Originally Posted by Mark Twain

I remember those days of twenty-one years ago, and a certain pathos clings about them. Susy, with her manifold young charms and her iridescent mind, was as lovely a bubble as any we made that day— and as transitory. She passed, as they passed, in her youth and beauty, and nothing of her is left but a heart-break and a memory. That long vanished day came vividly back to me a few weeks ago when, for the first time in twentyone years, I found myself again amusing a child with smoke-charged soap-bubbles.

Susy’s next date is November 29th, 1885, the eve of my fiftieth birthday. It seems a good while ago. I must have been rather young for my age then, for I was trying to tame an old-fashioned bicycle nine feet high. It is to me almost unbelievable, at my present stage of life, that there have really been people willing to trust themselves upon a dizzy and unstable altitude like that, and that I was one of them. Twichell and I took lessons every day. He succeeded, and became a master of the art of riding that wild vehicle, but I had no gift in that direction and was never able to stay on mine long enough to get any satisfactory view of the planet. Every time I tried to steal a look at a pretty girl, or any other kind of scenery, that single moment of inattention gave the bicycle the chance it had been waiting for, and I went over the front of it and struck the ground on my head or my back before I had time to realize that something was happening. I didn’t always go over the front way; I had other ways, and practised them all; but no matter which way was chosen for me there was always one monotonous result— the bicycle skinned my leg and leapt up into the air and came down on top of me. Sometimes its wires were so sprung by this violent performance that it had the collapsed look of an umbrella that had had a misunderstanding with a cyclone. After each day’s practice I arrived at home
with my skin hanging in ribbons, from my knees down. I plastered the ribbons on where they belonged, and bound them there with handkerchiefs steeped in Pond’s Extract, and was ready for more adventures next day. It was always a surprise to me that I had so much skin, and that it held out so well. There was always plenty, and I soon came to understand that the supply was going to remain sufficient for all my needs. It turned out that I had nine skins, in layers, one on top of the other like the leaves of a book, and some of the doctors said it was quite remarkable.

I was full of enthusiasm over this insane amusement. My teacher was a young German from the bicycle factory, a gentle, kindly, patient creature, with a pathetically grave face. He never smiled; never made a remark; he always gathered me tenderly up when I plunged off, and helped me on again without a word. When he had been teaching me twice a day for three weeks I introduced a new gymnastic— one that he had never seen before— and so at last a compliment was wrung from him, a thing which I had been risking my life for days to achieve. He gathered me up and said mournfully: “Mr. Clemens, you can fall off a bicycle in more different ways than any person I ever saw before.”

(c) The Mark Twain Foundation/The Regents of the University of California

Originally Posted by Italuminium

That is really cool stuff. Didn't know there was an unpublished autobiography.

Originally Posted by gaucho777

FYI, Mark Twain gave instructions for his autobiography not to be published until 100 years after his death. That 100-year anniversary was a couple years ago, at which point we published the first of three volumes. (It was a NYT best seller.) Volume 2 is due out this Fall.

Autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 1

Autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 2 (forthcoming)