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in the very last paragraph of Mark Twain's Adventures of huckberry Finn Huck reckons that it's time to light out for the territory ahead of the rest it's a decision Huck's Creator already had made a quarter of a century earlier he
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wasn't even Mark Twain then but as Huck might have said that ain't no matter with the Civil War spreading across his native Missouri 25-year-old Samuel Clemens suddenly out of work as a Mississippi riverboat pilot gladly accepted his brother's offer to join him
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in the Nevada territory far from the battle fields of the war a stage coach journey across the Great Plains and over the Rocky Mountains was just the beginning of a nearly 6-year long Odyssey that took Samuel Clemens from
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Missouri to Hawaii with stopovers in Virginia City Nevada and San Francisco by the time it was over he would find himself reborn as Mark Twain America's Best Loved and most influential writer the trouble as he famously promised had
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begun this book sheds new light on this crucial but still largely unex examined period in Mark Twain's life it tells the story of a young genius finding his voice in the ramshackle mining camps the boom towns and newspaper offices of the
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Wild West it is a winding journey of self-discovery filled with high adventure and low comedy as Twain Dodges Indians and gunfighters receives marriage advice from brigam young burns down a mountain with a frying pan
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narrowly avoids fighting a duel hikes across the floor of an active volcano becomes one of the first white men to try the ancient haw haian sport of Surfing and writes his first great literary success it is a fascinating inspiring account of how an unemployed
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Riverboat pilot a failed prospector a neofight newspaper reporter reinvented himself as America's most famous and beloved writer that is an exert from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today which is lighting out for the
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territory how Samuel Clemens headed west and became Mark Twain and it was written by Roy Morris Jr I want to tell you how I stumbled Upon This Book few months ago um I'm traveling with my wife uh down the coast of California where half
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somewhere between uh Santa barbar and Los Angeles and I stumbled into this uh little coffee shop across the street from the coffee shop uh I saw it said Ed bookstore so of course I had to go over there it was a tiny one room used
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bookstore that only sold books for cash and it is I was looking through their biography section of course and that is where I found this book and they somehow agreed to sell it to me for the sticker price of $2 I want to jump right into
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the introduction because I think the author does a fantastic job of of talking about the importance of the place and time in which we grow up and in Mark Twain's case he's growing up in Missouri on the Western Bank of the Mississippi River and it says he knew
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all about the concept of lighting out for the territory as a young boy he regularly watched the steamboats who were offloading travel worn passengers whose dreams involved making a new start of things in the west that already
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legendary region where a man with a pth could successfully reinvent himself that last sentence is incredible and it is also a reoccurring theme in human nature this idea that we have we have an an innate desire to escape a place right
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with the hope of escaping and changing who we are and so many of the people heading west are they're going for the Gold Rush they're going they're literally moving their physical location to pursue greater Economic Opportunity
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that is a main main theme in Mark Twain's life I want to go back to the ending of the introduction because I think this writing is incredible and another thing that's just going to reoccur because the book ends this is nearly perfect biography of of Mark Mark
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Twain uh because the book ends when he becomes Mark Twain he's around 30 years old uh when the book ends so it says before turning his sits Westward the Restless Twain spent the better part of a decade wandering the great cities of
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the East and Midwest he worked as a journeyman printer before becoming a pilot on the Mississippi River like huckberry Finn he learned early on to light out at the first sign of trouble and when the Civil War erupted he already had one foot out the door had he
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stayed on this is this is a great way so I'm going to tell you my note before I read this paragraph to you this is a great way to think about power law people power law people is one of the most incredible ideas once you know it
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because then you see it everywhere it's a quote from my friend Sam hinky that he said on his episode of inves like the best he says people are really a power law and the best ones change everything and so a great way to think about power
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law people is their absence leaves a void that no one else can fill and we're going to see that here with Mark Twain so it's like okay well the Civil War erupts and that's what what caused this that's the impetus like the motivation
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for Mark Twain to get the hell out of Missouri he did not want to fight in the war and he he actually gets conscripted into the war temporarily on both sides and this is why it was so important that he made that decision had he stayed on
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Twain might have gotten himself killed the Guerilla war in Missouri was particularly nasty but his death would not have lengthened the life of the Confederacy or the Union by a single day it would however have reduced the
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literary inheritance of the United States by an incalculable amount that is a hell of a sentence it would how however have reduced the literary inheritance of the United States by an incalculable amount that is a description of a power law person and so
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one of the most surprising things that I learned from reading this book is the fact that when he was a young man if you would have asked Mark Twain at that time Samuel Clemens what his life's work was going to be he wouldn't have said writer
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he did not think that becoming a writer and a humorist and a public lecturer was going to be his life's work something he's known for hundreds of years or 150 years after his death he thought his dream job he thought he was going to be
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a steamboat pilot he was going to Pilot a steamboat up and down the Mississippi Riv river that was his dream job and so there's a bunch of reoccurring themes that you're going to see throughout this book one of them is the fact that you
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can reinvent yourself anytime you want if things are not going well in your life like in Twain's life he essentially just stumbles from one failure to the next until he does find his life's work you can keep trying on different
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professions different Geographic locations until you find one that suits you and another reoccurring theme is this idea from Steve Jobs where you cannot connect the dots looking backwards it comes from his Stanford commencement address where he's talking
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about the fact that he was taking all these classes after he dropped out of Reed College and he wasn't going to he didn't know at the time he was just learning new skills and he didn't know he was going to use those skills they'd
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come in handy later on in his career at Apple and so he says it was imposs possible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college but it was very very clear looking back 10 10 years later you cannot connect the dots
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looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future you have to trust in something in your gut Destiny Life Karma whatever this approach has never let me
