Mark TwainArticle Free Pass The Dandy Frightening the Squatter”
(1852), appeared in Eastern newspapers and periodicals. In 1852,
acting as the substitute editor while Orion was out of town,
Clemens signed a sketch “W. Epaminondas Adrastus Perkins.” This
was his first known use of a pseudonym, and there would be
several more (Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Quintius Curtius
Snodgrass, Josh, and others) before he adopted, permanently, the
pen name Mark Twain. Having acquired a trade by age 17, Clemens
left Hannibal in 1853 with some degree of self-sufficiency. For
almost two decades he would be an itinerant labourer, trying
many occupations. It was not until he was 37, he once remarked,
that he woke up to discover he had become a “literary person.”
In the meantime, he was intent on seeing the world and exploring
his own possibilities. He worked briefly as a typesetter in St.
Louis in 1853 before traveling to New York City to work at a
large printing shop. From there he went to Philadelphia and on
to Washington, D.C