A Rough Man Essays - Lecturers, Mark Twain, Redding, Connecticut

A Rough Man Essays - Lecturers, Mark Twain, Redding, Connecticut A Rough Man Rough, vigorous, hot-tempered and rich is what Mark Twain grew up to be. Born 1835 in Missouri, Florida he always did what he needed to in order for him to reach his goal. Even though he dropped out of school at the age of twelve, when his father died, he accomplished numerous things. Mark began writing when he took the job of a journalist. The tale 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' was his first success. After a trip by boat to Palestine, he wrote The Innocents Abroad. As his writing career blossomed, he also became successful as a lecturer. In 1870 got married, and a few years later he and his wife settled in Hartford, Connecticut. Huckleberry Finn is Twain's masterpiece, for its use of the brilliant character and descriptions, showing the humor of man's cruelty to man. He also wrote The Gilded Age, 1873, Old Times on the Mississippi, 1875, The Prince and the Pauper, 1882, Life on the Mississippi, 1883, Pudd'n-head Wilson, 1894, and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, 1896. His later works, such as The Mysterious Stranger, unpublished until 1916, are not as amusing and more discouraging. He is known as one of America's finest and most characteristic writers. 1872 is the year when Roughing It was written. This book was just a personal narrative and not a history to show-off, nor a thoughtful commentary. It's a record of several years of exciting migration, and it's intention to help the reader rather than to hurt him with truth, or fill him with science. In this book there is lots of information about episodes that happened in the Wild West. There is stories in this book that have never been told and only been seen in the writers own eyes. There is a great deal of information in this book and the writer himself says this book can not be helped, but Twain was never exactly worried about giving his books an artistic framework. The information that he wrote came out of him naturally. He felt this urge to write and felt the excitement when he wrote his books. He felt that he was giving everyone a piece of what made him. He liked to live the fast life, that way he could have something to write about. He once said, The more I caulk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Mark didn't expect justification from his readers but tolerance. Trying his luck at anything and everything was one of his bizarre habits. He writes hilariously about his many encounters with vigilantes. He knew very well that carrying a Smith & Wesson's was necessary when traveling in the Wild West. Guns back in the old times were not very accurate so you had a better chance of catching a cold than actually catching something to eat with a rifle. Many people saw Mark as a playboy, the pioneer in letters, and the leader of the herd. William Dean Howell, Mark Twain's friend, called him the Lincoln of our literature. This guy knew what he was talking about, not only were Twain and Lincoln both belongings of the border democracy but through out their lives they continued to look to the Wild West for the supplying of their imaginations. His work comes from the same roots that made Lincoln's life the basic American myth. The man who came from nowhere and overcame an unpromising back ground to come out as one of the nations greatest heroes. Twain departed for Carson City with his unionist brother, Orion, who had recently been chosen Secretary of the Territory of Nevada. He moved because he was convinced that his life as a confederate soldier offered a far greater threat to both to him and the confederacy than it did to Lincoln's armies. In the spring of 1867 he arrived at New York and had a growing character of a preacher and an author. At that time he was an unpaid private secretary but soon became a prospector, a financier, almost a millionaire, a worker in the mill, and finally a reporter. With the exception of reporting he had no sort of success in any of