He
says of his birthplace: "The village contained a hundred people, and I
increased the population by one per cent. It is more than the best man in
history ever did for any other town." When he was two and a half years old,
the family moved to Hannibal on the Mississippi, thirty miles away.
The most impressionable years of his boyhood were spent in Hannibal, which
he calls "a loafing, down-at-the-heels, slave-holding Mississippi town." He
attended only a common school, a picture of which is given in _The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer_. Even this schooling ceased at the age of twelve,
when his father died. Like Benjamin Franklin and W. D. Howells, the boy
then became a printer, and followed this trade in various places for nearly
eight years, traveling east as far as the City of New York. He next became
a "cub," or under pilot, on the Mississippi River. After an eighteen
months' apprenticeship, he was an excellent pilot, and he received two
hundred and fifty dollars a month for his services. He says of these days:
"Time drifted smoothly and prosperously on, and I supposed--and hoped--that
I was going to follow the river the rest of my days, and die at the wheel
when my mission was ended.
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