[Compare this review to the notice in The Chicago Tribune, 18 December 1871.]

San Francisco Daily Alta California [unsigned]
1877: January 15

Tom Sawyer was a boy, not one of the sort that you read about in good books, but a little devil, never malicious and always at some trick, and in the course of years he engaged in a multitude, all of which are here recorded in Twain's style. He had special aversions for church, Sunday school, pious people, devout conversation and the company of his sedate but good old aunt. In spite of his efforts to escape from such inflictions he had to suffer them once in a while, but in his efforts to get some diversion on such occasions he more than once made lively sensations. Too lazy to get his Sunday school lessons, he managed by sharp trading to buy up a lot of the tickets given to the best pupils, and when a distinguished visitor came the children were requested to step forward with their tickets so that the one who had the most should receive the prize. To the astonishment of all Tom Sawyer was the hero, and, after a great time had been made over him, the visitor thought Tom should have a chance to show his learning, so he asked him who were the first two of the twelve Apostles to follow Jesus, it being presumed that the prize boy knew such things perfectly, for the lesson of the term had been in the study of the four Gospels. Tom felt the necessity of giving some answer, and his was "David and Goliath," to the surprise of the visitor, the consternation of the head teacher and the amusement of the school. When Tom went to church he took a large snapping bug (which has a grip like a crab) with him, and it got hold of a church-going dog, which rushed around the building and howled in a manner highly unbecoming to the place. When he was sick his aunt gave him pain-killer, and when she went out he gave a dose to the cat, which squawled, rushed around like mad, upsetting everything, and then jumped through the window, breaking a pane of glass in the way. Aunt Polly hearing the disturbance and finding the cause, scolded Tom for being so cruel to the cat, but Tom said she had compelled him to take pain-killer when he protested, and he had not given it to pussy till she came and begged for a taste when she saw him pour it into a spoon. He went to school, and got into trouble on account of a little girl--both about ten years old. Having read about the romantic life of pirates, Tom and two companions of the same age stole a little raft, on which they floated a few miles on the Mississippi to a small uninhabited island, where they remained three days, while their relatives mourned their supposed death by drowning, and when they were discovered and brought back there was great rejoicing, and Tom was looked at by other little boys as a wonderful hero, and he put on awful airs on account of the sensation he made. What we have told here is merely part of the outline of the story; the chief merit is in the filling in, which is full of humorous and acute delineation of the follies, superstitions and peculiarities of boys, girls and older people.

But for the Introduction to this book, we should have little difficulty in assigning it its proper place in literature. We should say at once that the author was draping himself in the garb of one of those typical Yankee tourists of whom we hear so often, and whom we do meet occasionally, -- the tourists who "do" Europe in six weeks, -- whose comment on Venice is that they do not care much for those old towns, and on the Venus de' Medici that they do not like them stone gals. If we thought at all about the name on the title-page, we should put it down as a pseudonym, though the probability is that we should not think about it. Anyhow, we should come to the conclusion that Mark Twain, whoever he might be, had hit off the oddities of some of his countrymen very well; that many of his remarks were amusing, and almost witty; and that he was certainly not such a fool as he tried to look. But when Mr. Hingston tells us seriously that Mark Twain is really the pseudonym of the sub-editor of a daily paper in a Western city a few months old, that he is a flower of the wilderness, a thoroughly untravelled American applying the standard of Nevada to historical Europe, we are fairly puzzled. We can readily believe that the writer of this book is ignorant of many of those things which would be familiar to an English tourist. His remark that "Raphael, Angelo, Canova -- giants like these gave birth to the designs" of the statues on the Cathedral at Milan, is not much more than the hasty generalization of one who takes his facts from guides and guide-books. The statement that "Raphael pictured such infernal villains as Catherine de' Medici seated in heaven and conversing familiarly with the Virgin Mary and the angels," may surprise those who remember that Catherine de' Medici was only born one year before the death of Raphael. Again, we are told that Raphael is buried in Santa Croce, instead of in the Pantheon; but we may conclude from this that in Mark Twain's opinion every great artist should be buried in several places, just as each relic of a saint is multiplied. We owe this suggestion to what Mark Twain says of an important fellow-passenger calling himself Commissioner of the United States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa. The comment on this "titular avalanche" is, "to my thinking, when the United States considered it necessary to send a dignitary of that tonnage across the ocean, it would be in better taste and safer to take him apart and cart him over in sections in several ships."

In all these mistakes there is nothing unnatural. Most men who are not learned, and who do not take the precaution of using books of reference before they speak, may fall into the same errors. The only thing that characterizes Mark Twain is the reckless manner in which he makes his assertions. The greater his blunder, the more assurance there is in his language. Thus he says, without the slightest reserve, that the Emperor of the French "kept his faithful watch and walked his weary beat as a common policeman of London" as if the special constable of 1848 had been Z 264. Yet it is not till we get beyond the mistakes that we light on the genuine untravelled American. It is significant of him that he does not commit himself to facts of his own, because he is sceptical as to the existence of everything. He listens gravely to the guide's stories, and then asks some question which reduces them to an absurdity. He finds everybody else admiring a picture, and that is enough to set him against it. By putting a number of exaggerations together he deprives any little grain of truth of its value. This is the man who, in the present volume, remarks that the Italians spell a word Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy, adding calmly, "foreigners always spell better shall they pronounce." He, too, when shown the writing of Christopher Columbus observes, "Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could write better than that. You mustn't think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not fools by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of real merit, trot them out, and if you haven't, drive on!" There are a good many comments on pictures from the same point of view. Take this on the characters of Sacred Art: "When we see a monk sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him and without other baggage, we know that is St. Jerome; because we know that he always went flying light in the matter of baggage. When we see a party looking tranquilly up to heaven, unconscious that his body is shot through and through with arrows, we know that that is St. Sebastian. When we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are." Another question on which the untravelled American is worth hearing is the ubiquity of guides, with their constant repetition of legends and their unceasing exaggeration. At Gibraltar one story was dinned into the tourist's ear, till at last he exclaimed to the narrator, "Sir, I am a helpless orphan in a foreign land; have pity on me." One supposed safeguard against invention is that a guide "would hardly try so hazardous an experiment as the telling of a falsehood when it is all he can do to speak the truth in English without getting the lockjaw." But even this seems to have failed in Rome, if we may judge from the following tirade against the mythical being to whom the guides give the name of Michael Angelo:

This last touch is exactly characteristic of the untravelled American. In other places, however, the exaggeration to which Mark Twain gives way shows that he is consciously acting a part. We do not like him any the worse for that, and without the preface we should have been easily reconciled to his eccentricities. His incidental remarks about things in general are sufficiently humorous to ensure his book a hearing, though they have the misfortune to contradict Mr. Hingston's theory. The genuine Yankee tourist would never sneer at one of his fellow countrymen for ignorance of French manners and assumption of native superiority. When Mark Twain finds an American proclaiming his nationality in this offensive way -- "I am a freeborn sovereign, Sir, an American, Sir, and I want everybody to know it" -- he adds, "the fellow did not mention that he was a lineal descendant of Balaam's ass, but everybody knew that without his telling it." Does this come under the rule of Quis tulerit Gracchos? We think not. In our opinion Mark Twain is merely showing the prevalence of the faults which he satirizes. He wishes to remind us that, whether we take Mr. Hingston's view or the more natural one, he is not the only untravellcd American in his party, and that he is always on the look-out for incidents which may serve his purpose. In this respect Mark Twain's travels remind us of The Book of Snobs, where the fancy picture of the author wholly eclipsed his characters.

[This reviewer read the pirated English edition of Innocents Abroad, published in 1870 with the title The New Pilgrim's Progress. The Introduction referred to was written for that edition by Edward P. Hingston, who had met MT in Nevada.]

Athenaeum [unsigned]
1876: June 24

The name of Mark Twain is known throughout the length and breadth of England. Wherever there is a railway-station with a bookstall his jokes are household words. Those whose usual range in literature does not extend beyond the sporting newspapers, the Racing Calendar, and the "Diseases of Dogs," have allowed him a place with Artemus Ward alongside of the handful of books which forms their library. For ourselves, we cannot dissociate him from the railway-station, and his jokes always rise in our mind with a background of Brown & Polson's Corn Flour and Taylor's system of removing furniture. We have read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with different surroundings, and still have been made to laugh; and that ought to be taken as high praise. Indeed, the earlier part of the book is, to our thinking, the most amusing thing Mark Twain has written. The humour is not always uproarious, but it is always genuine and sometimes almost pathetic, and it is only now and then that the heartiness of a laugh is spoilt by one of those pieces of self-consciousness which are such common blots on Mark Twain's other books. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is an attempt in a new direction. It is consecutive, and much longer than the former books, and as it is not put forward as a mere collection of Screamers, we laugh more easily, and find some relief in being able to relax the conventional grin expected from the reader of the little volumes of railway humour. The present book is not, and does not pretend to be a novel, in the ordinary sense of the word; it is not even a story, for that presupposes a climax and a finish; nor is it a mere boys' book of adventures. In the Preface the author says, "Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try pleasantly to remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in." Questions of intention are always difficult to decide. The book will amuse grown-up people in the way that humorous books written for children have amused before, but (perhaps fortunately) it does not seem to us calculated to carry out the intention here expressed. With regard to the style, of course there are plenty of slang words and racy expressions, which are quite in place in the conversations, but it is just a question whether it would not have been as well if the remainder of the book had not been written more uniformly in English.

