More Twain-related links for my own satisfaction. I’m currently completing “Life on the Mississippi” and figured I should supplement my imagination and Twain’s recollections with hard links.
Regarding “Life on the Mississippi,” two passages have stood out. In one, Twain modestly describes the peculiar experience of seeing a steamer named after him. He’s writing in the 1880’s, and it’s interesting to me that his steamboating past was sufficiently celebrated prior to his fact-gathering voyages for the book I’m reading now that his former colleagues saw fit to honor him in such wise.
In the other he describes the loss of his younger brother Henry in a steamboat’s boiler explosion. The passage held special meaning for me; there was a certain inevitability in his matter-of-fact recounting of the loss that I comprehended over a century-and-a-half’s distance.
Steamboats.org (employs the word “Steamboatin’!”)
Putt Putt Boats: Steam powered toy boats.