By the Mark, Twain!

    "By the mark, twain!". A term often yelled on riverboats during the 1800s to determine the depth of the water was an acceptable 6 feet.
     Samuel Langhorn Clemens adopted the pen name Mark Twain in 1862. He grew up in Mississippi, building the foundation of many of his novels. He worked as an editor for a few years and later as a steamboat pilot which was one of his greatest dreams. He served briefly in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He traveled to the Wild West in 1861 with his brother to Nevada and later California where he settled and married Olivia Langdon, the daughter of a rich New York coal merchant.
    For years throughout all of Twain's travels and life experiences, Twain was writing two major novels. The first, stemming from his experiences in Missouri, was "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" which was published in 1867. The character of Tom Sawyer was said to have been based on Twain's childhood friend Tom Blankenship. The second novel was about a supporting character of Tom Sawyer. This novel was entitled "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn".
   Ernest Hemingway would later write that all American literature stems from this book. "Huck Finn" captures the American way of life during the 1800s. Before this book, no American novel had used the voice of the people. Nothing had ever been written in such a raw tone that embodied the colonial life of the times. Twain's two main related works set the tone for many future writers and gave way to the new form of American Literature.