The Atlanta Constitution [unsigned]
1885: May 26

A very deplorable fact is that the great body of literary criticism is mainly perfunctory. This is not due to a lack of ability or to a lack of knowledge. It is due to the fact that most of it is from the pens of newspaper writers who have no time to elaborate their ideas. They are in a hurry, and what they write is hurried. Under these circumstances it is not unnatural that they should take their cues from inadequate sources and give to the public opinions that are either conventional or that have no reasonable basis.

All this is the outcome of the conditions and circumstances of American life. There is no demand for sound criticism any more than there is a demand for great poetry. We have a leisure class, but its tastes run towards horses, yachting and athletic sports, in imitation of the English young men who occasionally honor these shores with their presence. The imitation, after all, is a limping one. The young Englishman of leisure is not only fond of outdoor sports, but of books. He has culture and taste, and patronizes literature with as much enthusiasm as he does physical amusements. If our leisure class is to imitate the English, it would be better if the imitation extended somewhat in the direction of culture.

The American leisure class--the class that might be expected to patronize good literature and to create a demand for sound, conservative criticism--is not only fond of horses, but is decidedly horsey. It is coarse and uncultivated. It has no taste in either literature or art. It reads few books and buys its pictures in Europe by the yard.

We are led to these remarks by the wholly inadequate verdict that has recently been given in some of the most prominent newspapers as to the merits of Mark Twain's new book, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The critics seem to have gotten their cue in this instance from the action of the Concord library, the directors of which refused the book a place on their shelves. This action, as was afterwards explained, was based on the fact that the book was a work of fiction, and not because of the humorous characteristics that are popularly supposed to attach to the writings of Mr. Clemens. But the critics had got their cue before the explanation was made, and they straightway proceeded to inform the reading public that the book was gratuitously coarse, its humor unneccessarily broad, and its purpose crude and inartistic.

Now, nothing could be more misleading than such a criticism as this. It is difficult to believe that the critics who have condemned the book as coarse, vulgar and inartistic can have read it. Taken in connection with "The Prince and the Pauper," it marks a clear and distinct advance in Mr. Clemens's literary methods. It presents an almost artistically perfect picture of the life and character in the southwest, and it will be equally valuable to the historian and to the student of sociology. Its humor, which is genuine and never-failing, is relieved by little pathetic touches here and there that vouch for its literary value.

It is the story of a half illiterate, high-spirited boy whose adventures are related by himself. The art with which this conception is dealt with is perfect in all its details. The boy's point of view is never for a moment lost sight of, and the moral of the whole is that this half illiterate boy can be made to present, with perfect consistency, not only the characters of the people whom he meets, but an accurate picture of their social life. From the artistic point of view, there is not a coarse nor vulgar suggestion from the beginning to the end of the book. Whatever is coarse and crude is in the life that is pictured, and the picture is perfect. It may be said that the humor is sometimes excessive, but it is genuine humor--and the moral of the book, though it is not scrawled across every page, teaches the necessity of manliness and self-sacrifice.

The character of American humor, and its want of resemblance to the humor of Kamtschatka and Patagonia, -- will the reader forgive us if we fail to set down here the thoughts suggested by these fresh and apposite topics? Will he credit us with a self-denial proportioned to the vastness of Mr. Clements's very amusing book, if we spare to state why he is so droll, or -- which is as much to the purpose -- why we do not know? This reticence will leave us very little to say by way of analysis; and, indeed, there is very little to say of The Innocents Abroad which is not of the most obvious and easy description. The idea of a steamer-load of Americans going on a prolonged picnic to Europe and the Holy Land is itself almost sufficiently delightful, and it is perhaps praise enough for the author to add that it suffers nothing from his handling. If one considers the fun of making a volume of six hundred octavo pages upon this subject, in compliance with one of the main conditions of a subscription book's success, bigness namely, one has a tolerably fair piece of humor, without troubling Mr. Clements further. It is out of the bounty and abundance of his own nature that he is as amusing in the execution as in the conception of his work. And it is always good-humored humor, too, that he lavishes on his reader, and even in its impudence it is charming; we do not remember where it is indulged at the cost of the weak or helpless side, or where it is insolent, with all its sauciness and irreverence. The standard shams of travel which everybody sees through suffer possibly more than they ought, but not so much as they might; and one readily forgives the harsh treatment of them in consideration of the novel piece of justice done on such a traveller as suffers under the pseudonyme of Grimes. It is impossible also that the quality of humor should not sometimes be strained in the course of so long a narrative; but the wonder is rather in the fact that it is strained so seldom.

Mr. Clements gets a good deal of his fun out of his fellow-passengers, whom he makes us know pretty well, whether he presents them somewhat caricatured, as in the case of the "Oracle" of the ship, or carefully and exactly done, as in the case of such a shrewd, droll, business-like, sensible, kindly type of the American young man as "Dan." We must say also that the artist who has so copiously illustrated the volume has nearly always helped the author in the portraiture of his fellow-passengers, instead of hurting him, which is saying a good deal for an artist; in fact, we may go further and apply the commendation to all the illustrations; and this in spite of the variety of figures in which the same persons are represented, and the artist's tendency to show the characters on mules where the author says they rode horseback.

Of course the instructive portions of Mr. Clements's book are of a general rather than particular character, and the reader gets as travel very little besides series of personal adventures and impressions; he is taught next to nothing about the population of the cities and the character of the rocks in the different localities. Yet the man who can be honest enough to let himself see the realities of human life everywhere, or who has only seen Americans as they are abroad, has not travelled in vain and is far from a useless guide. The very young American who told the English officers that a couple of our gunboats could come and knock Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea; the American who at a French restaurant "talked very loudly and coarsely, and laughed boisterously, where all others were so quiet and well behaved," and who ordered "wine, sir!" adding, to raise admiration in a country where wine is as much a matter of course as soup, "I never dine without wine, sir"; the American who had to be addressed several times as Gordon, being so accustomed to hear the name pronounced Gorrdong, and who had forgotten most English words during a three months' sojourn in Paris; the Americans who pitilessly made a three days' journey in Palestine within two days, cruelly overworking the poor beasts they rode, and overtaxing the strength of their comrades, in order not to break the Sabbath; the American Pilgrims who travelled half round the world to be able to take a sail on the Sea of Galilee, and then missed their sole opportunity because they required the boatman to take them for one napoleon when he wanted two; -- these are all Americans who are painted to peculiar advantage by Mr. Clements, and who will be easily recognized by such as have had the good fortune to meet them abroad.

The didactic, however, is not Mr. Clements's prevailing mood, nor his best, by any means. The greater part of his book is in the vein of irony, which, with a delicious impudence, he attributes to Saint Luke, declaring that Luke, in speaking of the winding "street, called Straight" in Damascus, "is careful not to commit himself; he does not say it is the street which is straight, but the street which is called Straight.' It is a fine piece of irony; it is the only facetious remark in the Bible, I believe." At Tiberias our author saw the women who wear their dowry in their head-dresses of coins. "Most of these maidens were not wealthy, but some few have been kindly dealt with by fortune. I saw heiresses there, worth, in their own right, -- worth, well, I suppose I might venture to say as much as nine dollars and a half. But such cases are rare. When you come across one of these, she naturally puts on airs." He thinks the owner of the horse "Jericho," on which he travelled towards Jerusalem, "had a wrong opinion about him. He had an idea that he was one of those fiery, untamed, steeds, but he is not of that character. I know the Arab had this idea, because when he brought the horse out for inspection in Beirout, he kept jerking at the bridle and shouting in Arabic, Ho! will you? Do you want to run away, you ferocious beast, and break your neck?' when all the time the horse was not doing anything in the world, and only looked like he wanted to lean up against something and think. Whenever he is not shying at things or reaching after a fly, he wants to do that yet. How it would surprise his owner to know this!" In this vein of ironical drollery is that now celebrated passage in which Mr. Clements states that he was affected to tears on coming, a stranger in a strange land, upon the grave of a blood-relation, -- the tomb of Adam; but that passage is somewhat more studied in tone than most parts of the book, which are written with a very successful approach in style to colloquial drolling. As Mr. Clements writes of his experiences, we imagine he would talk of them; and very amusing talk it would be: often not at all fine in matter or manner, but full of touches of humor, -- which if not delicate are nearly always easy, -- and having a base of excellent sense and good feeling. There is an amount of pure human nature in the book, that rarely gets into literature; the depths of our poor unregeneracy -- dubious even of the blissfulness of bliss -- are sounded by such a simple confession as Mr. Clements makes in telling of his visit to the Emperor of Russia: "I would as soon have thought of being cheerful in Abraham's bosom as in the palace of an Emperor." Almost any topic, and any event of the author's past life, he finds pertinent to the story of European and Oriental travel, and if the reader finds it impertinent, he does not find it the less amusing. The effect is dependent in so great degree upon this continuous incoherence, that no chosen passage can illustrate the spirit of the whole, while the passage itself loses half in separation from the context. Nevertheless, here is part of the account given by Mr. Clements of the Pilgrims' excursion to the river Jordan, over roads supposed to be infested by Bedouins; and the reader who does not think it droll as it stands can go to our author for the rest.