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down you are going to see wait till we get to the end of the book Mark Twain's Destiny is exactly that with Steve Jobs said and so I want to jump to where we are in the book the fact that he is a Riverboat pilot the great line of
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demarcation in Mark Twain's life is going to be the Civil War as with anybody that was living in America at the time the Civil War is the great line of demarcation in their life and so this is where it's going to open up opportunities that one Mark Twain was
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not looking for and two he couldn't have possibly predicted the Civil War had rendered the Pilot's profession too confused and dangerous why because Boats were taking fire they're shooting at the boats from both sides so imagine you're
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Mark Twain you're just trying to deliver goods and people up and down the Mississippi River and one side of the river you got you're getting shot at by the Confederate Army and on the other side of the river you're getting shot up
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by the Union Army anybody with a brain is not going to stay in a situation like that right so it says uh he could not foresee what new course his life would take but he could grasp that his days as a Riverboat pilot which he called the
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only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived on the earth were over and so that's another way to get to know uh Mark Twain is an incredibly Restless person he is one that refuses to be hemmed in or controlled in any way
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he is always going to optimize for freedom and so that quote tells you why he was so drawn to being a Riverboat pilot it was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived and later as an old man when he's
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writing about this period of his life he said that he fully expected to follow the river the rest of my days and die at the wheel when my mission was ended and then as Abraham Lincoln would say eloquently a few years later the war
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came and so there's this maximum that I read in an autobiography one time that I think is fantastic it says opportunity is a strange Beast it frequently appears after a loss so the fact that he loses what he thought was his life's work is
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going to be one of the most important events in his life because it actually finds his true life work his true life's work in fact after the war he's given the choice do you want to go back to being a riverb pilot or do you want to
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continue write you know being Mark Twain writing books doing public lectures and he chooses to to to be Mark Twain to not go back to what he thought at that time when he was a younger man what his life's work was going to be we're not
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but at the time he was terrified he is absolutely terrified and so we see that here he paced the floor obsessed with the fear that he might be arrested by government agents and forced to act as a pilot on a government gunboat while a
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man stood by with a pistol ready to shoot him if he showed the least sign of a false move that right there is the fear that Twain runs from that is the fear that that pushes him West on this Odyssey where he actually transforms
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from Samuel Clemens into Mark Twain now is that like a legit fear of course it was because before the Transcontinental railroads the way to move goods and people was the river system and so both sides and you you'll see this later on
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the Confederates and the union both try to conscript Clemens into their army to make him do this because Clemens had valuable knowledge of the river it was usually a multi-year apprenticeship to become a riverb pilot because there were
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so many ways to to either run around or to not be able to navigate the river successfully so he had the spefic specific knowledge in his mind through years of experience that was very valuable to both sides in the war another surprising thing I learned is
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that in another life Mark TW would be a cocaine dealer even from a young age he is a voracious reader and he winds up reading about this little known plant called the Koka plant so it says Sam considered going to South America and
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opening up a trade in Koka a wondrous and still little known plant whose energy enhancing qualities he had read about he goes so far he gets on a boat and starts traveling to South America the wouldbe cocaine Baron boarded a steamboat and resumed his journey to
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South America by the time the vot do New Orleans 12 Days Later his career plans had changed dramatically why had they changed dramatically because it's something else is you're going to see over and over again not only in the life
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of Mark train but almost everybody the UN and I study is the importance of mentors usually older wiser people that take an interest and are trying to help you succeed his mentor the person that's going to teach him the most valuable
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skill set and the the best job that he ever had is this guy named captain Horus Bixby later in life Twain is going to write an entire book called life on the Mississippi about this time in his life he looked back as some of the best times
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he ever had so it says it was the Mississippi River itself that he fell most deeply in love with and he would remember that attachment with undiluted misty-eyed affection for the rest of his life Bixby was a good if idiosyncratic
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teacher and Clemens quickly became his pride pupil and so this is just going to be an incredible thought incredible writing obviously from Twain uh he this idea I talked about earlier is the fact that he had the skill set in his mind like why
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was that so valuable so it says there was a lot to learn bixby's Empire stretched from New Orleans to St Louis 1,200 miles on the lower Mississippi each mile menaced by ever shifting currents rip tides shallows sandb bars
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quicksands floating islands sunken rocks sunken trees sunken boats loose debris and the everpresent dangers of collisions with other boats shipboard fires and boiler explosions this is how Mark Twain described this I love I thought I wrote down this is just
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incredible thought he learned gradually he learned how to be a pilot the F this is now Mark Twain writing later in his life right beautiful writing here the face of the water in time became a wonderful book A book that was a dead
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language to the uneducated passenger but which told its mind to me without Reserve delivering its most cherish Secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice after two years of apprenticeship after two years of learning the river he becomes a fully
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licensed Steamboat pilot looking back he said that was the the greatest achievement the single proudest moment of his life was learning how to do this successfully that's incredible because he's writing that as a much older man
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and this gives you an indication why he thought he was just going to do this forever your true pilot cares nothing about anything on Earth but the river and his pride and his occupation surpasses the pride of kings and so why
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would Twain believe that this was going to be his life's work this is what I mentioned earlier because he's working in the technology industry of his day it was the Golden Age of steamboating before railroad supplanted the river as
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the nation's Chief conduit of goods and people Riverboat Pilots were Lords of all they surveyed and they had a princely salary of $250 a month that is a lot of money so at this time Twain on his salary not only is he traveling all the time he has
