MARK TWAIN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 527, 18 December 1912, Page 6

MARK TWAIN.

HOW HE' GOT HIS NAME. In Harper's Magazine, Mr Albert Bigelow Paine, the authorised biographer of Mark Twain, tells how the great humourist first really adopted the name when writing for a Nevada newspaper in 1863. His letters, copied and quoted all along the coast, were unsigned. He realised that to build a reputation it was necessary to fasten it to an individuality—a name. Just then news came to him that the old pilot he had wuunded by his satire, Isaiah Sellers, was dead At once the pen-name of Captain Sellers recurred to him. Clemens decided he would give it a new meaning and new sasociation in this far-away land. He went up to Virginia City. "Joe," he said to Goodman, "I want to sign my articles. I want to bo identifier! to a wider audiencG. "All right, Sam. What name do you want to use —Josh?" "No. I want to sign them 'Mark Twain.' It is an old river term, a leadsman's call, signifying two fathoms—twelve feet. It has a richness about it; it was always a pleasant sound for a pilot to hear on a dark night; it meant safe water." Mark Twain as first signed to a Carson letter bearing date of February 2 nd, 1863, and from that time, adds his biographpr, was attached to all Samuel Clemens' work. The work was neither better nor worse than before, but it had suddenly acquired identification and special interest. Members of the legislature and friends in "Virginia" and Carson immediately began to address him as "Mark."' The papers of the coast took it up, and. within a period to be measured by wepks he was no longer "Sam" or: "Clemens" or that "bright chap on the 'Enterprise,' " but "Mark"—"Mark Twain." No nom de plume was ever so quickly and generally accepted as that.