Under his nom de plume of Mark Twain, Mr. Clements is well known to the very large world of newspaper-readers; and this book ought to secure him something better than the uncertain standing of a popular favorite. It is no business of ours to fix his rank among the humorists California has given us, but we think he is, in an entirely different way from all the others, quite worthy of the company of the best.

[Soon after writing this review Howells would meet MT for the first time; he hadn't yet met him, however, and for reasons that are unclear thought his MT's real name was "Samuel S. Clements."]

Atlantic Monthly [unsigned; William Dean Howells]
1876: May

Mr. Aldrich has studied the life of A Bad Boy as the pleasant reprobate led it in a quiet old New England town twenty-five or thirty years ago, where in spite of the natural outlawry of boyhood he was more or less part of a settled order of things, and was hemmed in, to some measure, by the traditions of an established civilization. Mr. Clemens, on the contrary, has taken the boy of the Southwest for the hero of his new book, and has presented him with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree, and which gives incomparably the best picture of life in that region as yet known to fiction. The town where Tom Sawyer was born and brought up is some such idle, shabby little Mississippi River town as Mr. Clemens has so well described in his piloting reminiscences, but Tom belongs to the better sort of people in it, and has been bred to fear God and dread the Sunday-school according to the strictest rite of the faiths that have characterized all the respectability of the West. His subjection in these respects does not so deeply affect his inherent tendencies but that he makes himself a beloved burden to the poor, tender-hearted old aunt who brings him up with his orphan brother and sister, and struggles vainly with his manifold sins, actual and imaginary. The limitations of his transgressions are nicely and artistically traced. He is mischievous, but not vicious; he is ready for almost any depredation that involves the danger and honor of adventure, but profanity he knows may provoke a thunderbolt upon the heart of the blasphemer, and he almost never swears; he resorts to any stratagem to keep out of school, but he is not a downright liar, except upon terms of after shame and remorse that make his falsehood bitter to him. He is cruel, as all children are, but chiefly because he is ignorant; he is not mean, but there are very definite bounds to his generosity; and his courage is the Indian sort, full of prudence and mindful of retreat as one of the conditions of prolonged hostilities. In a word, he is a boy, and merely and exactly an ordinary boy on the moral side. What makes him delightful to the reader is that on the imaginative side he is very much more, and though every boy has wild and fantastic dreams, this boy cannot rest till he has somehow realized them. Till he has actually run off with two other boys in the character of buccaneer, and lived for a week on an island in the Mississippi, he has lived in vain; and this passage is but the prelude to more thrilling adventures, in which he finds hidden treasures, traces the bandits to their cave, and is himself lost in its recesses. The local material and the incidents with which his career is worked up are excellent, and throughout there is scrupulous regard for the boy's point of view in reference to his surroundings and himself, which shows how rapidly Mr. Clemens has grown as an artist. We do not remember anything in which this propriety is violated, and its preservation adds immensely to the grown-up reader's satisfaction in the amusing and exciting story. There is a boy's love-affair, but it is never treated otherwise than as a boy's love-affair. When the half-breed has murdered the young doctor, Tom and his friend, Huckleberry Finn, are really, in their boyish terror and superstition, going to let the poor old town-drunkard be hanged for the crime, till the terror of that becomes unendurable. The story is a wonderful study of the boy-mind, which inhabits a world quite distinct from that in which he is bodily present with his elders, and in this lies its great charm and its universality, for boy-nature, however human nature varies, is the same everywhere.

The tale is very dramatically wrought, and the subordinate characters are treated with the same graphic force that sets Tom alive before us. The worthless vagabond, Huck Finn, is entirely delightful throughout, and in his promised reform his identity is respected: he will lead a decent life in order that he may one day be thought worthy to become a member of that gang of robbers which Tom is to organize. Tom's aunt is excellent, with her kind heart's sorrow and secret pride in Tom; and so is his sister Mary, one of those good girls who are born to usefulness and charity and forbearance and unvarying rectitude. Many village people and local notables are introduced in well-conceived character; the whole little town lives in the reader's sense, with its religiousness, its lawlessness, its droll social distinctions, its civilization qualified by its slave-holding, and its traditions of the wilder West which has passed away. The picture will be instructive to those who have fancied the whole Southwest a sort of vast Pike County, and have not conceived of a sober and serious and orderly contrast to the sort of life that has come to represent the Southwest in literature. Mr. William M. Baker gives a notion of this in his stories, and Mr. Clemens has again enforced the fact here, in a book full of entertaining character, and of the greatest artistic sincerity.

Tom Brown and Tom Bailey are, among boys in books, alone deserving to be named with Tom Sawyer.

[These excerpts from newspaper reviews of Innocents Abroad were originally published by MT in the Buffalo Express (9 October 1869), then included at the end of the salesman's dummy edition of the book, under the title given above. Six notices of the lecture MT derived from the book were also published in the dummy, under the title "Opinions of the Press"; they are included here.]

From the Hartford (Ct.) Courant.

That the odd genius who described the "Jumping Frog," should go to see and describe the art-treasures of Europe and the ruins of Egypt and the Holy Land, has something in it very comical. Mark Twain is a true Californian, with the original, quaint humor of the Pacific; a very shrewd observer, not by any means unpoetical, but yet delighting to take the traditional poetry out of things. You may be sure that if he went to Italy or Jerusalem he would not idealize, but would try to photograph. His very exaggerations are all of the disenchanting sort, and are a very fair set-off to the usual rhapsodies of most tourists, who see what they have been educated to expect, and who have tradition so soaked into them that if they sat shivering in Naples in January, with snow in the streets and ice in the fountains, they would write home about sunny, delicious Italy. We doubt if the classic lands ever had exactly such a traveler through them as Mark Twain, who went out on the famous Quaker City excursion to the Holy Land, with a lot of passengers collected especially, it seemed to him, for the Holy Land, and this book is a dreadfully real, also a whimsical record of what they did and what they didn't do and see, with sketches of the pilgrims that all of them cannot regard with complacency. This record has been put into a large and handsomely printed volume of 651-pages, illustrated with two hundred and thirty-four cuts of various sorts, views from photographs, portraits, odd costumes, characters, scenes occurring on shipboard and on land, grave, funny, absurd, but a very good accompaniment to the text. The book has a great deal of entertainment in it. It has bits of excellent real description, and when Twain tries to reproduce a scene or describe a place, he does it with wonderful faithfulness. The author is not straining to be funny; he is not trying to make a joke book; and there is nothing in it of that painfully unnatural sort of wit that is so wearisome. Very few will be able to read it without laughing at least half the time. It may be absurd, but it certainly is funny. In the midst of the most serious passages, some quaint observation is dropped that has a good deal of the quality of the best humor. To attempt anything like a criticism of Mark Twain's peculiar humor, or to try to explain why it is that he is able to make people laugh in spite of themselves, is unnecessary now. The book is full of bright things, shrewd observations, that lurk here and there, and must be read with the context to be appreciated.

From the National (N.J.) Standard.

This is the raciest book we have met with for many a day. Much as we had expected to be pleased, we must truthfully say that we had no idea so much humor, wit, geniality, fine description and good sense, could be contained within the covers of any one book. It is a splendid book in every meaning of the word. It is readable, enjoyable, laughable; it is keen, satirical, comical, and funny; its descriptions are beautiful, and its style is unique, and not of a common stamp; its morals are of a high tone, and cannot be impeached; it will give the reader a new view of the countries and people that it describes, showing them upon a side never before exposed. It is not a book filled with caricature and stale jokes, but a clear, well-written volume upon most interesting subjects, yet viewing them from an entirely new stand-point, and portraying them in an original and characteristic manner. We turned over the pages, without selection of pieces, and commenced reading, and invariably in less than two minutes we were boiling over with laughter. Our sides ache, and we lay aside the volume to rest, and to advise our friends and readers, one and all, to buy the book at the first opportunity, and read it through. It is full of excellent illustrations, in fact, taken all in all, is the jolliest, pleasantest, most fascinating, and handsomest volume we know of.

From the Meriden (Ct.) Republican.

