ng measles, smoking, rolling rocks down a hill before church-bound carriages, and running away from home.
             Clemens and his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port on the Mississippi River, when Samuel was four years old. There, he received a pubic school education. After the death of his father in 1847, Clemens was apprenticed to two Hannibal printers, and in 1851 he began setting type for and contributing sketches to his brother Orion's Hannibal Journal. He contributed reports, poems, and humorous sketches to the Journal for several years. (Baldanza, Mark Twain, Intro. & Interpretation, 2)
             In 1857, at 22 years old, Clemens made plans to travel to South America, and in April of that year, he started down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. In a change of plans, instead of traveling to South America, he persuaded a riverboat pilot named Horace Bixby to teach him the skills of piloting. With a burning determination for adventure, by April of that year, Samuel had become a licensed riverboat pilot. But, the beginning o
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