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Young Mark Twain entered that world in 1857 as a cub pilot on a steamboat. The cast of characters set before him in his new profession was rich and varied a cosmos.He participated abundantly in this life, listening to pilothouse talk of feuds,piracies, lynchings ,medicine shows, and savage waterside slums. All would resurface in his books, together with the colorful language that he soaked up with a memory that seemed phonographic
1857年，少年馬克吐溫作為蒸汽船上的一名小領航員踏人了這片天地。在這個新的工作崗位上，他接觸到的是各式各樣的人物，看到的是一個多姿多彩的大干世界。他完全地投身到這種生活之中，經常在操舵室里聽著人們談論民間爭斗、海盜搶劫、私刑案件、游醫賣藥以及河邊的一些化外民居的故事。所有這一切，連同他那像留聲機般準確可靠的記憶所吸收的豐富多彩的語言，后來都有機會在他的作品中得以再現。
Steamboat decks teemed not only with the main current of pioneering humanity, but its flotsam of hustlers, gamblers, and thugs as well. From them all Mark Twain gained a keen perception of the human race, of the difference between what people claim to be and what they really are. His four and a half year s in the steamboat trade marked the real beginning of his education, and the most lasting part of it. In later life Twain acknowledged that the river had acquainted him with every possible type of human nature. Those acquaintanceships strengthened all his writing, but he never wrote better than when he wrote of the people a-long the great stream.
蒸汽船的甲板上不僅擠滿了富有開拓精神的人們，而且也載著一些娼妓、賭棍和歹徒等社會渣滓。從所有這些形形色色的人身上，馬克o吐溫敏銳地認識了人類，認識了人們的言與行之間的差距。他在蒸汽船上工作的四年半時間是他真正接受教育的開端，而且也是最具有深遠意義的教育。到了晚年，馬克o吐溫還聲言是密西西比河使他了解了各種各樣的人的本性。這種生活體驗對他的全部創作都起了促進作用，然而他描寫得最為成功的還是那些密西西比河上的人物。
When railroads began drying up the demand for steam-boat pilots and the Civil War halted commerce, Mark Twain left the river country. He tried soldiering for two weeks with a motleyband of Confederate guerrillas who diligently avoided contact with the enemy. Twain quit after deciding, "... I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating. "
隨著鐵路運輸的發展，社會上對汽船領航員的需求日漸減少，而內戰的爆發又阻礙了商業貿易的發展。這時，馬克o吐溫便離開了密西西比河流域。他在南方邦聯游擊隊的一支雜牌隊伍里當了兩個星期的兵。那支隊伍想方設法避免與敵軍交戰。在確信"我比發明撤退的人更精通撤退"之后，馬克吐溫離開了那支隊伍。
He went west by stagecoach and succumbed to the epidemic of gold and silver fever in Nevada's Washoe region. For eight months he flirted with the colossal wealth available to the lucky and the persistent, and was rebuffed.Broke and discouraged, he accepted a job as reporter with the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, to literature's enduring gratitude.
他乘驛站馬車來到西部，在內華達州的華蘇地區受到當時正流行的淘金熱的誘惑。同那只有既幸運而又鍥而不舍的追求者才能取得的巨大財富三心二意地打了八個月交道之后，他遭到了失敗。在破產和灰心之余，他接受了為弗吉尼亞市《領土開發報》當記者的工作，這一行動將獲得文學界永久的感激。
