah Ethelton
o About Magnanimous-Incident Literature
o The Canvasser's Tale
o An Encounter With An Interviewer
o Rogers
o Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
o The Curious Republic of Gondour
o A Memory
o Dan Murphy
o Curious Relic For Sale
o A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements
o A Royal Compliment
o The Approaching Epidemic
o The European War
o The Wild Man Interviewed
o Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again
o The Stolen White Elephant
o The £1,000,000 Bank Note
o
· Essays
o As Concerns Interpreting The Deity
o At The Shrine Of St. Wagner
o Concerning Tobacco
o The Death Of Jean
o Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
o How To Make History Dates Stick
o The Memorable Assassination
o On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying
o A Scrap Of Curious History
o A Simplified Alphabet
o Taming The Bicycle
o The Turning Point Of My Life
o William Dean Howells
o Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims
o Last Words of Great Men
o The War Prayer
o General Washington's Negro Body-servant
o Wit Inspirations of the "Two-year-olds"
o An Entertaining Article
o A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury
o Amended Obituaries
o A Monument to Adam
o A Humane Word from Satan
o The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English
o Advice to Little Girls
o Post-mortem Poetry
o The Danger of Lying in Bed
o Portrait of King William III
o Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?
o Punch, Brothers, Punch
o The Great Revolution In Pitcairn
o Paris Notes
o Legend Of Sagenfeld, In Germany
o Speech On The Babies
o Speech On The Weather
o Concerning The American Language
o Introductory to 'Memoranda'
o About Smells
o A Couple of Sad Experiences
o The 'Tournament' in A.D. 1870
o The Tone-Imparting Committee
o Our Precious Lunatic
o Paul Bourget
o What is Man?
o
· Poetry
o O Lord, Our Father
4.FAST FACTS
Birth name: Samuel Longhorne ClemensNickname (name change): Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson SnodgrassOccupation: NovelistBirth date: November 30, 1835Birth place: Florida, Mo.Death date: April 21, 1910Death place: Redding, Conn. Burial location: Woodlawn Cemetery, Elmira, N.Y.Spouse: Olivia LangdonChildren: Langdon Clemens, Susy Clemens, Clara Clemens, Jean ClemensDid you know?
Haley's Comet was visible in the sky on the night that Mark Twain was both born and passed away.
Mark Twain published more than 30 books throughout his career.
Hannibal, Mo. served as the inspiration for the fictional town of St. Petersberg in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
As a teenager, Twain worked as an apprentice printer.
As a riverboat pilot, Twain earned from $150 to $250 a month.
During the Civil War, Twain formed a Confederate militia known as the "Marion Rangers." The militia disbanded after approximately two weeks.
Twain left Missouri after his militia disbanded and moved to Nevada. There he worked as a miner.
"Roughing It" describes Twain's journey out West with his brother Orion.
From 1901 until his death in 1910, Twain was vice president of the American Anti-Imperialist League.
"Huckleberry Finn" was ranked as the fifth most frequently challenged book in the United States by the American Library Association.
Prior to adopting Mark Twain as his pen name, Clemens wrote under the pen name Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass for a number of humorous pieces that he contributed to the Keokuk Post.
5.Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:
ADVICE
There are three things which I consider excellent advice. First, don't smoke to access. Second, don't drink to excess. Third, don't marry to excess.
BABIES
Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain't any real difference between triplets and a insurrection.- The Babies speech 1879
Cat
Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.- Notebook, 1894
DANCE
I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases--the dances are precisely the same. You have only to spin around with frightful velocity and steer clear of the furniture. This has a charming and bewildering effect. You catch glimpses of a confused and whirling multitude of people, and above them a row of distracted fiddlers extending entirely around the room. The waltz and the polka are very exhilarating--to use a mild term--amazingly exhilarating.- Territorial Enterprise, Letter 12/12/1862
ECONOMY
It isn't the sum you get, it's how much you can buy with it, that's the important thing; and it's that that tells whether your wages are high in fact or only high in name.- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
FACTS
How empty is theory in the presence of fact!- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
GAMBLING
Illustration from first edition of
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a "flush." It is enough to make one ashamed of one's species.