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complete Freedom he's like the master of his own domain but he can afford to live well so he'd spend his money on like eating oysters and shrimp and mushrooms and he'd drink F Brandy and fine New Orleans restaurants he'd be able to send
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money home to his always impoverished mother and so for the very first time in his life he is making money he has Freedom he has a job he loves he feels he has purpose and then the Civil War breaks out and it says the Riverboat pilot understood that for the
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foreseeable future the most glorious part of his life was over and shortly thereafter his worst nightmare weapons he's actually drafted into war there's a there's a riverbat that pulls up on to the side of the river they see Twain and
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two other people standing there it is the they're from they're part of the the Union Army and they actually capture they're like oh now you're on our side their commanding officer approached the three able-bodied missourians demanded
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to know their identities and Brusly informed them that they were now to be drafted into the Union Army it was clemens's worst nightm sprung suddenly to life so they take him to the headquarters Twain actually escapes and
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is another reoccurring uh theme in his life he's constantly on the run in fact later on he said he has this hilarious line where he says uh I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating and so this is when his
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journey West and his transformation into Mark Twain begins because his brother actually gets a job working for the government of the newly created Nevada territory and so Twain goes with him to get away from the Civil War if you've
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ever seen the the show Deadwood the towns where Twain's going to spend the next few years of his life look a lot like that and so the big big problem here is the way that they have to get West is by traveling by stage coach now
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this is insane I've LED I have like this love affair with the American West I read a bunch of history books on it I kind of fantasize about it because I've lived on the East Coast my whole life I feel almost like I was born in the wrong
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place I think I have like the Western sense of like Adventure but anyways there is you're traveling just imagine you're in your 20s I think he's like 25 when this is happening right you're in your 20s it's 1860s America and you're TR tring West
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by stage coach there's several ways that Mark Twain could have died on this trip and the author does a fantastic job of listing those so at this point you have to worry about hostile Indians Cera denter tuberculosis small poox measles
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mumps Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever scurvy accidental drownings accidental shootings wagon mishaps Falls lightning strikes tornadoes whirlwinds blizzards quicksand wild animal attacks snake bites starvation exhaustion exposure and
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sometimes sheer Melancholy to enjoy such a trip a man must be able to endure heat like a salamander mud and water like a muskrat dust like a toad and labor like a jackass it is a hardship without glory to be sick without a home to die and be
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buried like a dog and the crazy thing about all that right is that go west young man that line was a rling cry for an entire generation maybe two generations of young men me to Head West Risk all of this for opportunity and a
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better life and so Twain is going to meet all kinds of interesting and crazy characters over the next six years as they're in the stage coach heading west one thing that he wanted to see was this new technology of their day this new
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service it's called The Pony Express so the Pony Express was actually like a genius uh invention of like a wildy entrepreneur the Pony Express was intended to answer the national demand for Swifter more dependable Coast to
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Coast mail service so at this time there only two ways for male to reach the West Coast right you have this thing called the ox bout route which would take essentially 3 weeks Overland if you wanted to say say you wanted to send a message from New York City to San
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Francisco they could get that they could take that route it'd be three weeks right for a little less money you could you could send it on a land and sea route which takes six weeks and so there's this entrepreneur named Russell
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and so he's like okay well the my two competitors are are 6 weeks or 3 weeks how can I figure out how to cut that down and make it faster because I know people will pay a premium for Speed that is always the case so he says he
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proposed to cut the time to 13 days by means of an interlocking relay system of horseback Riders dashing cross country at break neck speed each Rider would cover between 75 and 100 miles on his run with stops to change horses every
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dozen miles the mail was carried in a special designed pouch which fit over the saddle and could be transferred from one horse to another in a matter of seconds it's almost like a pit stop in like F1 now right now this is why I'm reading this to you cuz one
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they become like uh there's like there's like an Allure like a legendary Allure over these crazy young men that are just dashing across the country at Breakneck speeds this is hilarious apparently Russell was also a gifted copywriter
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Russell placed an ad for potential writers and leading newspapers throughout the West the ad itself became legendary here's the ad wanted young skinny wiry fellows not over 18 must be expert writers willing to risk death daily orphans preferred
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what an ad what do you think the response was hundreds of Adventure seeking young men quickly responded and this gives you an insight into the kind of people that would respond to such an ad this guy named Haslam it was all in a
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day's work for Haslam who once wrote 120 miles in the Utah territory with his jaw broken by an Indian arrow and one arm Shattered by a bullet I'm going to stay focused on Mark Twain but I highly recommend picking up this book and reading it it was really fun I bought
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the obviously the physical book in that little uh bookstore but I also then went and bought bought I wanted to support the author so I bought the Kindle version as well but I do want to pull out because there's just all these crazy
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characters and crazy stories in the book it's really fun to read but what was fascinating is I want to pull out some of the people that Mark Twain actually interacted with so he's going to wind up having coffee he meets this guy on his
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on his trip this guy named Slade that's his last name right and this guy was nuts he's involved in all kinds of crimes he's killing a bunch of people um and he gets into a duel with this guy named Ben so Benny winds up finding Slade at the time Slade somehow was
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unarmed and Benny shoots Slade several times with a shotgun but then he made the Fatal mistake of not finishing Slade off when he had the chance Slade then recovers goes and seeks revenge shoots and makes sure that Benny is dead then
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he cuts off Benny's ear and he wears it and so there's stories in the book where Slade is going around and like showing off this trinket this this dead man's ear and showing it to like the local children in the town and so Twain winds
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up meeting and having coffee with Slade another guy that he winds up meeting is Brigham Young he is the leader of the Church of L Saints the Mormons at this time and Twain writes about this meeting that he has with briam young this is
