On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) vs Life on the Mississippi
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,610words between them — 6 min of it
On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) is longer — 146,268 words against 144,658 for Life on the Mississippi, a difference of 1,610 words or about 6 min of extra reading. On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 9.8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) | Life on the Mississippi | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Ruskin, John | Twain, Mark |
| Words | 146,268 | 144,658 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 9h 45m | 9h 39m |
| Unique words | 14,509 | 13,911 |
| Sentences | 5,101 | 6,193 |
| Average sentence length | 28.7 words | 23.4 words |
| Reading grade | 13.1 | 9.8 |
| Reading ease | 52.4 | 66.2 |
| Long words | 12.3% | 8.6% |
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 = |146,268 − 144,658| = 1,610 words 1,610 ÷ 250 wpm = 6 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) or Life on the Mississippi?
On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) is longer — 146,268 words against 144,658 for Life on the Mississippi, a difference of 1,610 words or about 6 min of extra reading. On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 9.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 21263 and no. 245 — 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.
