Life On The Mississippi By Mark Twain example essay topic

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain is his journal about vital river life during the steamboat era and a melancholy remembrance of it after the Civil War. Mark Twain tells of his life on the river, humorous folktales, and a glimpse of Twain's life during his childhood years. The Mississippi River was a major part of Mark Twain's life. The river In the three introductory ones which precede these, the physical character of the river is sketched, and brief reference is made to the early travelers and explorers of the stream, -- De Soto, Marquette, and La Salle; these latter belonging to the epoch of what Mr. Clemens quaintly calls 'historical history,' as distinguished from that other unconventional history, which he does not define, but certainly embodies in the most graphic form. There are some good touches in this opening portion; as where the author refers to 'Louis XIV., of inflated memory,' and, speaking of indifference which attended the discovery of the Mississippi, remarks, 'Apparently, nobody happened to want such a river, nobody needed it, nobody was curious about it; so, for a century and a half, the Mississippi remained out of the market and undisturbed.

When De Soto found it, he was not hunting for a river, and had no present occasion for one; consequently he did not value it, or even take any particular notice of it. ' We are also presented with a chapter from an unpublished work by the writer, detailing the adventures of a southwestern boy a quarter of a century ago, which places before us in vivid colors the rough, hilarious, swaggering, fighting, superstitious ways of the bygone rafts men. Rude, sturdy, unflinching, and raw though the picture is, it is likely to stand a long while as a wonderful transcript from nature, and as a memorial of the phase of existence, which is describes that will not easily be surpassed in the future. The chapter on Racing Days is perhaps a little disappointing, although suggestive. Then there comes a short autobiographic summary of Mr. Clemen's life after he had ceased to be a pilot and several other things, and until he became a New Englander; followed by an account of the trip which he made down and up the Mississippi, twenty-one years from the time when he last sailed upon it in charge of a steamer's course. At St. Louis he found a steamer, which was to stop at the old French settlements sixty miles below St. Louis.

'She was a venerable rack-heap, and a fraud to boot; for she played herself for personal property, whereas the good honest dirt was so thickly caked over her that she was righteously taxable as real estate. There are places in New England where her hurricane deck would be worth a hundred and fifty dollars an acre. The soil on her forecastle was quite good; the new crop of wheat was already springing from the cracks in protected places. The companion way was of a dry, sandy character, and would have been well suited for grapes, with a southern exposure and a little sub soiling. The soil of the boiler-deck was thin and rocky, but.