Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri and died in Connecticut in 1910.  In 1909 Mark Twain made this comment “I came in with Halley's Comet, It is coming again next year. The Almighty has said, no doubt, 'Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together. '” He died on April 21, 1910—one day after the comet had once again reached its perihelion. He is best known for his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).

In 1883, Mark Twain, the American writer, humorist and essayist wrote an autobiography entitled Life on the Mississippi. This is an excerpt from that book called Two Ways of seeing a River. It is about the difference in our perspective from seeing something for the first time that captivates and enchants us to losing that charming view of it due to familiarity and a deeper understanding of its essence. He asks the question do you gain or lose by this insight?