How To Tell a Story and Other Essays
John Marshall Clemens, who had been trained for the bar in Virginia, served for some years as a mag- istrate at Hannibal, holding for a time the position of county judge. With his death, in March, 1847, Mark Twain's formal education came to an end, and his education in real life began. He had always been a delicate boy, and his father, in consequence, had been lenient in the matter of enforcing attendance at school, although he had been profoundly anxious that his children should be
How To Tell a Story and Other Essays
If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I seemed to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to know ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would be an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.
How To Tell a Story and Other Essays
There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled "American." There isn't a single human ambition, or religious trend, or drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code of principles, or breed of folly, or style of conversa- tion, or preference for a particular subject for dis- cussion, or form of legs or trunk or head or face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can
How To Tell a Story and Other Essays
incredible labor necessary to attain it—a labor compared with which the efforts needed to acquire the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at a University are as light as a sum- mer course of modern novels. To appreciate the full meaning of a pilot's marvelous education, one must read the whole of "Life on the Mississippi," but this extract may give a partial idea of a single feature of that training—the cultivation of the memory:
How To Tell a Story and Other Essays
There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain "Hurricane" Jones, of the Pacific Ocean,—peace to his ashes! Two or three of us present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a ship; he picked up what little education he had among his shipmates; he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea. He had
How To Tell a Story and Other Essays
learning, and persuades us and encourages us with prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own; and when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we come with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill—there is nothing to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does America do? She charges a duty on French works of art!