We hope our readers will purchase one new book just as soon as the Agent for this place shall put in an appearance. We refer to Mark Twain's new book entitled the "New Pilgrim's Progress." Mark Twain, always interesting, in this book has outrivaled himself. It is instructive, humorous, racy, full of quaint expressions that make you laugh unexpectedly, and before you are quite ready; critical, sometimes caustic, but always good natured; never prosy or wearisome. You begin the book and do not want to leave it till the last line is reached. Mark never describes a place, or sees a sight as others do. He is intensely original; and for us there is where the charm lies. It is a work permanently adapted for home reading aloud, and will invariably call up around the fireside a spirit of mirth and congeniality. No one can read its pages without feeling there is still beauty and sunshine in the world.

From the New York Express.

It is one of the most quaint and enjoyable books of travel that has been issued from the press. Certainly, Mark Twain succeeds in dispelling many of the old traditions which travelers have so long inflicted upon a confiding and long suffering public. He has gone over the ground with a genuine Yankee spirit, determining to see everything that is to be seen, to see it thoroughly and like a man of sense, to go into ecstacies [sic] over but few things, and to speak the plain, unvarnished truth under all circumstances. And this truth is told to us in such a winsome form, that we cannot but listen to it with agreeable sensations. Throughout runs an undercurrent of genuine native humor. Not what we are so apt to accept as such, and which is principally remarkable for its vulgarity and insipidity, but a real, crisp, tangible wit, that speaks in every line of the vitality, the vigorous honesty of the man, and of how fully he is imbued with all the better of the national characteristics. The book is a Golconda of wit and a very mine of sparkling entertainment.

From the Newark (N.J.) Register.

It is a rare and wonderful combination. The humor is natural, never forced; the narrative is instructive, and the descriptive passages are some of the finest in the English language, abounding in choice expressions and beautiful metaphor.

From the Winsted (Ct.) Herald.

The book opens richer and richer with every leaf you turn. The next best thing to having been one of this Holy Land excursion party, is to read this enchanting account of it. Indeed we guess the book will afford more enjoyment, in proportion to the cost, than did the trip itself. The book and the trip are just alike in one respect,--when you once get aboard you cannot get away from it. Perhaps, however, there will be no danger in accompanying the author as far as off Sandy Hook.

From the New York Leader.

Twain's irony is delicious and far-reaching; his facetious satire penetrates the very soul of appreciation. His drolleries are wickedly amusing. No one in full sympathy with humor can read Mark Twain's best things and not laugh heartily over them. Of course his latest work is his best, as it is his most elaborate effort.

From the Norwich Bulletin.

If people don't stop laughing so immoderately in the dead hours of the night as to keep their neighbors awake, there will probably be trouble, that's all. The cause is said to be Mark Twain's new book, which everybody is reading. But that is no excuse.

From the New York Herald.

The "Innocents Abroad" must be read to be thoroughly enjoyed. It is an oasis in the desert of works on foreign travel, with which we are deluged at the present day. We have read it through with pleasure, and if Mark Twain will do no worse in future efforts at Book Making, we will always heartily welcome him at our desk.

From the Mohawk Valley Register.

Buy it, and you will bless Mark Twain to the end of your existence.

From the Liberal Christian, N.Y.

It is the record of a party on a holiday excursion, and every page is touched with the mirth of the happy merry-makers, and in every paragraph you feel a giggle if you do not hear a laugh. Here are no homilies; no essays on politics, no discussion of philosophies, or art, or archaeology; yet the book preaches nevertheless, and is full of health and aglow with that cheerful, hopeful, wholesome religion which has so much faith that it does not fear to crack a joke or to make one. It tells a great deal that other and more serious writers consider it beneath their dignity to tell, and it keeps striking the spear-point of its shrewd Yankee common sense into the cracks and crevices of antique customs and institutions until we half expect a general tumbling down of European civilization upon the Pilgrims' heads.

From the New York Evening Post.

It contains many scenes of real merriment that few can read without laughter. The cleverness, frankness, and catholic spirit of the writer are everywhere apparent.

From the Central Baptist, St. Louis, Mo.

It abounds in historical and legendary lore, and written in the quaint and serio-comic strain peculiar to the author, will readily recommend itself to the public.

From the New York Tribune.

It is refreshing to find a tourist who does not care what other tourists have said before him. Mark Twain must be rated as the chief representative of that peculiar kind of humor whose principal elements are not bad spelling and verbal burlesque, for he does not practice these arts. The greater part of his book is pure fun, and its freshness is wonderfully well sustained.

From the True American, Trenton, N.J.

The work abounds in historical facts, descriptions of different countries and important personages, scenes and incidents, so bound together by wit, pleasantry and flashes of grotesque humor, as to make one of the most readable and amusing books of the period.

From the Providence (R.I.) Morning Herald.

He has described with his rare skill and in his best style, the adventures of the company, as well as his own, which are among the best things in the book. He has left the beaten path of tourists, and has never pretended an admiration which he did not feel, or which was yielded in obedience merely to invariable custom. He claims to adhere to the truth and to facts, and in his book has shorn many of the venerable shams of the old world of the false charms they have pretended. The stand-point of the traveler is certainly new, and the book throughout bears the impress of originality. The piquant humor and rare felicity of the text is well sustained by the numerous engravings, upwards of two hundred in number, with which the book is embellished.

From the Providence (R.I.) Journal.

The book is funny clear through; and if any doubt that fun can be sustained through so many pages, they can be cured by entering their names upon the subscription list.

From the Norwich (Ct.) Daily Advertiser.

The drollest, funniest, most truthful and readable book of the season is Mark Twain's account of the pleasure trip of a party on the Quaker City, up the Mediterranean. The writer sees the humorous side of every thing, or gives a humorous side to serious things, but is not lacking in power to be sober and wise, and even eloquent, when those qualities seem necessary for effect. If any one wants a book that will really interest and instruct him about one of the most remarkable portions of the earth, and at the same time to keep in rollicking good humor, he cannot afford to be without this book.

From the New York Times.

About one-third of this pleasant book is given to the sacred parts of Asia Minor and Egypt--showing the mental proclivity of the majority on board the Quaker City. The volume is a large one of 650 pages, beautifully printed, and swarming with illustrations which, in their own way, are as effective and amusing as the letter press. It is altogether a very taking book; and a great many persons who would not care to read the graver accounts of travel through these world-renowned places, will find themselves very much interested in Mark Twain's humorous way of getting over the same ground.

From the Rochester Chronicle.

Twain's book is valuable for pricking many of the bubbles and exploding the humbugs of European travel.

From the Newark (N.J.) Daily Advertiser.

We have one earnest caution for our readers who may buy this book. The writers seeks to rest your ribs by occassional [sic] fine passages of true eloquence, or sentiment, or sensible description. But he does not succeed. The book must be taken in interrupted doses. There is more fun in it than it is safe to swallow at once.

From the Hartford (Ct.) Times.

We are indebted to the publishers for a copy of a new and really unique volume of travels by that rollicking humorist, "Mark Twain." It is a lively, laughter-exciting book, such as one rarely meets among volumes of travels; yet the fun is not the only feature of the book. It abounds in interesting information, conveyed in a wide range of facts, adventures, and personal experiences. It is fresh, racy and sparkling as a glass of iced champagne, and a good deal better for the health and digestion. Seated under a shady tree, with this instructive picture book before him, one can, in most moods, be better entertained than with a living companion. It gives us living scenes and pictures of life and experience in far distant lands, so graphically portrayed that the book will make an attractive addition to the treasures of the library and the drawing-table, for the benefit of one's self or friends in a winter evening. Everybody should buy and read it.

From the New Jersey Journal.

Criticism of the work is almost impossible; as sufficient gravity of countenance for the purpose, can hardly be maintained over the volume. To think of, or look at it, is to smile, but to read it is to overwhelm all criticism with uncontrolable [sic] laughter. It is truly an original affair, and does credit to its author. He treats of subjects of which we supposed we were fully acquainted in such a manner that we come to the conclusion finally that we are swallowing sugar-coated statistics,--and are aware that we are digesting much useful and important information,--learning facts we never knew before,--getting glimpses of scenes and places from entirely new stand-points, and catching new and quaint ideas, expressed in the most original and funny manner. Altogether the book is a good one; one we can heartily recommend to our readers. It is pure in morals, and just the thing for fire-side reading. Buy this Book, say we, and, our word for it, you will not regret the outlay.

From the Springfield (Mass.) Union.

This is one of the most readable and entertaining books of the season. For years the quaint humor of Mark Twain has enlivened the columns of the newspapers, and few readers finish a column of his correspondence without wishing, like Oliver Twist, for more. The present volume, while brimfull [sic] of humor in almost every page, is by no means a mere jest book, but contains more information in regard to the places visited by the "Pilgrims" than would be gathered from many dry books of travel. It is profusely illustrated, and the views, which profess to be real, are authentic and well-executed; while the comic and fancy sketches aptly illustrate the drollery of the text.

From the Springfield (Mass.) Republican.

Mr. Clemens brings to his work a free spirit, a lively fancy and an indescribable emancipation from old trammels of thought and feeling. He is as different from the stock traveler as he is from Montague or Bunyan's Pilgrim,--sees things that nobody else saw, says things that nobody else ever thought of saying, and throws over his whole work the charm of an uncouth freshness.

