Every boy thrills to the adventures of that pair of immortal youngsters, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. If you have not read them yet, you will, and you will enjoy them all the more if you have read this book.

Of course, their names were invented by the very great American who wrote their stories: Mark Twain. But the adventures really happened. They happened to the boy Mark Twain himself and his friends.

Here is the story of his own boyhood. Mark Twain was just his writing name; you will find out why he took it. His actual name was Samuel Clemens, and everyone called him Sammy. Never was there a boy more full of mischief, more full of curiosity about everything.

This account of Sammy Clemens begins when he was four years old and his family was living in the little village of Florida, Missouri. But the real adventures start two years later when they moved to Hannibal, Missouri, on the bank of the wide and wonderful Mississippi River.

What a place for a boy to grow up! What exciting opportunities it offered: all sorts of boats going by all day long; the haunted island where you could dig for pirate treasure; the river cave.

As you read about the funny and thrilling times Sammy Clemens had, you realize that he was Tom Sawyer and that Huck Finn was his very good friend, Tom Blankenship.

When Sammy Clemens was twelve his father died and he had to go to work. It is fortunate for all of us that he worked as a "cub" printer on a newspaper, for that is where he learned to write. In almost no time at all he was writing amusing stories for the paper.

In a few years, Sammy, almost a man, went to St. Louis. In Miss Mason's exciting story about him you see him sailing away up the river he loved so well—to be a printer, then a river pilot, then a newspaperman and then a writer of famous books —America's greatest humorist, beloved all over the world.

This book about him makes you realize why he could never forget his boyhood on the river, and why he was able to write such wonderful stories about it, based on his own experiences and the tales he heard.

Mark Twain Boy of Old Missouri is one of a series of books about the boyhood of great Americans. They reveal the qualities which, developed in manhood, were to make these men great. For all children they are a simple, lively and delightful introduction to important characters of our history or literature. These famous figures become genuine friends, youngsters like themselves.

From the book