Saturday Review
December 29, 1894, p122
Pudd'nhead Wilson. By Mark Twain. London: Chatto & Windus. 1894.
Mark Twain's last book is a story of mixed babies and the
ingenious detection of crime. It is not altogether another
Huckleberry Finn. On the other hand, it is a relief to find that
it is not another Yankee at King Arthur's Court. Roxy, the slave
woman, who changes the babies, is a delightful character, who stirs us
with a warm and ready interest. For the rest, there is little that can
be said to rouse enthusiasm. Pudd'nhead Wilson himself is a little
unreal, too much of the deus ex machina, though there is much that
is Twainian in the specimen sayings that illustrate his wisdom. Every
chapter is headed with these extracts, and it is clear that Pudd'nhead
Wilson is to Mark Twain what Poor Richard was to Franklin. In the means
by which Wilson detects the murderer of Judge Driscoll we have an
ingenious adaptation of the system of thumb-impressions, originated by
Sir W. Herschell in India, as a method of identifying criminals. It is
cleverly, if not entirely persuasively, worked out in the story. But the
sketch of Roxy, the negress, is by far the finest thing in the book.