Mark Twain was born in Florida
and spent his ______ in Hannibal, Missouri,
along the Mississippi River.
Three of his most famous books ____ people on this great river.
They are The ____ of Tom Sawyer,
The ____ of Huckleberry Finn
and Life on the Mississippi.
Indeed, this author loved the river so much
that even his pen name is about the river.
"Twain" is an old word for "two".
So, to "Mark Twain",
is to say that the water is two fathoms deep.
A fathom is equal to six feet or 1.83 metres.
Twain left school at school at the age of twelve to look for work.
Over the next two decades he was a printer,
a riverboat pilot,
a soldier,
a gold miner,
a businessman
and a newspaper reporter.
His first successful story was about a jumping frog contest.
His writing became famous for its description of common people
and the way they talked,
but especially for his humour.
He became rich from the many novels,
short stories and travel journals he wrote
and was very popular at public readings.
Yale and Oxford Universities honoured him for his writing.
However, the last years of his life were filled with sad events,
loneliness and the loss of much money.
His writing lost most of its humour and became sad like him.
Yet he is still one of the most popular writers in the world today.
A Paul's ET in TEFL Production. 2009