Some of Mark Twain's stories were based on his real life experiences growing up as a child in Mississippi. Three of most popular include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Life on the Mississippi.
             Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, as Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Mark Twain was just a pen name acquired from a river boat. On river boats, one member of the crew always stood near the railing measuring the depth of the water with a long cord which had flags spaced six feet apart. When the crewman saw the flags disappear he would call out "Mark One!" for one fathom and for two fathoms he called out "Mark Twain!" Two fathoms meant safe clearance for river boats, so Sam Clemens chose a name which not only recalled his life on the river but which also had a reassuring "all's well" meaning.
             The beginning of his life was unpromising. His family was a good one but its circumstances were reduced and its environment was discouraging. His father, John Marshall Clemens, a lawyer by profession and a merchant by vocation, had brought his family to Florida from Jamestown, Tennessee, like the manner of Judge Hawkins in The Gilded Age. Florida was a small town then, a village of twenty-one houses located on Salt River, but Judge Clemens, as he was usually called, believed in its future. He believed that Salt River would eventually be made navigable and Florida would become a metropolis. He established a small business there, and located his family in the humble frame cottage where, five months later, was born a baby boy to whom they gave the name of Samuel, a family name, and added Langhorne, after an old Virginia friend of his father. (Magill, 1991, P 1954)
             The child was puny, and did not make a very sturdy fight for life. Still he weathered along, season after season, and survived two stronger children, Margaret and Benjamin. By 1839 Judge Clemens had lost faith in Florida. He re...