A Gem of a Book: Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi"

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

~Mark Twain, from "Life on the Mississippi" 

From time to time we come across delightfully stimulating books, the sort that--for any number of reasons-- rouses the mind from its slumbers. It's a bit like meeting a new person, whose energy or manner is just plain contagious.

That's how I felt after reading Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" (1883), a wide-ranging, oft-hilarious memoir of Samuel Clemens' time as a steam-boat pilot on the Mississippi River. Like the river this book wanders, but as is usually the case Twain spins a yarn so eloquently one can hardly find a place to pause from reading. Twain's is a manner both engrossing and illustrative, with an eye for subtle detail that conveys many shades of meaning. Below are a few quotes from the book, which I hope you'll read (for free if you prefer, through the above link). Enjoy!

"In the South the war is what A.D. is elsewhere; they date from it."

"Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him, sir."

"Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings."

"The world and the books are so accustomed to use, and over-use, the word 'new' in connection with our country, that we early get and permanently retain the impression that there is nothing old about it. We do of course know that there are several comparatively old dates in American history, but the mere figures convey to our minds no just idea, no distinct realization, of the stretch of time which they represent. To say that De Soto, the first white man who ever saw the Mississippi River, saw it in 1542, is a remark which states a fact without interpreting it: it is something like giving the dimensions of a sunset by astronomical measurements, and cataloguing the colors by their scientific names;--as a result, you get the bald fact of the sunset, but you don't see the sunset. It would have been better to paint a picture of it."