- quoted in A Bibliography of Mark Twain, Merle Johnson
HABIT
Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
ILLNESS
....as far as being on the verge of being a sick man I don't take any stock in that. I have been on the verge of being an angel all of my life, but it's never happened yet.- Mark Twain, a Biography
JESUS
Jesus died to save men--a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?- Notebook #42
6.Mark twain house
The Mark Twain House
Long celebrated for its apparent whimsy and stylistic idiosyncrasy, the Twain House is more accurately noted as an inspired and sophisticated expression of modernity. In this design, the architect Edward Tuckerman Potter expanded on his earlier Nook Farm house for George and Lilly Warner (built 1870, destroyed c.1960). For Twain however, Potter employed a vibrant palette of painted brick reminiscent of William Butterfield's work in England of the 1860s and traditional chalet designs of the Alsatian region of France.
The Twain house is defined mostly by the variety and unpredictability of its elements. No two elevations are alike; generally symmetrical gables are, upon closer inspection, subtly different in their decorative treatments: various chimneys and towers rise spontaneously in contrast to the calming, broad sweep of the deep porches and porte cochere. The painted brick diaper pattern seems to strain as it contains the shifting surfaces of the walls and the vigorously projecting bays.
This commitment to experimentation is also revealed in the exotic and provocative interiors designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and his partners in Associated Artists. Cultures and styles from around the globe are celebrated and reinterpreted in the dense network of pattern, texture, and color throughout the first floor of the house. Northern Africa, the Far East and India are woven together in a bravura performance of a knowing and elegant eclecticism that helped set a new standard for the Gilded Age.
New technologies were also employed that included a gravity flow heat system, split flues to allow for windows over two fireplaces, and seven bathrooms with flush toilets. In addition, Twain was both proud of, and flummoxed by, his telephone, one of the very first installed in a private home. When combined with his profoundly new way of writing as he advanced his increasingly progressive social and political views, the house is more clearly appreciated as a landmark of modern American thought in the fullest sense.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
1839 - Samuel Clemens moves to Hannibal, Mo.
1867 - Publishes his first book, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."
1869 - Mark Twain publishes "Innocents Abroad" after traveling through Europe and the "Holy Land." The book is considered to be Twain's first best-seller.
1876 - Mark Twain publishes "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."
1882 - Publishes the novel "The Prince and the Pauper."
1884 - Mark Twain publishes his most popular work, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
Feb. 2, 1870 - Mark Twain marries Olivia Langdon
1907 - Twain receives an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.
Mark Twain play to appear on Broadway03-22-2007Is Mark Twain ready for Broadway? You better believe it. According to producer Bob Boyett, the recently discovered Twain-written play, “Is He Dead?” is scheduled for an October opening on Broadway. In an article featured on Playbill.com, Boyett told reporter Zachary Pincus-Roth that rehearsals are set to begin in September with the play opening at the end of October. This past February, Boyett, along with co-producer Bill Haber, brought on David Ives to rework the long lost Twain play and hired Michael Blakemore to direct. According to the Playbill.com article, the 1898 play was unearthed by scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Professor of English and Director of American Studies at Stanford University, while looking in an archive of Twain's papers at the University of California. The article goes on to state that Boyett obtained rights to the play in the spring of 2003 and it was published that fall.
2.BIOGRAPHY
On Nov. 30, 1835, the small town of Florida, Mo. witnessed the birth of its most famous son. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was welcomed into the world as the sixth child of John Marshall and Jane Lampton Clemens. Little did John and Jane know, their son Samuel would one day be known as Mark Twain - America's most famous literary icon. Approximately four years after his birth, in 1839, the Clemens family moved 35 miles east to the town of Hannibal. A growing port city that lies along the banks of the Mississippi, Hannibal was a frequent stop for steam boats arriving by both day and night from St. Louis and New Orleans. Samuel's father was a judge, and he built a two-story frame house at 206 Hill Street in 1844. As a youngster, Samuel was kept indoors because of poor health. However,
by age nine, he seemed to recover from his ailments and joined the rest of the town's children outside. He then attended a private school in Hannibal.