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hilarious it is likely fictional but it is hilarious so he says to accommodate all 72 of his wives said Twain the Mormon leader had constructed a 96t wide bed for them to sleep in but the sound of their combined snoring proved
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deafening take my word for it young told Twain 10 or 11 wives is you need never go over it Twain for his part endorse polygamy at least for the Mormons this is he's just funny seeing the poor ungainly and pathetically homely women
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thronging the seats of Salt Lake streets of Salt Lake City Twain judged that the man who marries one of them has done an act of Charity which entitles him to the kindly Applause of mankind and the man that marries 60 of them has done a deed
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of open-handed generosity so Sublime that the nation should stand uncovered in its presence and worship insight silence and so it is factual that Mark Twain met Brigham Young his account is largely believed to be fictional so
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finally uh after I think it's like a week or 18 days something like that they wind up getting to where they're going they're they're setting up shop and helping the governor of the newly formed Nevada territory so they're going to set
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up this place called Carson City the day they get there there's a gunfight and a windstorm and so that's just a normal day in the Nevada Capital Carson City interesting enough who actually named for the Explorer Christopher KCK Carson
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I read a book called blood and thunder if you're looking for a great audio book uh about the West KCK Carson is the main character of the book Blood and thunder it's a fascinating read and so Carson City is one of these like boom towns
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it's very close so I think it's like 12 miles away from the richest Silver Strike in American history this thing called the Comm stock load when they say the richest Silver Strike in American history back in the 1800s I think maybe
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starting in 1860 over the next 30 years that mine is going to make $400 million so they're setting up shop right next to this this volcano of money and there's this just mad fever to get rich quick or get rich as fast as possible that you
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know is a main theme throughout this entire book in fact Mark Twain speculates many many times he's gonna have so many failed businesses and failed occupations before he realizes hey I should just he gets his first break and I'll tell you how how that
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happens and then he goes fully into being a writer and a public lecturer but I do just want to pull out another character that is around Mark Twain at this time so there's this guy named Jack Harris Jack Harris robbed so many stage
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coaches that Wells Fargo gave him a job so he'd stop robbing them and he didn't stop and it's just fascinating to think about Wells Fargo obviously still exists today I think they did like 80 billion in Revenue last year but you know in
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1860s in the the American West they're just getting robbed left and right and so it says the company began putting live rattlesnakes in its strong boxes to deter highway men such as Jack Harris from robbing them it also formed its own
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private police force which operated Under The Motto Wells Fargo never forgets so Twain's older brother is the assistant to the governor of the Nevada territory and Nevada lawmakers were wild they were beating the out of each other with firewood when a fellow
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legislator John Winters took issue with him van boken challenged him to a duel with pistols instead winners grabbed a piece of firewood and proceeded to beat the distinguished member over the head with it Knocking van bulin to the floor
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and stomping on him with his boots and then Twain observes that when they're not busy beating the out of each other they're busy just stealing a ton of money there's this fantastic line from one of my favorite books which is
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written by Will and Ariel Durant it's called the lessons of History I think about all the time it says in every age men have been dishonest and governments have been corrupt Twain's version of that is the government of my country SN
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Nu's honest Simplicity but fondal artistic villain and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in public service so Twain is going to have a series of jobs he wants to get rich because he's like I'm going to get rich
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else I'm going to get rich in Gold I'm going to get rich in silver he wants to speculate in Lumber he's just trying to make a fast Buck I mean this is just human nature right most people just want to make a lot of money and they want to
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do the least amount of work possible and so when he hears of opportunities he's always willing to quit his job and then travel for opportunity so then he's at this point in the story he's traveling to this new Boom Town but he has this
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terrible idea right Twain expected to find masses of silver lying above the ground and glittering in the sun on the mountain Summits but when he gets there he realizes that successful silver mining involved months of digging
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drilling boring and Blasting the purest veins were usually the deepest that is a great line that applies to so many other things the purest veins were usually the deepest there's no way in hell that train is going to do that kind of work
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so he quits in disgust okay so when I got to this section there's this excellent book that I covered a long time ago I should reread it it's called The Big Rich it is about the second oil boom in Texas history it is episode 149 the book is amazing but there's a line
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in the book that I've never forgotten I think it's a metaphor for for life not just for oil and it says the trouble with this business is that everybody expects to find oil on the surface if it was up near the top it wouldn't be any
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trick to it you've got to drill deep for oil that is a very very similar thought behind the line in this book that says the purest veins were usually the deepest and so one problem with human nature is that we all get caught up in
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what everybody else is doing and that's why there there's these Bubbles and and bursts over and over again and so the same thing's happening here they're like nobody wants to actually dig and do the actual mining what we want to do is we
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want to trade paper we want to buy shares in largely non-existent mines and so the buying and shares of buying and selling this paper these shares in these mins the entire Camp the entire uh region that that train is in is doing
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engaging the same practice and so Twain's like oh that's genius I can make a ton of money I don't actually to do any work he says the trick is not to mine the silver ourselves by the sweat of our own brows and the labor of our
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hands but to sell the ledges the paper to the dull slaves of toil and let them do the mining and here's the problem with that Twain is is taking his the money he saved up through his own labor and then speculating what do you think
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is going to happen this is very similar to investing in startups right Twain owned several shares and a bunch of Mines it did not take him long to realize that most if not all were utterly worthless there's multiple times wait till I I'm going to blow your mind
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with something in a little bit but there's multiple times in this book where he is deeply deeply depressed I think this is the first step to becoming Mark Twain this idea of like this cannot be my life is a very powerful motivator
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says Twain was tired of being a minor swearing that he would never look upon his mom's face or get married until I rich until I am a rich man he was forced to take stock of his present situation I had gained a livelihood in various
