White House honors author Mark Twain’s birthday, historical classics, American patriotism

Sunday marked the 190th birthday of the famous penman Mark Twain, who championed American values of work, courage and integrity through his various short stories and classic novels.

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water,” Twain once said. “It’s a classic… something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read,” he also said, though most Americans would now consider his works classics.

Twain, who was born Samuel Clemens, Nov. 30, 1835, grew up in Hannibal, Missouri and worked as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. His penname derives from a nautical term: “mark twain” signifies the water is at least 12 feet deep to assure steamboat skippers of a safe passage.  

His time on the river shaped his classic stories of naive yet daring boys and their adventures along the Mississippi River: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. These boys managed to create much mischief, but Twain, with the light hand of a writer, guiding his readers as a captain steers a ship, ensured truth and moral upstanding prevailed.  

“Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest,” he said.  

President Donald Trump acknowledged Twain’s “beloved voice” of “plainspoken wisdom” in a White House proclamation Sunday.  

“Today, we celebrate the 190th birthday of the ‘father of American literature,’ Mark Twain, a storyteller whose wit, wisdom, and honesty spoke to the heart of our Nation,” reads the proclamation. “Through humor and imagination, he transformed everyday life into timeless tales, embodying the American spirit of daring and defiance, courage and confidence, and excellence and adventure.” 

Throughout his childhood and adult years, Twain watched America struggle through the bloody Civil War and divisive Reconstruction era but then rise at the turn of the Industrial Age, the proclamation detailed. He recorded “meaning in everyday experiences” and grounded the country’s identity amid its own bloodbath and rocky instability.  

“His humor was honest, his honesty was humorous, and both were unapologetic, bold, and distinctly American.” 

America is now “fulfilling Mark Twain’s hope” for the country through a “Golden Age of prosperity,” Trump’s proclamation also said, citing his administration’s policies to improve the economy, lower prices and secure both local and international peace and order. 

Trump’s “Golden Age” terminology directly counters Twain’s own name for his American age: “The Gilded Age,” which condemned the excessive greed he saw at the turn of the 20th century. 

“…We are fulfilling Mark Twain’s hope for an America that measures greatness not in the illusion he once called the ‘Gilded Age,’” the proclamation reads, “but in the Golden Age of prosperity for all Americans.” 

While Twain may have critiqued aspects of a growing America, the author still loved his country and recorded her beauty in his numerous works. He also bequeathed many maxims, as if he was speaking to Sawyer and Finn themselves:  

• “Be good or you will be lonesome.” 

• “If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.” 

• “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” 

Twain died April 21, 1910, at the age of 75, but his stories continue to shape Americans – young and old alike. 

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time,” he said.