The Prince And The Pauper

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Tom Canty was born into s family of beggars and thieves, but he dreams of a different life. Tom reads books about princes and nobility to escape his dreary existence in 16th century London. When he visits Westminster and meets a real prince, who could be his twin brother, Tom’s dreams suddenly become a reality with surprising results!About The Author:Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, to John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens.[5] When Twain was four, his family moved to Hannibal,[6] a port town on the Mississippi River that would serve as the inspiration for the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.[7] At that time, Missouri was a slave state in the union and young Twain was familiar with the institution of slavery, a theme he later explored in his writing.Twain was colorblind, a condition that fueled his witty banter in the social circles of the day.[citation needed] In March of 1847 when Twain was eleven, his father died of pneumonia.[citation needed] The following year, Twain became a printers apprentice and in 1851 began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his older brother, Orion. When he was eighteen, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. When he was 22 years old, Twain returned to Missouri. On a voyage to New Orleans down the Mississippi, the steamboat pilot, "Bixby", inspired Twain to pursue a career as a steamboat pilot, the third highest paying profession in America at the time earning $250 per month ($155,000 today), a "princely amount". Because the steamboats at the time were constructed of very dry flammable wood no lamps were allowed, making night travel a precarious endeavor. A steamboat pilot needed a vast knowledge of the ever-changing river to be able to stop at any of the hundreds of ports (to take on and discharge passengers and freight) and wood-lots along the river banks (to purchase fuel for the steam boilers). Twain meticulously studied 2000 miles of the Mississippi for more than two years until he finally received his steamboat pilot license in 1858. He worked as a river pilot until the American Civil War broke out in 1861 and traffic along the Mississippi was curtailed....