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vocations he said but I had not dazzled anybody with my successes and so by this point he had tried on you know 10 different occupations he is a failure there's nothing in this in his life there's a multiple times in this book where you're like there's no if you
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paused Mark Twain's life like you're watching this right you paus it there's nothing in his life so far that is that would lead you to believe that he's going to be one of the you know greatest and most beloved writers in American
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history right so at this point what is he doing he's like what the hell do I do I don't know what to do next I'm a failure at everything I try and yet we go back to that maximum opportunity is a strange Beast it frequently appears
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after a loss the answer came entirely out of the blue the business manager for the Virginia City territorial Enterprise this is a newspaper wrote to Sam in Late July to offer him a $25 a week staff writer position on the newspaper for
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several weeks simply as a lark Twain had been sending humorous letters to the newspaper and he was doing that not because he thought he was going to get a job and so what happens is they he's sending all these funny like little
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letters they like it when an opening arises on the paper staff the guy managing the business manager for that immediately thinks of Twain and offers him that job this is the first step to him becoming Mark Twain and again he shows he's willing to travel to pursue
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economic activity now this is a very humble first job he he's lucky in the sense that it's a very high quality newspaper he's working for two young Founders and he's going to found find another friend and mentor of sorts there's like a two or three maybe four times in the book where he meets these really important people and they give them advice and Twain what did what did Michael Jordan say successful people listen those that don't listen don't
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last long right Twain listens and in many cases he hears advice from three or four people that he uses for the rest of his life for multiple decades a single idea can change everything he was merely at the newspaper take his place as the
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paper's new local that's the the term of the job essentially it's just like a copy editor General assignment reporter you just have to fill in any last minute holes in the newspaper because the newspaper has to come out every day and
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so it says by sheer good look Twain had landed at a spot at the best newspaper between St Louis in San Francisco under the energetic leadership of the new owners uh you have 23y old editor and then the 21-year-old printing Foreman
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now that's pretty crazy because Twain is older than his bosses these young Founders are also gifted at finding other talented people and that's important because his what's going to be Twain's closest friend at work is this guy that goes by the pen name Dan quill
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the first bit of advice that he gives Twain Twain is going to carry for the rest of his career and it was wise and succinct and this is what he says Get the facts first then you can distort them as much as you like and so if you
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go and study a lot of train fiction they're it's rooted in actual factual events that then he then distorts and exaggerates right uh says Twain would never be a particularly hard worker he later boasted he later boasted that he
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made a 50% profit on his work for the Enterprise because he was being paid $6 a day and only doing $3 a day worth of work and so one of the founders of the newspaper is also going to give Twain a good piece of advice that Twain's going
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to apply to his fiction writing about a decade later and so he's saying listen when you're writing for this newspaper we don't say things like we it is reported or it is rumored or we understand instead we get the facts and then we speak out and say it is so and
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so and this is the reason otherwise people will not put confidence in your news unassailable certainty is the thing that gives a newspaper the firmest and most valuable reputation that is the advice to to train the way I would think
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about this is people are attracted to confidence and they're repelled from nuance and it is at this newspaper this is why I said this is like his first step to becoming uh Mark Twain because it was this job in Virginia City that he
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first used the pen name Mark Twain and even from day one on the job he does something that's really smart this is also another idea remember I can't stress the importance of the advice that Mark Twain learns throughout his life
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right the fact that these mentors these contemporaries these peers were constantly trying to help him there's a lesson that he learned on the Mississippi River that he used all of his life so go back to his Riverboat Mentor Bixby bixby's point was that a
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pilot had to trust his instincts and for the rest of his career Mark Twain would trust his all the while inhabiting the perilous border between safety and danger laughter and tears East and West so this idea of trust your instincts is
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something he used his entire life and as you'll see it's why we know the name Mark Twain to this day so I want to now combine two ideas this idea where other people his peers his mentors and contemporaries were very important to
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him they helped him think about and shape his own career and then this idea that came from the last episode The James Cameron episode in that episode James Cameron has this idea where like uh he would let ideas simmer for decades
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and I think he used the example of like uh the Plains Indian Indians how they would use every single aspect of the Buffalo down to like it's marrow he didn't let anything that he learned go to waste we're going to see that here the combination of those two ideas here
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with Mark Twain he's going to learn about the the the art to public speaking but he has no use of it yet something has to happen in his life to give him use which we'll get to but he's going to wind up meeting this guy uh name he
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calls himself Artemis Ward they wanted becoming friends and then Twain learns from this guy so at the time in history everybody knows Artemis Ward very few people know Mark train now you know who does know Mark train Artemis Ward so
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it's interesting although close to the same age as Twain Ward had far outstripped the younger man on the national stage he had been a columnist for the Cleveland plane dealer he had been editor of Vanity Fair magazine in New York he had already published his
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first book uh Ward was a favorite author of Abraham Lincoln who once interrupted a cabinet meeting at the White House to read aloud from one of Ward's humorous stories so at they're going to trade turns right each man at different points
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in history Ward and train are going to become the most popular humorist in America through writing and speaking it's essentially markk Twain before Mark Twain and so he sees in Ward A New Path that he's going to use and then perfect
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in the future uh Ward is in town in Virginia City to give to have a show like these these spoken word shows uh he had a cloud crowd pleasing stick uh which he took on the road to Great profit it involved outlandish puns heads
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scratching non sequitors uh long pointless stories all delivered with a characteristic dead pan voice and innocent expression and so Ward had been reading markk Twain's Post in the Virginia City newspaper and so he gets
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to town and the first person he wants to meet he's like I want to meet this guy they call him the Washo giant that was his nickname at the time so I want to meet Mark Twain They want he comes in town for the speak engagement they wind
