“The boys were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it was not.That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we needed was something to turn up that would call for it.”

American writer, humorist, and essayist

Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He is best known for the novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and for a body of work that helped define American writing in the late 19th century. His books also include A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Pudd'nhead Wilson. He co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today with Charles Dudley Warner. Twain's work is marked by wit, social satire, and a sharp eye for American life.