Showing results by author "Mark Twain" in All Categories

This a handpicked collection of some of the greatest Christian stories ever written. When we speak of these works as Christian stories, we mean that each story has a powerful Christian message based on Jesus' teachings. Three of the stories are from Jesus himself. Others were written by devout believers like Henry Van Dyke and Johanna Spyri. Yet, one of the authors, Mark Twain, was not a Christian himself, but his story reveals profound insights into the teachings of Christ.

Mark Twain delivered this humorous speech on taxation and morality at the Tuskegee Institute to commemorate its 25th anniversary. With his signature ironic wit, he told the audience woefully of the public vs. private morals of Christians. He says the Christian maintains the nation’s integrity 363 days a year, but the "other two days of the year he leaves his Christian private morals at home and carries his Christian public morals to the tax office and the polls, and does the best he can to damage and undo his whole year's faithful and righteous work."

Huckleberry Finn—the casual rebel, the homeless waif, the sometime liar and thief, the boy nobody wanted—finds, for the first time in his life, a sense of responsibility, acceptance, and love when he befriends a runaway slave named Jim. Fleeing down the Mississippi on a raft, Huck courageously violates social convention rather than betray the person who needs him most.

A blow on the head sends a practical Yankee back in time to King Arthur's court in medieval England. There, his Yankee ingenuity and knowledge of scientific theories startle the Knights of the Round Table. In the course of describing his hero's adventures, Mark Twain, the great satirist, takes the opportunity to make objects of mirth out of the ways of the Old World, the chivalry of knights, and the pomposity of kings.

One of the greatest satires in American literature, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court begins when Hank Morgan, a skilled mechanic in a nineteenth-century New England arms factory, who is struck on the head during a quarrel and awakens to find himself among the knights and magicians of King Arthur's Camelot. The 'Yankee' vows brashly to "boss the whole country inside of three weeks" and embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot with 19th century industrial inventions.

What if a story by Mark Twain about political economy had nothing to do with politics or economy? This humorous short story has everything to do with the interruptions by a workman the author faced when trying to pen thoughts on politics. There were many reasons Twain frustratingly agreed to something he never would have asked for, but the result were - shocking.

Fleeing the respectable society that wants to "sivilize" him, Huck Finn shoves off with Jim on a rhapsodic raft journey down the Mississippi River. The two bind themselves to one another, becoming intimate friends and agreeing "there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft".

This classic tale and superb short story by Mark Twain is a funny yet blistering indictment of political hypocrisy. A mysterious stranger is treated badly by the town of Hadleyburg—the town that proclaims itself "the most honest and upright town in the region". Through an ingenious sting operation, the stranger sets out to expose Hadleyburg's leading citizens and reveal their greedy, deceitful natures. Twain's burning wit and insight into political posturing and civic cowardice seem more pertinent than ever.

A brilliant amalgam of remembrance and reportage, by turns satiric, celebratory, nostalgic, and melancholy, Life on the Mississippi evokes the great river that Mark Twain knew as a boy and young man and the one he revisited as a mature and successful author.

"El príncipe y el mendigo" cuenta la historia de Tom Canty, un niño pobre y el príncipe Eduardo, hijo del rey Enrique VII de Inglaterra. Sus vidas dan un giro completo cuando, al cruzarse de manera azarosa, se dan cuenta de su asombroso parecido físico y deciden cambiar sus identidades. Así, atrapados en una vida opuesta a la suya, los niños vivirán innumerables peripecias y aprenderán a ver la sociedad y a sí mismos desde otra perspectiva.

Mark Twain's hilarious account of life with a malfunctioning burglar alarm.

Criticada y elogiada por igual, esta novela no solo constituye la culminación de la narrativa de Mark Twain, sino también el clásico por excelencia de la literatura estadounidense. Mark Twain, con su irónico sentido del humor y su prosa ágil y precisa, nos lleva por el Mississippi de la mano del inolvidable Huck Finn y su fiel amigo Jim, quien huye de la esclavitud. Novela sobre el racismo, la violencia, la amistad y la libertad en unos años turbulentos, Las aventuras de Huckleberry Finn es una lectura imprescindible a cualquier edad.

As a cub river pilot, one of Mark Twain’s masters was a pilot named George Ealer, who recited Shakespeare by the hour - from memory - and who was a virulent opponent of the notion that the Shakespeare plays and poems were in truth written by Sir Francis Bacon. At first, young Sam Clemens agreed with his teacher and boss, but he soon realized that it was no fun for the pilot to argue with someone who agreed with him all of the time.

This travel book humorously chronicles the trip Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion," on board the chartered vessel Quaker City through Europe and the Holy Land in 1867. The excursion was billed as a Holy Land expedition, with numerous stops and side trips along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, such as the train excursion from Marseille to Paris for the 1867 Paris Exhibition during the reign of Napoleon III and the Second French Empire, a journey through the Papal States to Rome, a side trip through the Black Sea to Odessa, and finally culminating in an excursion through the Holy Land.

In the sequel to Tom Sawyer, his sidekick Huckleberry Finn takes centre stage. Innocent and well-intentioned, Huck is brought face to face with the reality of slavery in the southern states as he helps his friend Jim escape to freedom.

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain. It was his first great success as a writer and brought him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (its original title) and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley.

Popular novelist Mark Twain will take you on a mesmerizing mystery story set in the small town of Dawson's Landing, Missouri, during the early 19th century, where you’ll follow the lives of two infants born on the same day. One is the privileged white son of Percy and Augusta Driscoll, while the other is the mixed-race child of their slave, Roxy. In an act of desperation to shield her son from the horrors of slavery, Roxy ingeniously swaps the babies' identities, an act destined to shape the course of their lives.

This third collecton of great American short stories includes titles by authors such as Stephen Crane, Ambrose Bierce, and Edgar Allan Poe.

This humorous travel book, based on Twain's stagecoach journey through the American West and his adventures in the Pacific islands, is full of colorful caricatures of outlandish locals and detailed sketches of frontier life. Roughing It describes how the narrator, a polite greenhorn from the East, is initiated into the rough-and-tumble society of the frontier.

A wonderful collection of short stories" by some of the all-time great American writers: 1. "The Diamond Lens" by Fitz James O’Brien; 2. "Titbottom’s Spectacles" by George William Curtis; 3. "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe; 4. "The Eyes of the Panther" by Ambrose Bierce; 5. "The Lightning Rod Man" by Hermann Melville; 6. "Seeds" by Sherwood Anderson; 7. "Who Was She?" by Bayard Taylor; 8. "The Man who stole a Meeting House" by John Townsend Trowbridge; 9. "Memoirs of a Yellow Dog" by O. Henry