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up just hitting it off they're like the same person they wind up getting drunk and hanging out for a bunch and so Ward invites him to the show and that was so important because this is like this is where he realized like oh I can do this
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too the whole point of the performance that's Twain immediately realized was not so much what was being said as how it was being said it was a master's level seminar on the art of comic delivery and train absorbed it all with
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the focused intensity of a precocious child and so I got to stop there because that's another example everybody learns from somebody Ward gives him advice and that he uses he gets this advice multiple times and he uses for the rest
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of his his life and the way I would put it is like you don't sell out to the baser elements of your profession what ever you're doing do it on the highest plane possible Ward offered to bring train Along on his tour of Europe and
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encouraged his Newfound Protege to write for more sophisticated Eastern Publications he's telling me listen man you are way too talented for what you're doing way you're you're way you're better than this and if you're going to do the same profession you might as well
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do it at the highest plane possible and he's like I will help you in any way he said he promised to dash off convincing notes to his friends in New York on Twain's behalf so this Odyssey that Mark Twain's on in the west lasts for five
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and a half six years three of those years he's in Nevada either in Carson City or Virginia City eventually I guess the point I need to make here is that it takes a while for him to actually apply this advice he does understand that he
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should be trying to position himself with like more sophisticated Eastern Publications and so one thing he does is he doesn't go back East yet but he moves out of like the boom tabs boom towns of Nevada and actually goes to San
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Francisco which at the time has a lot more culture than it's currently present in like the Nevada territory I do need to make the point though that this again is a inflection point in his life he's changing lives again that is the main
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theme that hey you can constantly revent yourself he's still searching for his life's work he's got a bunch of few ideas he's got good people around him but he still hasn't put it all together I do want to make the point that so far
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he's been just in Nevada alone he'd been a politician a silver Miner a stock Trader a mill worker and a newspaper reporter and the reason I bring that to your attention is because there is still nothing nothing nothing in the life of
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Mark Twain that could lead you to predict that he's going to be go down in history as one of the greatest American Writers ever so he goes to San Francisco problem is he's in a better City but he's still he's now working on the
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newspaper again and he hates it and what he hates most about this and this is really a good way to think about Twain is like he's he's always seeking novelty and running away from monotony well being like a just a standard beat
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reporter in San Francisco he realizes oh my God I'm living the same day every day which is literal literal hell for Mark Twain 40 years later Twain still shuddered at the soul killing routine each day's evidence was substantially a duplicate of the day before the daily
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performance was Killingly monotonous and this detesting of his job this hating of his Day-Day life goes back to this can't be my life is a very powerful motivator this deep hatred is going to lead to one the most surprising thing in the book and two finding the
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path forward into actually embracing Mark Twain as his identity so first he has to have a fight he's going to wind up getting either fired or quit from this job and then he has a hilarious way to talk about this uh many years into
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the future but it starts with the fact that his editor refuses to print Twain's story Twain is all Freedom so he does not like to have constraints on him accustomed to having everything he wrote printed without question Twain sted They
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wind up having a meeting they have a fight not at all clear if he either quit or got fired but what was what was clear that was that he was out of a job 40 years later it still hurt and when news photos of the great San Francisco
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earthquake of 1906 showed uh the newspapers building reduced to skeletal ruins Twain exclaimed how wonderful are the ways of Providence he said it was an act of God that destroyed the newspaper building so he was either willing to
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quit or get fired over principal but that did not mean that it was easy this is one of the darkest periods of his entire life Twain suddenly found himself struggling for two months my sole occupation was avoiding people during
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that time I did not earn a penny I became very adept that's what he calls slinking slinking away from people hiding from people and bills he can't pay any of his bills he said I slunk away from approaching faces that look familiar I robbed my generous landl I
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felt meaner and ler and more Despicable than worms and this is where we get to the biggest holy moment of the book Twain clung literally to his last dime afraid that complete pennes might suggest suicide he noted suddenly in an
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otherwise serious discussion of marriage that I am resolved on that or suicide meaning he wants to get married or he'll kill himself he Fred if I do not get out of debt in 3 months it is pistols or poison for one this is unbelievable
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several years after he remembered one despairing night when I put the pistol to my head but wasn't man enough to pull the trigger he put down the pistol and picked up the pen as he would throughout his life in good times and bad Mark
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train Wayne wrote and this is what I mean that opportunity is a strange Beast it frequently appears after a loss he goes from suicide being complet almost completely broke down to his last dime or his last penny to having the
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opportunity that creates Mark Twain and it comes from relationships everything in the world runs on relationships so remember Ward right Ward the guy that he met back in Virginia City the guy that gave him the the path forward offers to
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publish in like a literary magazine so maybe like I guess it would be like kind of the equivalent if you you publish a piece in like the New Yorker today or something like that and so Twain is a freelance writer I guess is the way to
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think about it in those terms he is going to write his first big hit this is so important it goes back to what I started the conversation with where Steve Jobs is completely right you cannot connect the dots looking forward
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you have to you can only connect them looking backwards if you're looking back at Twain's life this is a major major dot this is going to be his first viral hit it's going to be called the celebrated Jumping Frog of calaris
39:57
County or something like that I I need to talk first about like this level of procrastination the fact that he struggled greatly which with what is going to turn out to be his his first rival hit and then how it connects to everything else and literally creates
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Mark Twain Twain couldn't seem to get the Jumping Frog story written he finished two drafts and then he began the third it just wouldn't come he said then one dismal afternoon as I lay on my hotel bed uh determined to inform Ward
