Mark Twain-isms

I wrote this a few days ago when we were near Dubuque, but never got it posted...

The Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium had quite a few items of information about Mark Twain....

I didn't know this!

This was the lead line used for sounding displayed under the caption about the meaning of "Mark Twain".

"Two red-hot steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve... quaking and shaking and groaning from stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks... this is sport that makes a body's very liver curl with enjoyment." - Mark Twain on a steamboat race.

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications." -- Mark Twain
What is a Steamboat?
Some said it was "an engine on a raft with $11,000 worth of jig-saw."
Others thought steamboats were floating palaces or traveling hotels with pleasure and propulsion in the same package.
Still others likened them to floating cities with 400 or more citizens who inhabited the traveling town for that week.

Mark Twain's River
"When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman." - Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
No name is more closely linked to steamboats than Mark Twain, the pen name for the author and pilot Samuel Clemens.
Twain began on the river at age 22, and he piloted 24 boats in his two year steamboat career. Twain's next career was as a writer, and he made Life on the Mississippi famous throughout the world.

"...knowledge of Indians, & humanity are seldom found in the same individual." - Mark Twain, an advocate for the downtrodden and a thorn in the side of the hypocrites of his day.

I stopped on a bench to have a little chat with Mark Twain - Doesn't he look a little enthralled by the insights I was sharing with him regarding the book he was reading?!? Or maybe he was bored?