SATURDAY morning was come, and all the
summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There
was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music
issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring
in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance
of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village
and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far enough
away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.
(The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter 2)
Lighthouse:
. The lighthouse was
erected in 1935 to commemorate the centennial of Twain's Birth.
Tom and
Huck Statue : Located
on the north end of our historic Main Street at the foot of the
legendary Cardiff Hill, this statue of Mark Twain's most famous
characters was sculpted by Frederick Hibbard in 1926. The statue
represents the movement of time with Tom Sawyer growing up and
looking toward the future with bag over his shoulder, leaving
behind Huckleberry Finn who doesn't want to grow up. (cited from
http://www.hanmo.com/hcvb/attractn.html)
Mark Twain Cave(McDowell's Cave)
This
cave, located in Cave Hollow a mile south of Hannibal, was on
e of Twain's favorite places. It is called "MacDougal's
Cave" in The adventures of Tom Sawyer.
. . . MacDougal's Cave was but
a vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and
out again and led nowhere. It was said that one might wander
days and nights . . . and never find the end of the cave.
(The adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter
29)
[In
the Chapter 31 of The adventures of Tom Sawyer,
Tom and Becky went off their own way in the cave and were lost.
Many villagers searched the cave for Tom and Becky with all their
might. But "Three dreadful days and nights dragged their
tedious hours alone." On the other hand, Tom and Becky were
wandering from place to place in the cave.
]
"Why, I Didn't notice, Becky,
we are away down below them --- and I don't know how far away
north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. We couldn't hear
them here."
Becky grew apprehensive.
"I wonder how long we've been down here, Tom.
We better start back."
"Yes, I reckon
we better. P'raps we better."
"Can you
find the way, Tom? It's all a mixed-up crookedness to me."
"I reckon I could find it---but then the bats.
If they put both our candles out it will be an awful fix. Let's
try some other way, so as not to go through there."
"Well. But I hope we won't get lost. It would
be so awful!" and the girl shuddered at the thought of the
dreadful possibilities.
..., Becky would watch
his face for an encouraging sign, and said he would say cheerily:
"Oh, it's all right. This ain't the one, but
we'll come to it right away!"
(The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter 31)
The cave was an uncanny place,
for it contained a corpse ---the corpse of a young girl of fourteen.
It was in a glass cylinder inclosed in a copper one which was
suspended from a rail which bridge a narrow passage. The body
was preserved in alcohol and it was said that loafers and rowdies
used to drag it up by the hair and look at the dead face. The
girl was the daughter of a St. Louis surgeon of extraordinary
ability and side celebrity. He was an eccentric man and did many
strange things. He put the poor thing in that forlorn place himself.
(from the Autobiography of Mark Twain[ed.
Charles Neider], chapter 3)
Secrets of McDougal's Cave
On the
Mississippi River
Jackson's
Island viewed from Cardiff Hill :
Three miles
below St. Petersburg, at a point where the Mississippi River
was a trifle over a mile wide,there was a long, narrow, wooded
island, with a hallow bar at the head of it, and this offered
well as a rendezvous. It was not inhabited; it lay far over toward
the further shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled
forest. So Jackson's Island was chosen. Who were to be the subjects
of their piracies was a matter that did not occur to them. Then
they hunted up Huckleberry Finn, and he joined them promptly,
for all careers were one to him; he was indifferent. They presently
separated to meet at a lonely spot on the river-bank two miles
above the village at the favorite hour -- which was midnight.
There was a small log raft there which they meant to capture.
Each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he could
steal in the most dark and mysterious way -- as became outlaws.
And before the afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy
the sweet glory of spreading the fact that pretty soon the town
would "hear something." All who got this vague hint
were cautioned to "be mum and wait."
(The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter 13)
River
Boat Landing :
Morning came, eventually, and
by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and rollicking company were
gathered at Judge Thatcher's, and everything was ready for a
start. It was not the custom for elderly people to mar picnics
with their presence. The children were considered safe enough
under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few young
gentlemen of twenty-three or thereabouts. The old steam ferryboat
was chartered for the occasion; presently the gay throng filed
up the main street laden with provision baskets. Sid was sick
and had to miss the fun; Mary remained at home to entertain him.
The last thing Mrs. Thatcher said to Becky, was:
"You'll not get back till
late. Perhaps you'd better stay all night with some of the girls
that live near the ferry landing, child."
"Then I'll stay with Susy
Harper, mamma."
"Very well. And mind and
behave yourself and don't be any trouble."
Presently, as they tripped along,
Tom said to Becky:
"Say - I'll tell you what
we'll do. 'Stead of going to Joe Harper's we'll climb right up
the hill and stop at the Widow Douglas'. She'll have ice cream!
