April – Sam wrote a sketch named “Luck” about a military officer whose stupidity results in success and fame. It was not published until 1891 in Harper’s Monthly Magazine [MTNJ 3: 226]. From the Mark Twain Encyclopedia, Craig Albin contributor:

“Twain claimed he did not invent this story but rather heard it from a clergyman who had once been an instructor at the officer’s military school and who had been an eyewitness to the officer’s remarkable rise…. ‘Luck’ is a minor work that reveals, with typical Twainian insight, the ironic and sometimes humorous role played by chance in the lives and reputations of the famous” [475].