From the New York World.

No American book of travels contains so much genuine fun. It aims to entertain and it does. There is a genuine American tone about it which is refreshing to see after the snobberies of some other American travelers.

From the New York Sun.

He pricks a great many bubbles blown by previous travelers, both in print and out of it; and where anything seemed to him an imposition or a delusion, he bluntly says so. One cannot read half a dozen pages of the book without enjoying as many hearty laughs at droll fancies of the author and the comical tint which he gives to every picture. Aside from its mirth the book abounds in clear and graphic description, and now and then the author indulges in sentimental writing and bursts of eloquence quite in contrast with his levity on other pages. Altogether this book is both instructive and entertaining, which is more than can be said of all travelers' tales.

From the Paterson Daily Guardian, N.J.

It is a large book, but a reading of a few pages is sufficient to convince the reader that Mark is equal to it, and could stand a good deal larger one. The public could also.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

The author of this work during the past winter delivered in scores of cities in the West, his popular lecture termed "The American Vandal Abroad," to large and delighted audiences. The material for that lecture was drawn from this book, and is a fair specimen of its style and quality. The lecture is spoken of in the following manner by the press:

At Cleveland, Ohio.

LIBRARY ASSOCIATION--LECTURE OF "MARK TWAIN."--We shall attempt no transcript of this lecture, lest with unskillful hands we mar its beauty, for beauty and poetry it certainly possessed, though the production of a professed humorist.

We know not which most to commend, the quaint utterances, the funny incidents, the good-natured recital of the characteristics of his harmless "Vandal," or the gems of beautiful description which sparkled all through his lecture. We expected to be amused, but we were taken by surprise when he carried us on the wings of his redundant fancy, away to the ruins, the cathedrals, and the monuments of the old world. There are some passages of gorgeous word-painting which haunt us like a remembered picture. We congratulate Mr. Twain upon having taken the tide of public favor "at the flood" in the lecture field, and having conclusively proved that a man may be a humorist without being a clown. He has elevated the profession by his graceful delivery and by recognizing in his audience something higher than merely a desire to laugh. We can assure the cities who are awaiting his coming, that a rich feast is in store for them, and Cleveland is proud to offer him the first laurel leaf in his role as lecturer, this side the "Rocky slope."

At Toledo, Ohio.

MARK TWAIN'S LECTURE.--White's Hall was filled from cellar to garret, last night, by one of the best tickled audiences that ever assembled there to hear a lecture or see the speaker. Mark Twain tickled them. And he did it so easily and almost constantly, that they didn't know what they were laughing at more than half the time. Twain is witty, and his wit comes from his own fertile brain. His style is original; and his manner of speaking is not after the manner of men generally. His serious face and long drawn words are, of themselves, sufficient to make one laugh, even if there were not in every sentence expressed a sparkling gem of humor and original idea. His anecdotes, with which the lecture is replete, are rich, and, as he tells them, irresistibly funny. In some of his descriptions of European places and characters the lecturer delivers, at times, most eloquent passages, brilliant in thought and word. That Mark Twain is a success as a lecturer, as well as writer, we think no one who heard "The American Vandal Abroad," last night, will dispute.

At Sharon, Penn.

MARK TWAIN.--This combination of letters spells a name and designates a man for whom we have the most intense veneration. We had the privilege and pleasure of hearing his quaint and instructive lecture, the "American Vandal Abroad," on Saturday Evening last. A large and appreciative audience greeted him, all anxious to hear and see the man who had placed himself so high in their esteem by the many brilliant witticisms from time to time seized with avidity by the public press, and through it placed before the world. Mr. Twain was heard and admired. New and warm friends were added to his list and the old ones retained. Such a deep interest was manifested in the lecture that at the close a general dissatisfaction was apparent that he did not speak longer. It seemed too short, but upon consulting the time it was discovered to the great surprise of all that he had talked one hour and a half. A sermon of the same dimensions to the self-same audience would have found many dozing, and at the hour of high noon! The lecture was a grand success. Everybody was pleased. He is about to issue a work of some six hundred pages, "The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrim's Progress." We long to see it, and predict for it an extensive sale.

At Chicago.

"MARK TWAIN" ON THE SPHYNX [sic].--Among the gems of fine description in the lecture of Mark Twain, Tuesday evening, that of the mysterious Sphynx thrilled his audience with admiration.

From the Elmira, N.Y., Daily Gazette.

MARK TWAIN'S NEW BOOK, "THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, OR THE NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."--Advance sheets of the new work have incidentally come under our notice--and from them we are prepared to speak highly of Mr. Clemens' prospective book. It has for its foundation a description of the sights and scenes of famous places abroad, while they are treated in that peculiarly attractive vein of power and genuine humor, which has made him widely famous, and placed him at the head of the witty writers of America. Mr. Clemens, however, is something besides a literary humorist. There occurs in his writing a blending of sentiment and thought as fine and striking as they are beautiful and sparkling--ideas as clear and penetrating as his humor is fresh. From what we have seen of his new book we are led to believe that it will do much towards advancing his reputation, and establish it on an enduring basis. That it will be a success is already assured.

From the Mohawk Valley, N.Y, Register.

By a private note from "Mark Twain," we learn that he is about to issue his new book, "The New Pilgrim's Progress," and then transform himself into a pilgrim again and start for California. The first part of the information we hail with the utmost satisfaction, but we regret that he is soon to leave the Atlantic coast. However, as many people will kill themselves with laughter over his book, he might be subject here to the annoyance of frequent arrests for being accessory before the fact to numerous cases of manslaughter. In California he would be safe among his earlier friends, who know him better, and would let him off more easily.

Boston Daily Advertiser[unsigned]
1885: March 12

Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" had a certain relishable flavor when mixed up with the miscellaneous assortment of magazine literature; but in a book form, and covering more than 350 pages, they are wearisome and labored. It would be abou t as easy to read through a jest book, as to keep up one's interest in the monotonous humor and the dialectic variations of "Huck Finn's" narrative. Here and there are spatches of Mark Twain's best work, which could be read over and over again, and yet b ring each time an outburst of laugher; but one cannot have the book long in his hands without being tempted to regret that the author should so often have laid himself open to the charge of coarseness and bad taste. The illustrations are admirable in thei r way. As to the general character of the book, it may be sufficient to remind the reader of the author's notice, that "all persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished ; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

MARK TWAIN'S NEW BOOK. What would the great old romantic voyagers and travellers, the heroes of Hackluyt and Purchas, say of the monster Yankee picnic to Europe and the Holy Land? I think that if those worthies were to get hold of a copy of Mark Twain's account of the excursion, there would be laughter in Elysium. At any rate, I can hardly believe it possible for an earthly reader -- unless, indeed, like Charles Lamb's Scotchman, he is joke-proof -- to peruse Twain's new book, The Innocents Abroad, without "laughing consumedly." The work, however, though rich in joke and jest is not, like Gilbert a Becket's dreary comic histories, a merely funny book. On the contrary, it is a very full and matter-of-fact record of travel in Europe and the East, delightfully flavored with humor and plentifully spiced with wit. Addison's sober citizen complained that there were too many plums and no suet in his pudding, but no one can say that Twain's literary pudding is wanting in suet or too full of plums.

Our author is not one of the "one-eyed travellers," mentioned by Whateley, who see "a great deal of some particular class of objects, and are blind to all others," but a shrewd, quick-witted person, who travelled with his eyes very wide open, and saw things as they were, not as they have been described by poets and romancers. It is not, however, so much for its new, truthful and pleasant pictures of Old World places and people, as for the delicious wit and humor scattered so freely up and down the book, that one praises and prizes The Innocents Abroad. And it is such good humor, too, most of it, and with all its freedom and riot, touching gently and lovingly all serious things. I have been reading Fuller's Pisgah Sight of Palestine, and derived no little amusement by comparing his descriptions of the Holy Land with Mark Twain's. Fuller, though as pious and reverent as a saint, was a rare wit and humorist, and his book on Palestine is brimming over with merry quibbles and jocular humor. Although some of Mark Twain's levities might have displeased the witty old divine, I think that he would have laughed loud and long at the passage concerning the tomb of Adam.

The Innocents Abroad is issued by the American Publishing Company of Hartford, and is sold only by subscription. The Boston agents are George M. Smith & Co., No. 6 Tremont Street.

Boston Evening Traveller[unsigned]
1885: March 5

It is little wonder that Mr. Samuel Clemens, otherwise Mark Twain, resorted to real or mock lawsuits, as may be, to restrain some real or imaginary selling of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" as a means of advertising that extraordinarily senseless publication. Before the work is disposed of, Mr. Mark Twain will probably have to resort to law to compel some to sell it by any sort of bribery or corruption. It is doubtful if the edition could be disposed of to people of average intellect at anything short of the point of the bayonet. This publication rejoices in two frontispieces, of which the one is supposed to be a faithful portrait of Huckleberry Finn, and the other an engraving of the classic features of Mr. Mark Twain as seen in the bust made by Karl Gerhardt. The taste of this gratuitous presentation is as bad as is the book itself, which is an extreme statement. Mr. Clemens has contributed some humorous literature that is excellent and will hold its place, but his Huckleberry Finn appears to b e singularly flat, stale and unprofitable. The book is sold by subscription.

