The Autobiography of Mark Twain - Chapter 2 - My Uncle Was Also a Farmer

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Ophelia

A section of Mark Twain’s autobiography presents vivid rural life in Hannibal through the narrator’s childhood memories, including the village’s streets and log buildings, everyday trade, and family hospitality on his uncle’s farm. It describes the farm yard, forbidden swimming pools, the log cabin where “Aunt” Hannah lived, and the close relationships with enslaved friends. Subsequent chapters continue with landscape recollections, school life, and health stories tied to family doctors and relatives.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages100

Reading Time2 h 34 min

AccessFree to download

From the Preface

Chapter 2

Life on the farm

Aunt Hannah and Uncle Dan’l

Chapter 3

The farm remembered

Doctors and childhood injuries

Chapter 4

The country schoolhouse

T h e A u t o b i o g r a p h y o f M a r k T w a i n p F r o m t h e P r e f a c e In thIs AutobiogrAphy, I shall keep In mInd the fact that I am speaking from the grave…. I shall be dead when the book issues from the press…. It seemed to me that I could be as frank and free as in a love letter if I knew that what I was writing would be exposed to no eye until I was dead, and unaware, and indifferent. mark twaIn T h e A u t o b i o g r a p h y o f M a r k T w a i n p 1 M a r k T w a i n The village has two streets, each a couple of hundred yards long, covered with stiff black mud in wet times, deep dust in dry. Most of the houses were of logs. There were none of brick and none of stone. There was a log church, which was a schoolhouse on week days. There were two stores in the village. My uncle owned one of them. It was very small, with a few rolls of cloth; a few barrels of salt fish, coffee, and sugar, brooms, axes, and other tools here and there; a lot of cheap hatsand tin pans strung from the walls. At the other end of the room there were bags of shot, a cheese or two, and a barrel or so of whisky. If a boy bought five or ten cents’ worth of anything he was entitled to a handful of sugar from the barrel; if a woman bought a few yards of cloth she was entitled to some thread; if a man bought something he was at liberty to swallow as big a drink of whisky as he wanted. T h e A u t o b i o g r a p h y o f M a r k T w a i n p C H A P T E R 2 my uncle was also a farmer, and hIs place was In the country four miles from Florida. I have not come across a better man than he was. I was his guest for two or three months every year, from the fourth year after we removed to Hannibal until I was eleven or twelve years old. It was a heavenly place for a boy, that farm. The house was a double log one, with a spacious floor (roofed in) connecting it with the kitchen. In the summer the table was set in the middle of that shady and breezy floor, and the wonderful meals—well, it makes me cry to think of them. The farmhouse stood in the middle of a very large yard and theyard was fenced on three sides; against these stood the smoke house; beyond were the fruit trees and beyond them the Negro quarters and the tobacco fields. Down a way from the house stood a little log cabin against the fence, and there the woody hill fell sharply away to a brook which sang along over its stony bed and curved in and out and here and there in the deep shade of overhanging greenery—a divine place for going in barefoot, and it had swimming pools, too, which were forbidden to us and therefore much frequented by us. For we were little Christian children and had early been taught the value of forbidden fruit. 3 M a r k T w a i n In the little log cabin lived a bedridden white headed slave woman whom we visited daily and looked upon with wonder, for we believed she was upward of a thousand years old and had talked with Moses. We called her “Aunt” Hannah. Like the other Negroes, she was deeply religious. All the Negroes were friends of ours. We had a faithful good friend in “Uncle Dan’l,” a middle aged slave whose head was the best one in the quarter, whose sympathies were wide and warm and whose heart was honest and simple. I have not seen him for more than half a century and yet spiritually I have had his welcome company a good part of that time. It was on the farm that I got my strong liking for his race and my appreciation of certain of its fine qualities. This feeling and this estimate have stood the test of sixty years and more. T h e A u t o b i o g r a p h y o f M a r k T w a i n p C H A P T E R 3 I can see the farm yet, wIth perfect clearness ; I can see all Its belongings, all its details; the family room of the house, the vast fireplace, piled high on winter nights with flaming logs; the lazy cat spread out in front of it; the sleepy dogs; my aunt in one chimney corner, knitting; my uncle in the other, smoking hi

FAQs

What does the narrator set up in the preface about writing the autobiography?

He explains he is speaking from the grave and that the book will be published after he is dead. He also emphasizes writing with frankness because it will not be seen until then.

What is described about the narrator’s uncle’s farm in Chapter 2?

The chapter portrays it as a deeply enjoyable place for a boy, with log buildings, meals, an enclosed yard, and nearby cabins and natural features. It also highlights forbidden pleasures like swimming pools and the children’s religious upbringing.

How does Twain connect childhood health and medicine to family life?

The text says he was told he was sickly and depended on medicines early in life. It also describes how doctors were handled through family women and how Doctor Meredith saved his life multiple times.

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Ophelia