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At the age of 36 Twain settled in Hartford, Connecticut. His best books were published while he lived there.
三十六歲時，馬克吐溫開始定居于康涅狄格州哈特福德鎮，他的最優秀的作品全是在那段時間里問世的。
As early as 1870 Twain had experimented with a story about the boyhood adventures of a lad he named Billy Rogers. Two years later, he changed the name to Tom, and began shaping his adventures into a stage play. Not until 1874 did the story begin developing in ear nest. After publication in 1876, Tom Sawyer quickly became a classic tale of American boyhood. Tom's mischievousdaring, ingenuity,and the sweet innocence of his affection for Becky Thatcher are almost as sure to be studied in American schools to-day as is the Declaration of Independence.
早在1870年，馬克吐溫就試著寫了一篇關于一個他名之為比利羅杰斯的男孩子的童年歷險故事。兩年后，他又將主人公的名字改為湯姆，并著手將故事改編成劇本。直到1874年他才開始認真地擴展故事情節。《湯姆o索亞》于1876年出版后，很快成為美國兒童故事的經典之作。這部描寫湯姆的頑皮、勇敢、機智以及他對貝琪莎切爾的天真純潔的感情的故事幾乎像《獨立宣言》一樣成了今天美國學校里的必讀書本。
Mark Twain's own declaration of independence came from another character. Six chapters into Tom Sawyer, he drags in "the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard." Fleeing a respectable life with the puritanical Widow Douglas, Huck protests to his friend, Tom Sawyer: "I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't work, Tom. It ain't for me ... The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell-everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."
馬克吐溫本人的獨立宣言卻是由另一個人物表達出來的。在《湯姆o索亞》第六章里，他引出了"村里的流浪少年，鎮上酒鬼的兒子哈克貝利o費恩"。哈克不愿在清教徒道格拉斯寡婦家過上等人的體面生活，從那里逃出來后對他的朋友湯姆o索亞發牢騷說："我試過了，還是不行;不行啊，湯姆。那不是我過的日子……那寡婦家吃飯要聽鐘聲，睡覺要聽鐘聲，起床也要聽鐘聲，什么事情都得規規矩矩，簡直叫人受不了。"
Nine years after Tom Sawyer swept the nation, Huck was given a life of his own, in a book often consider ed the best ever written about Americans. His raft flight down the Mississippi with a runaway slave presents a moving panorama for exploration of American society.
《湯姆索亞》風靡美國九年之后，哈克被賦予獨立的生命，成為一本被許多人認為是最成功的描寫美國人的作品的書中的主人公。他同一個逃跑出來的奴隸一起乘坐木筏沿著密西西比河順流而下的漂流航程展現了一幅幅揭示美國社會生活全貌的生動畫面。