When Samuel was 12, his father died of pneumonia, and at 13, Samuel left school to become a printer's apprentice. After two short years, he joined his brother Orion's newspaper as a printer and editorial assistant. It was here that young Samuel found he enjoyed writing. At 17, he left Hannibal behind for a printer's job in St. Louis. While in St. Louis, Clemens became a river pilot's apprentice. He became a licensed river pilot in 1858. Clemens' pseudonym, Mark Twain, comes from his days as a river pilot. It is a river term which means two fathoms or 12-feet when the depth of water for a boat is being sounded. "Mark twain" means that is safe to navigate. Because the river trade was brought to a stand still by the Civil War in 1861, Clemens began working as a newspaper reporter for several newspapers all over the United States. In 1870, Clemens married Olivia Langdon, and they had four children, one of whom died in infancy and two who died in their twenties. Their surviving child, Clara, lived to be 88, and had one daughter. Clara's daughter died without having any children, so there are no direct descendants of Samuel Clemens living. Twain began to gain fame when his story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County" appeared in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. Twain's first book, "The Innocents Abroad," was published in 1869, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" in 1876, and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in 1885. He wrote 28 books and numerous short stories, letters and sketches. Mark Twain passed away on April 21, 1910, but has a following still today. His childhood home is open to the public as a museum in Hannibal, and Calavaras County in California holds the Calavaras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee every third weekend in May. Walking tours are given in New York City of places Twain visited near his birthday every year.
3.Works
· fiction
o A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
o A Double Barrelled Detective Story
o A Horse's Tale
o Huckleberry Finn
o Letters from the Earth
o Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
o The $30,000 Bequest
o The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
o The American Claimant
o The Gilded Age
o The Mysterious Stranger
o The Prince and the Pauper
o
o The Tragedy of Pudd'Nhead Wilson
o Tom Sawyer Abroad
o Tom Sawyer, Detective
o
· Non-Fiction
o A Tramp Abroad
o Chapters from My Autobiography
o Christian Science
o Editorial Wild Oats
o Following the Equator
o Is Shakespeare Dead?
o Life on the Mississippi
o Roughing It
o The Innocents Abroad
o
· Short Stories
o A Burlesque Biography
o The Californian's Tale
o A Dog's Tale
o Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale
o The First Writing Machines
o The Five Boons of Life
o A Helpless Situation
o Italian with Grammar
o Italian without a Master
o A Telephonic Conversation
o Was it Heaven? Or Hell?
o 1601
o The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
o A Burlesque Autobiography
o The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut
o How to Tell a Story
o Extracts from Adam's Diary
o Eve's Diary
o The Loves Of Alonzo Fitz Clarence And Rosannah Ethelton
o About Magnanimous-Incident Literature
o The Canvasser's Tale
o An Encounter With An Interviewer
o Rogers
o Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
o The Curious Republic of Gondour
o A Memory
o Dan Murphy
o Curious Relic For Sale
o A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements
o A Royal Compliment
o The Approaching Epidemic
o The European War
o The Wild Man Interviewed
o Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again
o The Stolen White Elephant
o The £1,000,000 Bank Note
o
· Essays
o As Concerns Interpreting The Deity
o At The Shrine Of St. Wagner
o Concerning Tobacco
o The Death Of Jean
o Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
o How To Make History Dates Stick
o The Memorable Assassination
o On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying
o A Scrap Of Curious History
o A Simplified Alphabet
o Taming The Bicycle
o The Turning Point Of My Life
o William Dean Howells
o Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims
o Last Words of Great Men
o The War Prayer
o General Washington's Negro Body-servant
o Wit Inspirations of the "Two-year-olds"
o An Entertaining Article
o A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury
o Amended Obituaries
o A Monument to Adam
o A Humane Word from Satan
o The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English
o Advice to Little Girls
o Post-mortem Poetry
o The Danger of Lying in Bed
o Portrait of King William III
o Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?
o Punch, Brothers, Punch
o The Great Revolution In Pitcairn
o Paris Notes
o Legend Of Sagenfeld, In Germany
o Speech On The Babies
o Speech On The Weather
o Concerning The American Language
o Introductory to 'Memoranda'
o About Smells
o A Couple of Sad Experiences
o The 'Tournament' in A.D. 1870
o The Tone-Imparting Committee
o Our Precious Lunatic
o Paul Bourget
o What is Man?
o
· Poetry
o O Lord, Our Father
4.FAST FACTS
Birth name: Samuel Longhorne ClemensNickname (name change): Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson SnodgrassOccupation: NovelistBirth date: November 30, 1835Birth place: Florida, Mo.Death date: April 21, 1910Death place: Redding, Conn. Burial location: Woodlawn Cemetery, Elmira, N.Y.Spouse: Olivia LangdonChildren: Langdon Clemens, Susy Clemens, Clara Clemens, Jean ClemensDid you know?
Haley's Comet was visible in the sky on the night that Mark Twain was both born and passed away.