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that I had nothing appropriate for his collection a small voice began to make itself heard inside of him a small voice began to make itself heard try me try me oh please try me please do it was the poor little jumping frog the one that
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old Ben had described he's talking about the guy he overheard the story in the bar I immediately got up and wrote out the tale if it hadn't been for the little fellow's appropriation in a in this strange fashion I would have never written about him if you ever hear
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Cormac McCarthy talk about the way he writes he says it just comes out out of him it's very similar to what Mark train saying it's just like I tried tried fought against it didn't come I'm laying there about to give up and then it just
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comes out of me and I sit down and I write it out the importance of this story cannot be understated it is his first viral hit it is going to sweep across all the newspapers and all the magazines all throughout the country
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which is going to lead him to his next big break when he's in Hawaii which I'll get there in a second what's fascinating about this is the viral nature of this story caught him by surprise he didn't even think it was that good the only one
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not amused by the story it seemed was the author himself to think that after writing many articles a man might be excused for thinking that were tolerably good so saying thought I wrote a bunch of good stuff in the past those New York
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people should single out a villainous backward sketch to compliment me on so he's like this was just something that was trying to make uh to write just to make a living to just survive didn't even take it that seriously and yet it is one in which all the country is
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praising me for and it is the first opportunity that opens up every single opportunity after listened to this grudgingly and gradually Twain accepted his fate he thought he had a call to literature of a low low order that's what they called it at the time you
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writing funny literature literature of a low order humorous it is nothing to be proud of he said but it is my strongest suit from now on he pledged he would turn my attention to seriously writing to excite the laughter of God's
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creatures it is a poor pitiful business he wrote the year is 1865 it is is a few weeks before Twain's 30th birthday so because that went viral everybody knows who Mark Twain is now he gets all these he gets opportunities he
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gets to choose from at the time Hawaii was not a state it was actually wasn't even called Hawaii it was called The Sandwich Islands back then and Twain has been wanting to go for a while but he's like okay well how can I get there and
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so Hawaii is going to change everything because his greatest scoop he gets his greatest scoop in Hawaii which actually leads him to his public lecture career which then leads him to Europe which then leads him to his his wife that he
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like the love of his life uh but we're not there yet so what he does is he approaches this these newspaper owners I think in Sacramento and he's like listen if you'll pay for the trip to Hawaii I'll spend I think he he decides he's
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going to spend a month out there I will write a series of like letters for the newspaper you know 25 or 30 of these letters he thinks he's going to go for a month and he loved Hawaii so much he winds up spending four months there and
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much later as an older man he's writing about this this just beautiful memory in his life and he says it was the peacefest restful sunniest balest dreamiest Heaven of Refuge for a worn out and wary Spirit the surface of the
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Earth can offer and so this is what I mean how one opportunity unlocks another opportunity how opportunity tends to beget more opportunity he winds up getting an opportunity this is something he couldn't have planned it's outside of
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his control but he winds up meeting this American Diplomat that is that's in Hawaii Hawaii at the time his uh name is Burlingham and Burlingham just wants to meet Twain because Burlingham and lingham's son is a fan of Burling of
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tween's writing in fact they had memorized tween's Frog story and could repeat it like on command and so Twain winds up becoming friends and spending time with Burlingham why he's in Hawaii and then again this is another that you
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have an older person well-connected person trying to take an interest in Mark Twain call I think he calls him a genius and he gives advice that's going to sound very similar to the advice that Ward gave uh Twain all way back in Virginia City and this is advice that
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Twain's GNA use for the rest of his life again and it's this idea it's like whatever you're doing do it on the highest plane possible do not give into the Bas or elements of your uh of your occupation and so it says a paternalistic Ambassador Burling game
44:41
gave the author a well-meaning piece of advice direct quote from Burlingham here you have great ability I believe you have genius what you need now is a refinement of Association seek companionship among men of superior
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intellect and character refine yourself and your work never affiliate with inferiors always climb it was an admonishment Twain would take to heart and follow virtually to the letter for the next 44 years shortly after they meet and become
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friends right there's this incredible Survival Story that's going to that's gonna this thing doesn't just go viral over the United States like tween's Frog story this goes viral over the entire year or entire Earth rather and Twain is
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the one that gets this scoop and he gets the scoop because the Ambassador right the American ambassador arranges for train to be the first person to interview these people that survived this incredible shipwreck there was a a Shipwreck Boat like a a Lifeboat that
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lands on the southern coast of Hawaii led by this guy named captain Josiah Mitchell this is like still famous they had been at sea for 43 harrowing days and they were just in a 15ot light booat Lifeboat with just 10 days worth of food
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at the time their endurance was the single boat record in the world for people that survive the longest in a small boat it says with only 10 days rations the cway were soon reduced to eating their boots shoelaces pieces of
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wood strips of canvas Cotton shirts and silk handkerchiefs the survivors were less than a day away from drawing straws to kill and eat the loser of the lottery and in a matter I think a day or two Twain writes up this story sends it off
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and it go it spreads like wildfire all over the world why is that important because again opportunity unlocks the next opportunity what he realizes is like oh wait now I actually have something where I'm somewhat of an
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authority on I can start doing stage shows he's gonna take this this story and then add humorous bits about it and he's like now I have a plat like I'm going to use I'm going to run WS Playbook I'm going to be a public lecturer starts out didn't thought it
46:47
maybe just one city it went so it goes so well that he winds up touring and he does this for the rest of his life and the smart thing he does is he capitalizes on all the media attention right away so it says he begins
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seriously discussing a new Venture a public lecture on Hawaii that would capitalize on his current status and his current status meaning an American that just SP 4 months on the Sandwich Islands and had stumbled into this unbelievable
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uh worldwide scoop of the great you know the greatest feed of endurance for any Shipwrecked victims at that time in history and you see right from the get- go that that Twain is an a phenomenal marketer so he he does two smart things