British Quarterly Review [unsigned]
1876: October

Tom Sawyer is a bit of a scamp, a kind of juvenile Gil Blas, an enfant terrible, a schoolboy full of practical jokes and solemn impositions, who wins a Sunday-school Bible by buying tickets, and proves his assiduous study by the astounding answer to the question, "Who were the first two apostles?" "David and Goliath." He absconds from school, and with a village ne'er-do-well sets up for a pirate on an island in the river, then steals home at night to listen to his old aunt weeping over him as drowned, and is furtively present on Sunday to hear his funeral sermon preached. In one of his escapades he is witness of a midnight murder--gets lost in a cave on the Mississippi, finds the murderer and his treasure, and ends his schoolboy days by being a hero. The book is full of roaring fun, interspersed with touches of true pathos. It will have the effect of making boys think that an unscrupulous scapegrace is sure to turn out a noble man; it might therefore have given more emphasis to truth and straightforwardness. But it is irresistible; fully up to the mark of the "Innocents Abroad."

If any book of late years has so generally interested the press of the country and received so extensive and favorable an introduction to the public as has Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, since its appearance, we fail to remember the instance. We gave to our readers last week, in a supplementary sheet, some specimens of the notices we have found in our exchanges. Numerous as were the excerpts here collected, they represent but a fraction of what have fallen under our observation, and the notable fact is, that, instead of the mere mention so commonly accorded to a new book, almost every journal has given it an unusually elaborate review, written not in a simple spirit of courtesy, but evidentally with an inspiration of interest excited by reading the work. The truth is, we believe, that no one of an ordinary disposition of mind can dip into the volume without being snared by a curious fascination. It is so different from any narrative of travel that ever was written before. The mere tickle of an ever pervading humor is not all that makes it delightful, but that humor is like an atmosphere, in which the old world scenes that so many tourists and travellers have led us into, take on a new and altogether novel appearance, so that we follow our droll excursionist from place to place as eagerly as though we had never been carried to them by any narrative before. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the book is just a big package of Mark Twain's jokes, to be read with laughter, and for the sake of laughter. It is the panorama of Europe and the Holy Land as they were seen by one who went abroad with no illusions; who carried about with him a shrewd pair of American eyes, and used them to get his own impressions of things, as they actually presented themselves, not as he had been taught to expect them; who bore with him, moreover, as acute an appreciation of sham and humbug as his sense of the humorous and ludicrous was keen. What he saw he tells, and we believe there is more true description in his book than in any other of the kind that we have read. What is to be told soberly he tells soberly, and with all the admiration or reverence that is due to the subject. But he does like to wash off false colors, to scrape away putty and varnish, to stick a pin into venerable moss grown shams -- and it is a perpetual delight to his reader to see him do it in his droll, dry way. We have yet to find the person who could open the book and willingly lay it down again, for, certainly, it is not often that more or livelier entertainment can be had in the same compass. The work has been published by the American Publishing Company, at Hartford, and is sold by agents who canvass for subscriptions.

[MT was part-owner and editor of the Express. Frederick Anderson suggests J.N. Larned may have written this notice (MT: The Critical Heritage, p. 25) -- or MT could have written it himself.]

Athenaeum [unsigned]
1890: February 15

A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens), published by Messrs. Chatto & Windus, is a rather laborious piece of fun with a sort of purpose in it. One of the illustrations, early in the volume, represents a Yankee tickling with a straw the nose of a gigantic statue of a lion, and indicates the general nature of the serious purport of the 525 pages of that very American kind of American humour of which "Mark Twain" is the chief master. Laughing at British institutions, and showing that the good old times were uncommonly bad times for the people, and that not a few of the historical privileges which still exist do not suit the ideas of the great republic of the West, afford a good deal of harmless amusement and opportunities for very trite comment. It is a mistake to decide that ridicule cast upon the story of Arthur is an offence in any way other than in the matter of taste in jokes. Sir Thomas Malory and Lord Tennyson will survive. Masterpieces will stand any amount of parody. "The Burial of Sir John Moore" and Gray's "Elegy" are just as impressive and admirable as if they had not been parodied with all sorts of jocularity and ribaldry scores of times. One may easily read Mark Twain's book without any ill will; but it is a harder task to read it with sustained merriment. By writing so much the author has shown how mechanical his method really is, and, with all respect for the cleverness of the writers of Gaiety burlesques, one doubts if anybody could be amused by reading one of them if it ran to five hundred pages. That is, however, the sort of task which Mark Twain offers to his readers. One may be pardoned for confessing that the task has proved too severe. A trial of several chapters taken at random shows that the author is still as fresh as ever in his racy contrasts between things ancient and modern, and as quaint in his droll expressions. He can raise a laugh once, twice, or even twenty times, but not a thousand.

Boston Sunday Herald [Sylvester Baxter]
1889: December 15

Of all the extraordinary conceits that have germinated in his fruitful imagination, nothing more delicious has ever occurred to Mark Twain than that of running riot among the legendary times of our ancestral race by placing "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." These quoted words form the title of the latest successor to Innocents Abroad. Here is a rare field for the unbridled play of fancy, and right bravely has the author used his opportunity. There is a most audacious rollicking around among the dusty bric-a-brac of chivalry -- which is not handled at all gently -- and a merry tossing about of poetic finery in a way that ruthlessly exposes in their literal ugliness the illusively mantled facts. Of course there is most abundant fun, and Mark Twain's rich humor never coursed more freely than here, where just provocation is never absent. But there is much more than this; the sources of the claims of aristocratic privileges and royal prerogatives that yet linger in the world are so exposed to the full glare of the sun of 19th century common sense, are shown in so ridiculous an aspect, that the work can hardly fail to do yeoman service in destroying the still existing remnants of respect for such pretensions. Through the book there is a steady flowing undercurrent of earnest purpose, and the pages are eloquent with a true American love of freedom, a sympathy with the rights of the common people, and an indignant hatred of oppression of the poor, the lowly and the weak, by the rich, the powerful and the proud. While much false glamour is dispelled by resolving it into absurdity under the touchstone of truth, the book is marked by real beauty, by a poetry of style worthy of its rich material, with much sympathetic tenderness, as well as frankness of speech. The quaint early English speech is handled with the same artistic skill that characterized the author's facile handling of the stately Elizabethan in that lovely idyll of childhood, The Prince and the Pauper, and the constant admixture of a concisely expressive American vernacular thereto makes a contrast of lingual coloring that is

We may fancy that the same matter-of-fact Englishman who seriously reasoned that certain statements in Innocents Abroad were preposterously absurd, and could not be based upon fact, might again step forward to break a lance against this book by showing, from historical and philological data, that such a language could not possibly have been spoken in the sixth century, since the English tongue did not exist, and that the use of Norman French names before the conquest is anachronistic in the highest degree! But this is an excursion back into the England of the chronicles, and not of strict chronology, and that eminent ethnologist, Tylor, would undoubtedly perceive with delight the accuracy of scientific perception in the treatment of human nature which marks the book. For, in order to characterize with truth a past period we must make ourselves familiar with some existing state of society that is analogous therewith. Only under such conditions can a faithful historical romance be written, for otherwise the writer cannot fail to modernize his work, and falsify its life with 19th century sentiments that could not have been known in a previous age. By resorting to the principle that "distribution in time" is paralleled by "distribution in space," we may solve many a problem. So there is a certain aspect of sober truth in this most fanciful tale, and, just as the Connecticut Yankee went back into the days of King Arthur's court, so might he go out into the world today, into Central Asia or Africa, or even into certain spots in this United States of ours, find himself amidst social conditions very similar to those of 1300 years ago, and even work his astonishing 19th century miracles with like result. For it is a fact that, when Frank Hamilton Cushing astounded the Zuni Indians with an acoustic telephone constructed of two tomato cans and a string, they deemed him a magician, and tried him for witchcraft. And, for parallels of the inhumanities which, as we here read of them, seem to have been left far behind us in the track of the centuries, we have but to look with George Kennan into the dungeons of Siberia; and, in our own country, read the records of the investigations into the horrors of the almshouses, jails and lunatic hospitals here in this enlightened commonwealth of Massachusetts so late as the time of Horace Mann, or look to the record of the nameless barbarities of negro slavery alive in the memories of men still young. How the conscience and the sympathies of the world have quickened with the advent of the railway, the steamship and the telegraph! We have, after all, but just passed out across

and, in view of the few steps we have taken, we can hardly doubt that we are yet to make an infinitely mightier progress into the light of a genuine civilization, putting far behind us the veneered barbarism of the present, that still retains the old standards of conduct and intercourse for our guidance in all "practical" affairs.

