Mark Twain decided to see the river above St. Louis. He went to Hannibal
to spend a few days with old friends. "Delightful days," he wrote home,
"loitering around all day long, and talking with grayheads who were boys
and girls with me thirty or forty years ago." He took boat for St. Paul
and saw the upper river, which he had never seen before. He thought the
scenery beautiful, but he found a sadness everywhere because of the decay
of the river trade. In a note-book entry he said: "The romance of
boating is gone now. In Hannibal the steamboatman is no longer a god."
He worked at the Mississippi book that summer at the farm, but did not
get on very well, and it was not until the following year (1883) that it
came from the press. Osgood published it, and Charles L. Webster, who
had married Mark Twain's niece, Annie (daughter of his sister Pamela),
looked after the agency sales. Mark Twain, in fact, was preparing to
become his own publisher, and this was the beginning. Webster was a man
of ability, and the book sold well.
"Life on the Mississippi" is one of Mark Twain's best books--one of those
which will live longest. The first twenty chapters are not excelled in
quality anywhere in his writings.
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