"At some point (1909) Harpers Bazaar asked Twain to write a short essay on 'the turning point in my life. He didn't like the premise because he didn't believe that anyone's life had just one 'turning point.' As he saw it, there was 'a long chain of turning points' in each person's history, and no link in this intricate chain meant much without the others. Looking back over the events of his early life, he saw five or six crucial links---or turning points---starting with the day his mother 'apprenticed me to a printer.' His vagabond life as a young printer led to adventures along the great wateways of the American frontier, which aroused his interest in becoming a steamboat pilot. When 'boats stopped running' during the early days of the Civil War, he went farther West and caught 'the silver fever' in Nevada. When he didn't stike it rich, he traded a miner's shovel for a journalist's pen and made a name for himself in the West, which inspired him to try his luck as an author back East."
-Michael Shelden, p. 384
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