In his later years, Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, became increasingly embittered and cynical. “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man,” he wrote in “Pudd’nhead Wilson.” Of religion he said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”
Twain had cause for his bitterness. In his youth, he lost several siblings, including his beloved brother Henry. In his own home, death was also familiar. The loss of his 24-year-old daughter Susy to spinal meningitis was a particularly crushing blow. His disastrous and foolish ventures into business often backfired, bringing him at one point to bankruptcy.