Mark Twain published more than 30 books throughout his career.
Hannibal, Mo. served as the inspiration for the fictional town of St. Petersberg in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
As a teenager, Twain worked as an apprentice printer.
As a riverboat pilot, Twain earned from $150 to $250 a month.
During the Civil War, Twain formed a Confederate militia known as the "Marion Rangers." The militia disbanded after approximately two weeks.
Twain left Missouri after his militia disbanded and moved to Nevada. There he worked as a miner.
"Roughing It" describes Twain's journey out West with his brother Orion.
From 1901 until his death in 1910, Twain was vice president of the American Anti-Imperialist League.
"Huckleberry Finn" was ranked as the fifth most frequently challenged book in the United States by the American Library Association.
Prior to adopting Mark Twain as his pen name, Clemens wrote under the pen name Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass for a number of humorous pieces that he contributed to the Keokuk Post.
5.Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:
ADVICE
There are three things which I consider excellent advice. First, don't smoke to access. Second, don't drink to excess. Third, don't marry to excess.
BABIES
Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain't any real difference between triplets and a insurrection.- The Babies speech 1879
Cat
Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.- Notebook, 1894
DANCE
I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases--the dances are precisely the same. You have only to spin around with frightful velocity and steer clear of the furniture. This has a charming and bewildering effect. You catch glimpses of a confused and whirling multitude of people, and above them a row of distracted fiddlers extending entirely around the room. The waltz and the polka are very exhilarating--to use a mild term--amazingly exhilarating.- Territorial Enterprise, Letter 12/12/1862
ECONOMY
It isn't the sum you get, it's how much you can buy with it, that's the important thing; and it's that that tells whether your wages are high in fact or only high in name.- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
FACTS
How empty is theory in the presence of fact!- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
GAMBLING
Illustration from first edition of
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a "flush." It is enough to make one ashamed of one's species.
- quoted in A Bibliography of Mark Twain, Merle Johnson
HABIT
Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
ILLNESS
....as far as being on the verge of being a sick man I don't take any stock in that. I have been on the verge of being an angel all of my life, but it's never happened yet.- Mark Twain, a Biography
JESUS
Jesus died to save men--a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?- Notebook #42
6.Mark twain house
The Mark Twain House
Long celebrated for its apparent whimsy and stylistic idiosyncrasy, the Twain House is more accurately noted as an inspired and sophisticated expression of modernity. In this design, the architect Edward Tuckerman Potter expanded on his earlier Nook Farm house for George and Lilly Warner (built 1870, destroyed c.1960). For Twain however, Potter employed a vibrant palette of painted brick reminiscent of William Butterfield's work in England of the 1860s and traditional chalet designs of the Alsatian region of France.
The Twain house is defined mostly by the variety and unpredictability of its elements. No two elevations are alike; generally symmetrical gables are, upon closer inspection, subtly different in their decorative treatments: various chimneys and towers rise spontaneously in contrast to the calming, broad sweep of the deep porches and porte cochere. The painted brick diaper pattern seems to strain as it contains the shifting surfaces of the walls and the vigorously projecting bays.
This commitment to experimentation is also revealed in the exotic and provocative interiors designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and his partners in Associated Artists. Cultures and styles from around the globe are celebrated and reinterpreted in the dense network of pattern, texture, and color throughout the first floor of the house. Northern Africa, the Far East and India are woven together in a bravura performance of a knowing and elegant eclecticism that helped set a new standard for the Gilded Age.
New technologies were also employed that included a gravity flow heat system, split flues to allow for windows over two fireplaces, and seven bathrooms with flush toilets. In addition, Twain was both proud of, and flummoxed by, his telephone, one of the very first installed in a private home. When combined with his profoundly new way of writing as he advanced his increasingly progressive social and political views, the house is more clearly appreciated as a landmark of modern American thought in the fullest sense.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
1839 - Samuel Clemens moves to Hannibal, Mo.
1867 - Publishes his first book, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."
1869 - Mark Twain publishes "Innocents Abroad" after traveling through Europe and the "Holy Land." The book is considered to be Twain's first best-seller.
1876 - Mark Twain publishes "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."
1882 - Publishes the novel "The Prince and the Pauper."
1884 - Mark Twain publishes his most popular work, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
Feb. 2, 1870 - Mark Twain marries Olivia Langdon
1907 - Twain receives an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.
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