Born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Though he was raised in Missouri, Mark Twain family originated from Kentucky (Bloom 6). Ancestry interested Samuel Clemens as it did his mother, though the history of the family lines on both sides is sketchy. On the Clemens side, the name appears in an ancient book by the Suetonius. The authors mother, Jane Lampton, took pride in what she believed to be her family ancestry. Her father’s side traced their origins to the Lamptons who lived in Durham, England (Kirk 1-2). He always spoke more frequently and highly of his mother than his father. One of the same traits that he inherited from his father was his tendency to make poor business decisions (Kirk 7). Samuel was …show more content…
Others described his hand and feet surprisingly small and delicate, showing that his daily work involved the refined tools of the pen and ink rather than the rugged equipment of the western trades which he became so closely associated. His voice was low and slow, full of his mother’s Kentucky drawl. Clemens like the sound of his voice. Some reporters claimed that people complained about his slow delivery and accused him of speaking at the rate of three per minute. He walked quickly but he took short steps. He was right handed and smoked cigars. Clemens had a quick temper and held grudges. He was sensitive about the underdogs of the world, the downtrodden and the defenseless, even though he may not have recognized of those who were in that condition in his time. People such as the poor, orphans, women, African Americans and Native Americans (Kirk …show more content…
The topic was “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands.” At age 30, Clemens didn’t know what to expect that first night in 1866. He envisioned walking out on stage to face an auditorium of empty seats, but when he arrived at the theater and saw the completely packed house, he was nearly over of stage fright. Samuel Clemens pulled up the courage to walk onto the stage and delivered a humorous lecture about what he saw in the Sandwich Islands. That result could not be called anything short of a resounding success (Kirk