If those ten minutes had played out differently, his name probably wouldn’t be catalogued in public libraries.

Neither would his writing style be studied by fledgling authors, some of whom study at the most prestigious universities.

He claimed his writing wasn’t what he was good at.

He did it, he said, because he had to.

And so, he followed the stories, wherever they took him, so he could fulfill his duty to the newspapers and magazines he wrote for.

He ended up rooming with his brother in Nevada, and for a while he gave up the trade of wordsmithing for mining silver, some 500 feet below the floor of the offices where he used to pen his stories.

The fates smiled on them; one day his brother happened down a mine shaft of which the first several hundred feet were claimed by another entity.

Beyond where the claim ended, though, his brother saw a sight that nearly paralyzed him. 

There, right in front of him, was the richest vein of silver he had ever seen.

He hurried back to the claim office with all the speed he could muster to file his claim on that section.  Needless to say, when the front shaft owners found out what was done, although completely legal, feelings became evident.  But they had to give it up, the claim was filed, and that was that.

The excitement of it kept the two brothers up for nights on end as they talked in rabid joy of their coming wealth and the splendor they could take advantage of. 

They made plans, ad infinitum, of whose debts they would pay off; whose lives they could enrich by helping out, here and there.

The soon to be millionaires were invited to a party in a neighboring town.  The party went well; so well in fact, that it was late before the one whose name we know so well set out, on foot for the nine-mile trip home.

And it was in the last few hundred feet that realization dawned on him with sickening insight. 

On the day they were to take possession of their claim, like it was for anyone taking possession, a person of their firm had to be on site, standing at the claim, when midnight struck.

He was a few hundred feet from town, and his claim, when he realized it was 10 minutes after twelve. 

He rushed to the claim to restake it, but it was of no use.  The front shaft owners were standing there, and had already claimed it.

His name was Samuel Clemens, or as we know him better, Mark Twain.

And so, he went back to writing. 

And if I must surmise anything, my guess is that should he have been on time, and claimed his millions, there would have been no need to write the now classic books and articles we read from him.

Because it seems that as wealth and good times smile upon a person, they soon fill up any need for the people in such a position to reach deep, and to find those things within themselves that sometimes surprise them, and the rest of the world, for that matter.