As an instance of the scientific fidelity of this book in its picture of mediaeval society, we may take this from the description of the company at King Arthur's Round Table, around which there was an average of about two dogs to one man, watching for bones:

The following also illustrates an exact perception of the essentially savage traits of such a people: "Finally it occurred to me all of a sudden that these animals didn't reason; that they never put this and that together; that all their talk showed that they didn't know a discrepancy when they saw it." Again, when Sir Sagramour le Desirous caught a chance remark of the Yankee applied to some one else and thought it meant for him, and so challenged him to the memorable encounter that took place several years after, and was fought with

the "Sir Boss," as he was called said: "Whenever one of those people got a thing into his head, there was no getting it out again. I knew that, so I saved my breath, and offered no explanations." The foregoing characterizations might apply equally well to a tribe of Dakota Indians, to their hardly more civilized foes, the cowboys of the plains, to the mountaineers of Tennessee and Georgia, or even to the savages in our great city slums.

By some strange means, perhaps more marvellous than those by which Edward Bellamy transferred the hero of "Looking Backward" forward to the year 2000, the Yankee is carried back 1300 years in time, and in the record of his adventures affords us another and very instructive sort of "Looking Backward." He is captured by one of King Arthur's mailed knights, whom at first he takes for a circus performer, and is carried to Camelot as a prisoner. Condemned to be burned alive, according to the pleasa nt custom of the age, he saves himself by threatening to blot out the sun unless he is set free. He knew that a total eclipse was due as that date, and, as it begins, the superstitious and credulous people at once accept his claim to be a great magician, and King Arthur begs him to let them off and name his own terms. He consents to spare the sun, but just for a lesson he says he will let the darkness proceed and spread night in the world, and exacts as his conditions that he shall be appointed perpetua l prime minister and chief executive to the King, simply taking for remuneration 1 per cent of such actual increase of the revenue over and above the present amount as he may succeed in creating for the state. He then proceeds to run the kingdom accordin g to modern ideas; he introduces, step by step, 19th century inventions, his magic of modern science putting old Merlin, with his "parlor magic," quite in the shade. One of the most comical things in the book is the way in which Merlin, who is horribly j ealous of his powerful rival, is made to serve as the arch villain of the story. A bright boy, one of the pages at the court, whom he calls "Clarence" for short, becomes the right hand man of the Yankee in carrying out his plans, and is trained according to the most approved modern ideas,

"What a jump I had made!" mused the Yankee.

He describes the people as "the quaintest, and simplest, and trustingest race" though "nothing but rabbits," and, to one born in a wholesome free atmosphere, it was pitiful to listen to their protestations of loyalty to royalty and aris tocracy.

all the time at Camelot, "and very stirring and picturesque and ricidulous human bull fights they were, too, but just a little wearisome to a practical mind. Another popular diversion was going for the Holy Grail.

According to the custom of the age, the Yankee, too, goes off in search of adventures, accompanied by the Demoiselle Alisande la Carteloise, who brings in a tale of the usual pattern, all about an ogre's enchanted castle, with captive maidens, etc. He has a most ludicrous time getting into his armor, and starts off, with "Sandy," as he calls her, riding behind him on the same horse. In his armor he felt hot and uncomfortable, he perspired in rivers, he itched and couldn't get at himself to scratch.

Occasionally he encountered one of his own "missionaries" as he called them, knights

bearing such inscriptions as "Persimmons' soap -- all the prime-donne use it!"

The adventures encountered upon this expedition are ludicrous and pathetic by turns; the wrongs and sufferings of the common people under the degrading conditions of that age are described with vivid and touching eloquence.

One day they came upon a group of poor, ragged creatures mending the thing they called a road:

At last they arrived at the Valley of Holiness, a famous pilgrimage resort with great monasteries and convents, and hermits galore. The monks were in sore distress, for the holy fountain had ceased flowing, and Merlin's most powerful magic failed to r estore it.

and told Merlin that the best thing for him to do was to go home and work the weather. "It was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he was the worst weather-failure in the kingdom. Whenever he ordered up the danger signals along the coast there wa s a week's dead calm, sure, and every time he prophesied fair weather it rained brick-bats. But I kept him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine his reputation."

He then worked a modern miracle on the well with stunning effect, sending to the factory and chemical laboratory at Camelot, which had been left in charge of Clarence, for the materials in the shape of lead pipe, a force pump with an electric apparatus and fireworks to give eclat to the proceedings. The account of this miracle is one of the most delicious things in the book, repairing the well with the aid of his trained assistants from Camelot by mending the leak which nobody had thought of looking f or, and, when everything was ready, repeating some phenomenally long German words by way of conjuration, accompanied by Bengal lights from the chapel roof, touched off with an electric battery, and finally turning on the water to the accompaniment of a gr and outburst of rockets -- all of which pyrotechnics was taken to be the vomiting of hell-fire by the infernal spirit that had enchanted the well.

While he was here at the Valley of Holiness, a rival magician arrived and everybody took stock in him because he claimed to be able to tell what the Emperor of the East and other mighty and distant potentates were doing at any moment. But the Yankee n on-plussed him by asking him to tell what he, the Yankee, was doing with his right hand! But the humbug pretended that such trifles were beneath his dignity; enchanters of his degree deigned not to concern themselves with the doings of any but kings, emp erors, princes, them that be born in the purple, and them only, and he volunteered to tell what King Arthur was doing. But the Yankee had secretly established telephonic communication with Camelot, and knew just what was really going on at the court, and prophesied that the King and Queen, with their following, would arrive in the valley the day after the next, at vespers, to pay pious homage to the waters that had been restored.

of the royal progress, but he was surprised that in the valley there was no sign of interest in the King's coming; there seemed to be no preparations making to receive him in state.

While the King is at the valley there is

for positions in the new standing army just instituted, the first regiment of which had just been formed. But the royal preference is given to the young scions of the nobility over the deserving cadets from the Yankee's recently instituted "West Point ." The latter, however, effects a happy compromise, by persuading the King to make the 1st regiment the crack one, the "King's Own," officered entirely by the nobility, with possibly five times as many officers as privates, so that it would be the heart' s desire of the nobility, and leaving the rest of the standing army to be made up out of common-place materials, and officered with nobodies, as was proper -- "nobodies selected on the basis of mere efficiency."

Another event is the arrival of the first newsboy with the arrival of the new paper started under the management of Clarence, the Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano, gotten up in the regular Arkansas style. The following, from the department of "Local Smoke and Cinders," is a sample item:

When the Yankee mentions his intentions to go out to scour the country disguised as a petty freeman and familiarize himself with the humbler life of the people, King Arthur is all on fire in a minute with the novelty of the thing, and insists on taking a chance in the adventure. So the two start out incognito, and the relation of their experience gives a wonderful chance to describe the customs and manners of the country in that age. He has a hard time

so as to assume the requisite humility in the presence of the gentry whom they meet on the way. On one occasion the King forgot himself. Two knights rode toward them, and it would have fared ill in consequence of the King's lack of proper deference h ad it not been for a dynamite bomb which the Yankee had taken along to work a miracle with in case of emergency. With this he blew up the knights most effectively, but he had to explain to the King that "this was a miracle of so rare a sort that it could n't be done except when the atmospheric conditions were just right. Otherwise he would be encoring it every time we had a good subject, and that would be inconvenient, because I hadn't any more bombs along."

Here is a capital saying by the King, when the Yankee is drilling him to walk like a lowly man, which is difficult, since his shoulders have known no ignobler burden than iron mail, and they will not stoop:

On this expedition the King is taught something of sympathy with the common people by becoming familiar with their condition, though it is a difficult lesson, that of bringing a man into touch with a mode of life foreign to that in which he is born and reared. "He could only see one side of it. He was born so, educated so; his veins were full of ancestral blood that was rotten with this sort of unconscious brutality." Finally, the Yankee and the King are

The slave market was utterly stagnant. The King of England brought $7, and his prime minister $9. The King brooded; but not about the prodigious nature of his fall; "what gravelled him most, to start with, was not this, but the price he had fetched!"

They have some exciting adventures, and are on the point of being hanged when they are rescued by the timely arrival of Launcelot and 200 mailed and belted knights on bicycles; Clarence rides along with them and tells how he has had the boys practising this long time, privately, and just hungry for a chance to show off.

and the modern inventions are brought out openly. Even base ball is brought forward with the intention of replacing the tournament with something that might furnish an escape for the extra steam of the chivalry. The account of a base ball match, with the knights playing in their armor, is funny enough. "When a man was running, and threw himself on his stomach to slide to his base, it was like an ironclad coming into port."