She has it most every day - dead loads of it. And she'll be awful
glad to have us."
"Oh, that will be fun!"
(The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer; Chapter
29)
Mark Twain
Memorial Bridge :
During Mark Twain's time, people
crossing the river at Hannibal used ferryboats. In 1871, the
first railroad-and-wagon bridge was erected. 65 years later,
the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge was built on September
4, 1936.
In July 1993, rising floodwaters forced
the temporary closing of this bridge.
The people of
Hannibal are not more changed than is the town. It is no longer
a village; it is a city, with a Mayor, and a council, and water-works,
and probably a debt. It had fifteen thousand people, is a thriving
and energetic place, and is paved like the rest of the West and
South --- where a well-paved street and sidewalk are things so
seldom seen that one doubts them when does see them. The customary
half-dozen railway center in Hannibal now, and there is a depot,
which cost a hundred thousand dollars. In my time the town had
no specialty, and no commercial grandeur; the daily packet usually
landed a passenger and bought a catfish, and took away another
passenger and a hatful of freight; but now a huge commerce in
lumber has grown up and a large miscellaneous commerce is one
of the results. A deal of money changes hands there now.(from
Life on the Mississippi)
The Commercial Construction
of Mark Twain( the following
passages are cited from Andrews, Gregg. City of Dust: A
Cement Company Town in the Land of Tom Sawyer, University
of Missouri Press, 1996)
In 1882, when Mark Twain returned
to the Mississippi River to gather more material for his book
Life on the Mississippi, it marked the first time in twenty
years that he had visited the South. Nostalgia and a romanticized
boyhood image of the antebellum South quickly gave way to pessimism
and bitterness as he passed southward through his native Missouri.
Disturbed by the violence, racism, sluggishness, coarse language,
tobacco chewing, and other features of Southern life, he complained
of stagnation and lack of economic progress since the Civil War.
He found little evidence of the New South transformation championed
by those who viewed industrialization, immigration, and urbanization
as the keys to dynamic economic and social growth. "There
is hardly a celebrated Southern name in any of the departments
of human industry," he complained, "except those of
war, murder, the duel, repudiation, and massacre."(p.7)
*
*
*
By
the time of the centennial anniversary celebration, the commercialization
of Twain ---and the association of him with the glorification
of capitalism -- was well underway. But at the ceremonial unveiling
of the statue of Tom and Huck at the foot of Cardiff Hill nine
years earlier, the Hannibal residents who paused to honor Twain
may also have paused to reflected on the sweeping changes that
industrialization had brought to the area since Twain's day.
They listened to several speakers, including the sculptor Frederick
Hibbard; Walter Williams, dean of the University of Missouri's
School of Journalism; and the mayor of Hannibal, Morris Anderson.
For those in the crowd whose thoughts and recollections may have
wandered to the noisy blasts and thick, hovering black smoke
near the cave just south of town, Anderson put the industrial
transformation of Twain's childhood world of adventure into perspective.
"The cave is still a picnic ground," he said "but
it is no place for robber bands in this industrial age, for you
can hear the rumble of the cement plant close at hand."
(p.301)
Link
to essays and articles on Hannibal
The Little Town
of Hannibal(link to about.com by Jim Zwick)
Chapter 7 of Albert Bigelow
Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography (New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1912), 26-30.
from Mostly
Mississippi,
by Harold Speakman
'Becky and Ignition' Chapter
of Harold Speakman's Mostly Mississippi (1927)
about a visit to Hannibal in the 1920s (sections 1-6), at the
Library of Congress.
Tourism plays a vital role in our community
Courier-Post Commentary on
Thursday, July 2,
1998
form Lighting
Out for the Territory---Reflections on Mark Twain and American
Culture (By Shelley
Fisher Fishkin )
Reference books or works cited
(excluding online texts):
The Mark Twain Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and James D. Wilson,
Garland,1993.
Mark Twain A-Z---The Essential
Reference to his Life and Writings,
R. Kent Rasmussen, OUP,1995.
Twain's world(MULTIMEDIA CD-ROM), Bureau Development.
Inc.,1993.
A Tom Sawyer Companion, John D. Evans, University Press of
America, 1993.
The Autobiography of Mark
Twain, ed. Charles Neider,
Harper Perennial, 1990.
City of Dust: A Cement Company
Town in the Land of Tom Sawyer,
Gregg Andrews, University of Missouri Press, 1996.
The
following books are available at 
The Mark Twain
Encyclopedia
Mark Twain A-Z---The
Essential Reference to his Life and Writings,
A Tom Sawyer
Companion
The Autobiography
of Mark Twain
City of Dust:
A Cement Company Town in the Land of Tom Sawyer
maintained by Robagoya-Juku
English School, Yokohama, Japan
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