MARK TWAIN- THE JESTER-3

Samuel Clemens grew with a grim sense of humour-so characteristic of what had prevailed then in the West-better defined as the humour that came out of a distinct condition-the battle of the frontier.Behind this western humour ,there was a distinct tragedy.

Even as a child Samuel was acquainted with many of the tragedies of life.Born in a midwestern village of poor whites, he saw slaves flogged and  men shot down in the streets.His parents led a migratory life of hopeless,defunct & loveless privation moving from seaboard to Kentucky- to Tennessee-to Missouri.It was here that  Samuel was born on 30 November 1835.

He had a bad child hood.His father was a morose & discouraged derelict.He hardly identified with his children -what to talk of showing any love and affection for them!He died in 1847 and Samuel,an unruly ,ragged,undersized,sickly and neurotic little of eleven,found himself all by himself in this unkind world.Taken out of the school,he worked in a press.He was described by his employer as a youngster with a huge head,an ink-smudged face, and on the whole,a lazy fellow.His friends' circle were like him & in the early teens, he witnessed the death of a sister and a brother.

At 23,his hair turned grey when another of his brothers was burned to death in a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi.At the age of 30 years, he had even contemplated to commit suicide.

All this notwithstanding,Samuel decided to live & translate  his sorrow into laughter.Yet his later experiences,though they brought him many honours,afforded him but little occasion for laughter.He lost two children in quick succession & the third one was seriously injured & escaped death as he heedlessly let go the perambulator at the summit of a steep hill, as he got wrapped in his own dreams.Susy-his most gifted daughter died in his absence.Another big tragedy hor him was the death of his another daughter Jean in 1909 due to an epileptic stroke.

Very few men have been more famous than Mark Twain.And very few men have have been more unhappy.He knew how to laugh uproariously.

But his laughter had tragedy into it.

(Next-True son of the Frontier)