Mark Twain AutobiographyIn NINE Slides

Presented by Conor Cunneen-IrishmanSpeaks – Author What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’

Birth

• I was born (Florida, MO) in 1835. The village contained a hundred people and I increased the population by 1 per cent. It is more than many of the best men in history could have done for a town. It may not be modest in me to refer to this, but it is true.

• Mark Twain Autobiography

Presented by Conor Cunneen-IrishmanSpeaks – Author What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’

Childhood

• As I have said, I spent some part of every year at the farm until I was twelve or thirteen years old. The life which I led there with my cousins was full of charm, and so is the memory of it yet. I can call back the solemn twilight and mystery of the deep woods, the earthy smells, the faint odors of the wild flow-ers, the sheen of rain-washed foliage, the rattling clatter of drops when the wind shook the trees, the far-off hammering of woodpeckers and the muffled drumming of wood-pheasants in the remoteness of the forest, the snap-shot glimpses of disturbed wild creatures scurrying through the grass,—I can call it all back and make it as real as it ever was, and as blessed.

• Mark Twain AutobiographyPresented by Conor Cunneen-IrishmanSpeaks – Author What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’

His 85 year old Mother Remembers

I hadn't seen my mother in a year or so. And when I got there she knew my face; knew I was married; knew I had a family, and that I was living with them. But she couldn't, for the life of her, tell my name or who I was. So I told her I was her boy."But you don't live with me," she said."No," said I, "I'm living in Rochester.""What are you doing there?""Going to school.""Large school?""Very large.""All boys?""All boys.""And how do you stand?" said my mother."I'm the best boy in that school," I answered."Well," said my mother, with a return of her old fire, "I'd like to know what the other boys are like.“• Mark Twain Speeches: Morals and Memories

Jane Lampton Clemens circa 1870

Presented by Conor Cunneen-IrishmanSpeaks – Author What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’

The River Boat Pilot

• I became a River boat pilot for a short period before the Civil War. A pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth.

• Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi

Presented by Conor Cunneen-IrishmanSpeaks – Author What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’

A Speech that Bombed

• When I sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat. I shall never be as dead again as I was then. I shall never be as miserable again as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn't know what the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one I shall never be as wretched again as I was then. Howells, who was near me, tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't get beyond a gasp. There was no use—he understood the whole size of the disaster.

• Mark Twain AutobiographyPresented by Conor Cunneen-IrishmanSpeaks – Author What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’

Sadness

• My own history includes an incident which will always connect me with England in a pathetic way, for when I arrived here seven years ago with my wife and my daughter--we had gone around the globe lecturing to raise money to clear off a debt--my wife and one of my daughters started across the ocean to bring to England our eldest daughter. She was twenty four years of age and in the bloom of young woman-hood, and we were unsuspecting.

• When my wife and daughter—and my wife has passed from this life since—when they had reached mid Atlantic, a cablegram—one of those heartbreaking cablegrams which we all in our days have to experience—was put into my hand. It stated that that daughter of ours had gone to her long sleep. And so, as I say, I cannot always be cheerful, and I cannot always be jokinb; I must sometimes lay the cap and bells aside, and recognize that I am of the human race like the rest, and must have my cares and griefs.

• Mark Twain Speeches: Books, Morals and Hats

The death of his beloved daughter Susy aged 24 greatly affected Twain

Presented by Conor Cunneen-IrishmanSpeaks – Author What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’

Olivia Langdon Clemens• I saw her first in the form of an ivory miniature

in her brother Charley's stateroom in the steamer "Quaker City," in the Bay of Smyrna, in the summer of 1867, when she was in her twenty-second year. I saw her in the flesh for the first time in New York in the following December. She was slender and beautiful and girlish. Under a grave and gentle exterior burned inextinguishable fires of sympathy, energy, devotion, enthusiasm, and absolutely limitless affection.

• I have compared and contrasted her with hundreds of persons, and my conviction remains that hers was the most perfect character I have ever met

• Mark Twain Autobiography

Olivia Langdon age 24, one year before her marriage to Sam Clemens

Presented by Conor Cunneen-IrishmanSpeaks – Author What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’

Halley’s Comet

• I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.“

• Mark Twain: A Biography – Albert Bigelow Paine

Presented by Conor Cunneen-IrishmanSpeaks – Author What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’

What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’

• NINE Lessons spelling MARK TWAIN acronym

• Message• Audience• Relate• Know your Objective

• Titter• Wait (the Pause)• Anecdotes• Involve• Narration and StagecraftPresented by Conor Cunneen-IrishmanSpeaks – Author What Mark Twain Learned Me ‘bout Public Speakin’