Encouraged by the welcome accorded to this first attempt at fiction, Mark Twain turned to the days of his boyhood and wrote ‘Tom Sawyer,’ published in 1875.  He also collected his sketches, scattered here and there in newspapers and magazines.  Toward the end of the seventies he went to Europe again with his family; and the result of this journey is recorded in ‘A Tramp Abroad,’ published in 1880.  Another volume of sketches, the ‘Stolen White Elephant,’ was put forth in 1882; and in the same year Mark Twain first came forward as a historical novelist—­if the ‘Prince and the Pauper’ can fairly be called a historical novel.  The year after he sent forth the volume describing his ’Life on the Mississippi’; and in 1884 he followed this with the story in which that life has been crystallized forever, ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ the finest of his books, the deepest in its insight, and the widest in its appeal.

This Odyssey of the Mississippi was published by a new firm, in which the author was a chief partner, just as Sir Walter Scott had been an associate of Ballantyne and Constable.  There was at first a period of prosperity in which the house issued the ‘Personal Memoirs’ of Grant, giving his widow checks for $350,000 in 1886, and in which Mark Twain himself published ‘A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court,’ a volume of ‘Merry Tales,’ and a story called the ‘American Claimant,’ wherein Colonel Sellers reappears.  Then there came a succession of hard years; and at last the publishing-house in which Mark Twain was a partner failed, as the publishing-house in which Walter Scott was a partner had formerly failed.  The author of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ was past sixty when he found himself suddenly saddled with a load of debt, just as the author of ‘Waverley’ had been burdened full threescore years earlier; and Mark Twain stood up stoutly under it as Scott had done before him.  More fortunate than the Scotchman, the American lived to pay the debt in full.

Since the disheartening crash came, he has given to the public a third Mississippi River tale, ‘Pudd’nhead Wilson,’ issued in 1894; and a third historical novel, ‘Joan of Arc,’ a reverent and sympathetic study of the bravest figure in all French history, printed anonymously in ’Harper’s Magazine’ and then in a volume acknowledged by the author in 1896.  As one of the results of a lecturing tour around the world he prepared another volume of travels, ‘Following the Equator,’ published toward the end of 1897.  Mention must also be made of a fantastic tale called ’Tom Sawyer Abroad,’ sent forth in 1894, of a volume of sketches, the ‘Million Pound Bank-Note,’ assembled in 1893, and also of a collection of literary essays, ‘How to Tell a Story,’ published in 1897.

This is but the barest outline of Mark Twain’s life,—­such a brief summary as we must have before us if we wish to consider the conditions under which the author has developed and the stages of his growth.  It will serve, however, to show how various have been his forms of activity,—­printer, pilot, miner, journalist, traveler, lecturer, novelist, publisher,—­and to suggest the width of his experience of life.