Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
Marshall Cohen—researcher and producer, CNN
Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
TWAIN, Mark
TWAIN, Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). (Florida, MO, Nov. 30, 1835--Redding, CT, Apr. 21, 1910). In 1882 Twain visited Dubuque, twenty-one years after his days as a riverboat pilot, while traveling up the MISSISSIPPI RIVER. His impressions of the river city were later retold in the pages of Life on the Mississippi, regarded by critics as one of his finest works.
Twain recalled with amusement the high-pressure sales pitch used by salesmen of the NORWEGIAN PLOW COMPANY. Twain reported that the salesman informed him that any country where farmers really knew how to plow used a Norwegian plow. The salesman was so confident in his product that he claimed if a competitor's plow was found to be as good he would eat it without any Worcestershire sauce to "flavor it up." Twain also told of TETES DE MORTS, south of Dubuque where a party of Native Americans had to choose between death in combat or jumping to their death.
