Q 01/05

On Mississippi steamboats, the leadsman's cry of "mark twain" announced what depth of water beneath the boat?

A) One fathom

B) Two fathoms

C) Four fathoms

D) Ten fathoms

Answer · why

B) Two fathoms

Two fathoms, or twelve feet, was safe water for a steamboat, so the cry was welcome news in the pilot-house. Samuel Clemens later took the call as his...

Q 02/05

Which veteran pilot agreed to teach the young Mark Twain the Mississippi River for five hundred dollars?

A) Horace Bixby

B) George Ealer

C) Sam Bowen

D) Grant Marsh

Answer · why

A) Horace Bixby

Horace Bixby collected only part of the fee before the Civil War shut the river, and the two men agreed to cancel the rest. He was still working on th...

Q 03/05

Which unfinished novel did Mark Twain borrow a whole raft chapter from to enliven Life on the Mississippi?

A) Tom Sawyer

B) Pudd'nhead Wilson

C) Huckleberry Finn

D) The Gilded Age

Answer · why

C) Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry Finn was still unfinished, and Twain guessed it might need five or six more years. It turned out to be his very next book.

Q 04/05

Which British novelist does Mark Twain hold largely responsible for the American Civil War in Life on the Mississippi?

A) Charles Dickens

B) George Eliot

C) Edward Bulwer-Lytton

D) Sir Walter Scott

Answer · why

D) Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott, Twain argued, infected the South with sham chivalry and a reverence for rank and caste. He called the condition the Sir Walter disea...

Q 05/05

Which Missouri river town was the boyhood village where Mark Twain and his friends all dreamed of working on steamboats?

A) Hannibal

B) Florida

C) New Madrid

D) Cape Girardeau

Answer · why

A) Hannibal

Hannibal was no longer the drowsy village he remembered when Twain returned for the book. It had become a city of fifteen thousand people, with a mayo...