Today Google is honoring the great American humorist, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, with a panoramic Google Doodle that references one of the early scenes from one of his classic stories.

Better known as Mark Twain, the legendary writer is celebrated in classrooms everywhere as one of the most important figures in American literature. It’s odd to find a kid in America that hits 15 without having read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or both).

Today’s Google Doodle, in honor of his 176th birthday, references a plot point in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. As a punishment for ditching school and muddying himself up in a fight, Tom’s aunt forces him to whitewash the fence on a beautiful Saturday. Less than pleased about these developments, he devises a scheme to make others whitewash the fence for him, all while providing him things in the process. By creating the illusion that whitewashing is something fun and desirable, he gets his work done for him. A true lesson we should all learn in life – how to game the system.

You can see Tom’s labor toiling away at whitewashing the fence, removing the Google logo from view. This is definitely one of my favorite Doodles that Google has offered up in a while.

The last thing Twain wrote was his autobiography, and it allowed him to have a bestseller a century after his death. The giant manuscript was published in 2010 and shot to the top of the bestseller lists. The reason for the delay in publishing was that Twain left explicit instructions to wait exactly 100 years after his death to release the autobiography.

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

What are you favorite Twain-isms? Let us know in the comments.