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So many of the Spokane people are now camping out that the most intelligent and highly appreciative audience which assembled to hear Mark Twain last evening was not so large as it should have been. All present thoroughly enjoyed their 90 minutes with the greatest of American humorists, from their first smile at "a day which was not good -- for school" to their nervous start at the "ough" which ended the old negro's ghost story and the evening's entertainment. Samuel L. Clemens, who for nearly a generation has been considered the typical and most successful humorist of America, is of medium height, sleight rather than portly, but his eagle face, in its wavy mane of gray hair, is very striking. His slow drawl and peculiarly dry manner are thoroughly natural to him, and were as markedly his own when he lectured on the Sandwich Islands in the 60's. He entertainment consists of the retelling of a number of the most famous stories from his books, with a background of amusing comment. He told about his first fight; "The Jumping Frog," his first hit in literature, the maundering ram story from "Roughing It," Huck Finn's runaway trip, "An Early Transgression," in which he depicted his juvenile remorse after stealing a green watermelon, the horrors of the German language, and finally the ghost story of "The Golden Arm." Mark Twain's quaint and original humor delighted his hearers, and the underlying stratum of pathos and serious thought, without which humor becomes verbal horseplay, was as highly appreciated. |