BOOK SHELF

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21826, 4 July 1936, Page 4 (Supplement)

BOOK SHELF

steamboats up and down the Mississippi river. That is how he came to choose the pen name by which the world knew him so well in later years. As a young man, when he

When Mark Twain was a Boy

mas is the story of the real Tom Sawyer, a boy who wanted to be a but who grew up instead a famous writer honoured by statesmen •lid Mng« He was born a hundred years ago in a little cabin in Missouri In the United States of America (whi<& was then a slave state). He never went to school after he was 11 years old. and he never sbw a railroad until he was almost grown. If you had met him then, rooming the woods barefooted with Huckleberry Finn, ‘‘the Red Handed ’ (whose true name was Tom Blankenship), and if you had told him, then, tbat*one day he would become a famous writer and put himself and his into a book, which boys ever after would read, he would have stared at you. Huckleberry Finn would have stared at you. The real Tom Sawyer came to Huckleberry Finn.) He was the Bve in the little white town of wily boy in the town who didn’t Ifnwwihal, Missouri, when he was have to go to school, or even church, four years old. He came in a wag- He could sleep anywhere he chose —

Mark Twain himself

began to write, nobody paid any attention to his real name, Samuel Clemens; so he adopted a name taken from a river term—“ Mark Twain.” The term means two fathoms of water —a welcome sound to any pilot. For if the depth of

m Am • w Mark Twain was once a stowaway on s boat like this. When he grew up he became a pilot on one of the big boats sailing up and down the Mississippi • <rm Sawver and Becky Thatcher went to school here, Becky’s real name, when she was a girl in Hannibal, Missouri, was Laura Hawkins 3. Marie Twain’s pilot license Thh jg |)j e of Huckleberry Finn whose real name, before Mark Twain put him In his stories, was Tom Blankenship a Here is the famous fence you’ve read about in “Tom Sawyer.” You remember how he induced other boys to it for Mm. It would take a great deal of painting, wouldn’t it?

gon, surrounded by furniture and all the worldly goods of the Clemens family. For the boy’s true name was not Tom Sawyer but Samuel Clemens. A wild, mischievous boy Be was—small for bis age, with a large bead and thick hair which he had to brush continuously if he kept it from curling. Sam was more of a trial, his mother often said, than - all of the other children put together. If you have reiftl Tom Sawyer and remember Aunt Polly, you will know just what Sam’s mother was like; for Aunt Polly in that book /was Mrs rtpmms —a woman stem and at the t*nw> time so tender-hearted that 'she used to punish the cat for catching mice. Of all the boys in Hannibal, as Sam grew older, he especially admired a ragamuffin, dressed m Ihrtfwfng patches, named Tom Blankenship (This, of course, was Si an empty hogshead, if* it suited

him —and he didn’t have to obey a single souL All the mothers in town hated Tom Blankenship, and all the boys in town wanted to be like him. As for Sam,- he adopted Tom on sight The boy Sam Clemens did not spend all his time seeking adventures with his gang. Often he would wander off by himself along the river. He would lie dreaming for hours on some hilltop overlooking -the Mississippi—his river—and watch the steamboats pass. And then he would change his mind about being a pirate or an Indian oar a trapper-scout When he grew up, he would be a steamboat pilot instead, high up above the deck in a glorious glass cage—a lordly creature, whoin everyone in the world, even the captain, had to obey. Sam did become a river pilot when he grew up, and a very good pilot too. For several years he led a happy, hard-working life, taking

the river is two fathoms, the steamboat can make a safe passage and the pilot knows that all is well. It is as Mark Twain that he was known in later years, when he became one of America’s best beloved authors. BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY READERS "The Thief,” by Robin Banks. “Sacked,” by Hugo Home. “The Pup,” by Watt A. Barker. “The Untruthful Boy,” by Eliza Lott. “Hard Up,” by M. T. Purse. “Quite Fluffy,” by Ida Down. “The Sick Chinese,” by Wung Bung Lung. “Greetings” by I* O. James. „ -- —’MATE PRIMROSE, \ Schoolhoose, Hinds.

Plaza Birthday Competition If your birthday is next week you may enter for the Birthday Puzzle. Tickets for the Plaza will be awarded girls and boys sending in the correct solution. Mark your letter “Birthday Competition” and send it to Lady Gay enclosing a stamped addressed envelope for your ticket. A halfpenny stamp will do. Plaza tickets may be used any afternoon.

The two pirates want that bag of gold hidden in the maze. Can yon race them to it?

TEMUKA’S MESSAGE We send Lady Gay and Mother Bunch our best wishes, and hope that we shall have a thousand more birthdays. / hope that many Temuka children join your “Happy Band” and I will do all I can to encourage them. —’MATE WAITAKI, A.8.H., Temuka. This week Lady Gay received two perfect advertisements. They were worded in correct style, just as they would appear in the paper. Not one single word had to be altered. She was so pleased that she said: “Special prize for Joyce McLaughlin, Dunsandel, and Stephen Delany, Burwood.”

In Fan Sail Drawn by M. C. Sexton, M.G, Tlmam