Life on the Mississippi vs France and England in North America, Part III
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
356words between them — 1 min of it
Life on the Mississippi is longer — 144,658 words against 144,302 for France and England in North America, Part III, a difference of 356 words or about 1 min of extra reading. France and England in North America, Part III is the harder read, at grade 10 against 9.8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Life on the Mississippi | France and England in North America, Part III | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Twain, Mark | Parkman, Francis |
| Words | 144,658 | 144,302 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 9h 39m | 9h 37m |
| Unique words | 13,911 | 11,603 |
| Sentences | 6,193 | 6,518 |
| Average sentence length | 23.4 words | 22.1 words |
| Reading grade | 9.8 | 10 |
| Reading ease | 66.2 | 62.5 |
| Long words | 8.6% | 10.6% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |144,658 − 144,302| = 356 words 356 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Life on the Mississippi or France and England in North America, Part III?
Life on the Mississippi is longer — 144,658 words against 144,302 for France and England in North America, Part III, a difference of 356 words or about 1 min of extra reading. France and England in North America, Part III is the harder read, at grade 10 against 9.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 245 and no. 40143 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