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here one to seed the ground to get people to show up he spends $150 to an ad in the newspapers advertising the show that he's doing and it says the ad itself was a classic example of TW and wit I'm going to try to read this to you
47:35
and hopefully it makes sense if not you might have to see it but what he does is you have all these headlines most of the ad is just a normal text right but then you have like five or six headlines all in caps locks and it immediately draws
47:47
your attention but it's funny what he does so in headlines it would say you know Mark Twain's uh going to speak this is what's included and it says a splendid Orchestra but under small print it goes is in town but it has not been engaged capital letters a den of
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ferocious wild beasts we'll be on exhibit in the next block magnificent fireworks were in contemplation for this occasion but the idea has been abandoned a grand torch light procession may be expected in fact the public are
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privileged to expect whatever they please so it's like trying to grab your attention like hey you want to see a den of wild beasts you want to see fireworks well we don't have that but we do have Mark Twain and then he has this tagline
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from the very first ad that he uses a bunch doors open at 7:00 the trouble will begin at 8 and so if you think about what's really happening here the people that show up at the show it's very similar to what you and I doing right now the note
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I left myself on all this is like this is just podcasting before podcast and it says the middle Decades of the 19th century saw an explosion of traveling lecturers in the United States an autodidactic effort that catered to the
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hunger those to those that are Hunger for knowledge and a self-educating populace it is what's taking place is no different than what you and I are doing right now and when I got to the section Jeff Bezos Pops to mind one of my Jeff
49:03
has you know an amaz a million amazing quotes but one of my favorite things he said I'm going to read this to you about you should be building your business around things that don't change one human being talking to another is as old
49:14
as language that is never going to change and this is what Jeff says I very frequently get the question what's going to change in the next 10 years and that's a very interesting question it's a very common one but I almost never get
49:24
the question what's not going to change in the next 10 years and I submit to you that the second question is actually the more important of the two because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time in our
49:35
retail business we know that customers want low prices and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now they want fast delivery they want vast selection it is impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up
49:47
and says Jeff I love Amazon I just wish the prices were a little higher or I love Amazon I just wish youd deliver a little more slowly impossible and so the effort put into those things spinning those things up we know the energy we
50:00
put into it today we'll still be paying off dividends for our new customers 10 years from now when you this is a spch line it's amazing when you have something that you know is true even over the long term you can afford to put a lot of energy into it and so another
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thing that he does he's so nervous he has complete like stage fright he's completely terrified of what he's about to do is he seeds the audience so Hill Cohen like he has a bunch of friends I think he's got like I don't know like
50:26
maybe eight or 10 different friends sitting all over the theater and he even knows where they are so if he wants to deliver like make sure that like the punch line hits or they laugh he'll like look in their direction if he makes eye
50:37
contact it means to laugh once one or two people laugh usually in an audience other people kind of pick it up as well and so he seated the audience the second thing that was hilarious right is now he's on tour is that train would finish
50:51
his show and then he' go out with the audience and get absolutely hammered go out and get drunk after the show is over with people in the audience and so as he keeps traveling around doing more shows more newspapers pick it up more
51:05
magazines talk start talking about it he gets he started getting a lot of attention for his shows it becomes very very successful like I said something he does for the rest of his life but then of course as the growth the popularity
51:13
of anything he starts getting a lot of critics Twain's response to criticism is hilarious he says everybody has a right to his opinion even if he is an ass they have the consolation of abusing me and I have the consolation slapping my pocket
51:28
and hearing the money jiggle so before you and I end this conversation let's go let's look back at what is taking place right finds thinks he's going to be a cocaine dealer travels down stumbles upon the best job he thought he'd have forever the
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Mississippi river boat Steamboat pilot then something completely out of out of his control the Civil War comes causes him to flee go out west and he has all these series of Adventures turns from Samuel Clemens into Twain meets a bunch
51:58
of people along the way that give him fantastic advice and change the trajectory of his life experien is unbelievably highs and then at the very bottom where he wants to he has a gun to his head finds the best opportunity of
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his life writes what he thinks is just a silly story that story goes viral that story creates all these other fans and people that love Twain and want to help him he turns that into a trip to Hawaii meets another one of his fans who
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happens to be very influential who leads him to the the greatest journalistic scoop he has of all time that leads him to his lecture career which further enhances his public profile which leads him to this 23- week trip in Europe
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which is in turn going to lead to the source material for his first great publishing success in book form which then in turn changes his life forever once again Twain's Restless nature served him well the subsequent 23 weeks
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he spent touring the old world gave him both the inspiration and the raw material for the book the Innocence abroad his first great publishing success and the biggest selling book in the United States in the last 17 years Twain also found a girl or rather he
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found the girl's brother and then he found the girl her name was Olivia Lis langon and she was to be the love of his life had he not gone on that Voyage his career most likely would have mirrored that of his recently deceased drinking
53:30
companion Ward a one-man show lived out in Smoky lecture Halls Cy hotel rooms and late night bars instead much to the wonderment of his Western friends Mark Twain set out rehabilitating himself in the single-minded interests of winning
53:48
the girl Twain told his friend that she was the most perfect Gem of womenkind that I ever saw in my life and I I will stand by that remark until I die Against All Odds he would prove as good as his word the unlikely marriage of the Hard
54:06
Knock humorous from Backwoods Missouri and the ays from upstate New York works surprisingly well Twain showed the previously sheltered Livy the world she in turn civilized him for the next 34 years in good times and bad the couple
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presented a unified front a mo marriage blessed with three spirited daughters and innumerable cats the contented author produced a remarkable stream of novels short stories essays and travel pieces that today stands as one of the
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great bodies of work in English literature the first book he completed after his marriage was roughing it a sunny and expansive account of his cross country Stage Coach trip with his brother a decade earlier and his adventures in the raw and wild
55:01
west what an incredible ending to the story and an illustration in one of Mark Twain's long-held beliefs that you can live multiple lives that you can constantly no matter what you can constantly reinvent yourself I highly recommend buying the book as I said
55:15
earlier I have both the hard cover version and the Kindle version if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time that is 312 books down 1,000 AO and I'll talk to you again soon