Mark Twain passage of boat, was a measure on the sounding line. Twain is an archaic term for "two", as in "The veil of the temple was rent in twain." The riverboatman's cry was "mark twain" or, more fully, "by the mark twain", meaning "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]", that is, "The water is deep and it is safe to pass." Twain said that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In "Life on the Mississippi", he wrote: Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot
The Old English Boethius and digressions throughout explaining allusions. Many of these additions come from glosses to contemporary Latin manuscripts of the "Consolation", which were obviously used in the translation process. There is also a significant number of references to Christianity within the translation which are entirely absent in Boethius's work. Sometime after the composition of the prose translation, someone adapted the prose translations of Boethius's metres into Old English alliterative verse. They are an important example of relatively securely dateable Old English poetry. The Old English Boethius The Old English Boethius is an Old English translation/adaptation of the sixth-century "Consolation of Philosophy" by