"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away--to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan" for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion--to "talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment"--meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent," and that he was therefore free to speak his "whole frank mind."

“我击中了它！”马克·吐温在1904年给一位朋友的信中写道我会把它给你的。在口述自传之前，你永远不会知道自己失去了多少乐趣。”因此，在经历了几十次错误的开始和数百页的书页后，吐温开始了讲述自己人生故事的“最终（也是正确的）计划”。他的创新理念是“只谈论你目前感兴趣的事情”，这意味着他的思想可以自由变化。这些文本中有许多在100年内未出版的严格规定意味着，当这些文本出版时，他将“死亡、无知、漠不关心”，因此他可以自由地说出他的“全部坦率的想法”