Samuel
L. Clemens had done nothing of significance by age twenty-five. As a journeyman
printer and pilot of a Mississippi River steamer, he had barley managed to earn
enough money for bed and board. Hence it was easy for him to turn his back on
civilian life and enlist in a pro-Confederate unit that was organized in his
native Missouri.
It
took only a few weeks for him to decide that military life was not for him.
Returning to the newspaper field as a reporter, he adopted the pseudonym Mark
Twain and became the most noted American writer of the century. Despite his
pro-secessionist views in early manhood, it was Twain who took a fling at
publishing in order to issue successfully the autobiography of Ulysses S.
Grant.
