Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced,"and "the father of American literature." Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
He served an apprenticeship with a printer early in his career, and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to his older brother Orion Clemens' newspaper. Twain then became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Piloting also gave Twain his pen name from "mark twain," the leadsman's cry for a measured river depth of two fathoms (12 feet), which was safe water for a steamboat.
The quote about royalty is from Chapter 20 of Twain's 1888 Notebook. He wrote, "By the absence of an irreverent press, Europe for a thousand years has existed merely for the advantage of half a dozen seventh-rate families called Monarchs, and some hundreds of riffraff sarcastically called Nobles. . .The institution of Royalty in any form is an insult to the human race. The man who believes there is a man in the world who is better than himself merely because he was born royal or noble, is a dog with the soul of a dog—and at bottom is a liar."
Twain was also a patriot and defender of American founding ideals who was not afraid to question the motivations of the political class. Celebrate a great American with the homage to the one and only Samuel Clemens!
