The Spectator
March 16, 1895, p368
Pudd'nhead Wilson. By " Mark Twain." (Chatto and Windus.)
--Has Mr. Samuel L. Clemens found Missouri audiences or readers slow to
appreciate his jokes? Mr. David Wilson comes to a Missouri town to
push his fortunes, Unluckily his first n utterance when he lands from a
steamer -- did steamboats pass "every hour or so" up and down the
Mississippi in 1830 -- is about a yelping dog, that if he owned half of
the beast he would kill his half. This would have been a fair joke in
New York; to the Missourians it seemed proof positive that the speaker
was a fool. Hence the sobriquet of "Pudd'nhead" which the public
opinion of the town fastens upon him. But he doesn't deserve it. On the
contrary, he is a clever fellow. He understands, for instance, how
the impressions of finger-tips may be made proofs of identity --is
not this again a little before date in 1830? This is the point of the
story, which is a somewhat gloomy but powerful tale of the slavery
times. "Mark Twain's" negroes are not of the Uncle Tom type; but the
story is not on that account a less vigorous indictment of the old
social order of the South.