The advance in the art of popular bookmaking in the past two decades is illustrated by the contrast between Innocents Abroad and this volume. In illustration, the progress is particularly notable. Even a child of today would turn in contempt from the crude woodcuts of the former to the beautiful pen-and-ink drawings by Dan Beard that adorn the new work. These drawings are graceful, picturesque and thoroughly characteristic of the spirit of the book. Many of them embody instructive allegories, as, for instance, in a cut of Justice, with her scales, one containing the heavy hammer of "Labor" and the other the baubles of "Aristocracy," but the latter made to outweigh the former by means of the string of "Self-interest," artfully attached to the toe of "Law," who stands by; another, in a similar vein, shows the Justice of the 19th century and Justice of the sixth century standing opposite each other, and simultaneously remarking, "Sister, your blind is disarranged," for, with the same manner of string attached to the toe of each, "Money" is made to outweigh "Labor" by the former, just as titles are made heavier in the balance by the latter. One little cut shows "Decorations of Sixth Century Aristocracy" as "Rewards for all Babes Born Under Specified Conditions," such as "Slave Driver," "Robber of Unarmed Savages," "Robber of Orphans," "Absorber of Taxes," "Murderer of Rivals," etc., the whole supported by "Honi soit qui mal y pense!" Another illustrates the remark of the king concerning a peasant: "Brother! to dirt like this?" by depicting the three phases of oppression of man by man, first by violence under the sword of royal power, then by the book of "law," making man subject to the slave driver's lash, and last, the subjection of the workingman to the millions of the monopolist. A strong and spirited picture of an arrogant slave driver shows in its face the unmistakable portrait of a celebrated American billionaire and stock gambler.

We are so accustomed to regard England of today as "essentially a republic, with a monarchical head," that it seems strange that the utterances of this book, so thoroughly in accordance with accepted American ideas, should find any difficulty in obtaining publicity in England, yet so strong is the prejudice there still that its English publisher has cut out some of the best passages, including a portion of the preface, with some persiflage about "the divine right of kings."

Boston Literary World [unsigned]
1890: February 15

Mark Twain's latest book, which his publishers have brought out in a handsome volume, seems to us the poorest of all his productions thus far. The conceit of taking a Yankee of this generation of telephones and the electric light back to King Arthur's Court may please some minds, if presented in a story of moderate length, but there can be few who will really enjoy it when long-drawn out to the extent of nearly six hundred pages. Whatever value Mr. Clemens might have incidentally imparted to his burlesque by giving something like a correct picture of the customs of the time in which the mythical King flourished is entirely absent. He has crowded into his picture a great number of episodes illustrating "ungentle laws and customs" which are historical, indeed; but he says:

It is not pretended that these laws and customs existed in England in the sixth century; no, it is only pretended that, inasmuch as they existed in the English and other civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that it is no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been in practice in that day also. One is quite justified in inferring that wherever one of these laws or customs was lacking in that remote time, its place was competently filled by a worse one.

Mr. Clemens' method of writing history would justify him in picturing the Connecticut of the seventeenth century as afflicted with loose divorce customs and great corruption at the polls -- or something worse -- simply because these are vices of the nineteenth century! To crowd into a representation of one age the social evils of all its successors known to us, and to omit those special redeeming features of the time which made life tolerable, is a very irrational proceeding.

The serious aim under Mark Twain's travesty is the glorification of American Protestant democracy. The effort fails through the extreme partiality of the procedure. Even a Mark Twain, the persistent teacher of irreverence for great men and great events, should have some little respect left for fair play. Mr. Clemens' previous books have been bad enough in their strong encouragement of one of the worst tendencies in a democratic State, the inclination to sheer flippancy and unmanly irreverence in the face of the natural sanctities of private life and the grand heroisms of human history. But this volume goes much further in its endeavor to belittle a century surrounded with romantic light by men of later times, who thus fell back upon poetry as a slight relief to the hard prose of their actual lot. A buffoon, like the hero of this tale, playing his contemptible tricks where Sir Thomas Malory has trod with a noble teaching of knightly courtesy, and uttering his witless jokes where Tennyson has drawn so many a high moral of true gentleness, is a sorry spectacle. It is not calculated to make a reflecting person proud of a shallow and self-complacent generation which can enjoy such so-called humor.

The one consolation to be derived from this melancholy product of the American mind in the ninth decade of the nineteenth century is that, equally in its serious and in its jesting parts, it must bring about a healthy reaction in some of its admiring readers because it overshoots the mark; because its history is perverse, in its one-sided accumulation of evils; and because its humor will be wearisome in the extreme when its falsity is seen.

When Mr. Clemens relates his Life on the Mississippi with characteristic American exaggeration, we cannot fail to laugh and become friends. But when he prostitutes his humorous gift to the base uses of historical injustice, democratic bigotry, Protestant intolerance, and nineteenth-century vainglory, we must express the very sincere animosity we feel at such a performance. If anything could be less of a credit to our literature than the matter of this book, it certainly is the illustrations which disfigure it. A Protestant of the Protestants himself, the writer of this review cannot refrain from thus freeing his soul in the cause of literary decency when the Roman Catholic Church, that is to say the Christian Church in one of the noblest periods of its history, is thus grossly assailed by the writer and the illustrator of this tiresome travesty.

Harper's Magazine[William Dean Howells]
1890: January

...Mr. Clemens, we call him, rather than Mark Twain, because we feel that in this book our arch-humorist imparts more of his personal quality than in anything else he has done. Here he is to the full the humorist, as we know him; but he is very much more, and his strong, indignant, often infuriate hate of injustice, and his love of equality, burn hot through the manifold adventures and experiences of the tale. What he thought about prescriptive right and wrong, we had partly learned in The Prince and the Pauper, and in Huckleberry Finn, but it is this last book which gives his whole mind. The elastic scheme of the romance allows it to play freely back and forward between the sixth century and the nineteenth century; and often while it is working the reader up to a blasting contempt of monarchy and aristocracy in King Arthur's time, the dates are magically shifted under him, and he is confronted with exactly the same principles in Queen Victoria's time. The delicious satire, the marvellous wit, the wild, free, fantastic humor are the colors of the tapestry, while the texture is a humanity that lives in every fibre. At every moment the scene amuses, but it is all the time an object-lesson in democracy. It makes us glad of our republic and our epoch; but it does not flatter us into a fond content with them; there are passages in which we see that the noble of Arthur's day, who battened on the blood and sweat of his bondmen, is one in essence with the capitalist of Mr. Harrison's day who grows rich on the labor of his underpaid wagemen. Our incomparable humorist, whose sarcasm is so pitiless to the greedy and superstitious clerics of Britain, is in fact of the same spirit and intention as those bishops who, true to their office, wrote the other day from New York to all their churches in the land:

It is a fallacy in social economics, as well as in Christian thinking, to look upon the labor of men and women and children as a commercial commodity, to be bought and sold as an inanimate and irresponsible thing.... The heart and soul of a man cannot be bought or hired in any market, and to act as if they were not needed in the doing of the world's vast work is as unchristian as it is unwise.

Mr. Clemens's glimpses of monastic life in Arthur's realm are true enough; and if they are not the whole truth of the matter, one may easily get it in some such book as Mr. Brace's Gesta Christi, where the full light of history is thrown upon the transformation of the world, if not the church, under the influence of Christianity. In the mean time, if any one feels that the justice done the churchmen of King Arthur's time is too much of one kind, let him turn to that heart-breaking scene where the brave monk stands with the mother and her babe on the scaffold, and execrates the hideous law which puts her to death for stealing enough to keep her from starving. It is one of many passages in the story where our civilization of to-day sees itself mirrored in the cruel barbarism of the past, the same in principle, and only softened in custom. With shocks of consciousness, one recognizes in such episodes that the laws are still made for the few against the many, and that the preservation of things, not men, is still the ideal of legislation. But we do not wish to leave the reader with the notion that Mr. Clemens's work is otherwise than obliquely serious. Upon the face of it you have a story no more openly didactic than Don Quixote, which we found ourselves more than once thinking of, as we read, though always with the sense of the kindlier and truer heart of our time. Never once, we believe, has Mark Twain been funny at the cost of the weak, the unfriended, the helpless; and this is rather more than you can say of Cid Hamet ben Engeli. But the two writers are of the same humorous largeness; and when the Connecticut man rides out at dawn, in a suit of Arthurian armor, and gradually heats up under the mounting sun in what he calls that stove; and a fly gets between the bars of his visor; and he cannot reach his handkerchief in his helmet to wipe the sweat from his streaming face; and at last when he cannot bear it any longer, and dismounts at the side of a brook, and makes the distressed damsel who has been riding behind him take off his helmet, and fill it with water, and pour gallon after gallon down the collar of his wrought-iron cutaway, you have a situation of as huge a grotesqueness as any that Cervantes conceived.

The distressed damsel is the Lady Corisande; he calls her Sandy, and he is troubled in mind at riding about the country with her in that way; for he is not only very doubtful that there is nothing in the castle where she says there are certain princesses imprisoned and persecuted by certain giants, but he feels that it is not quite nice: he is engaged to a young lady in East Hartford, and he finds Sandy a fearful bore at first, though in the end he loves and marries her, finding that he hopelessly antedates the East Hartford young lady by thirteen centuries. How he gets into King Arthur's realm, the author concerns himself as little as any of us do with the mechanism of our dreams. In fact the whole story has the lawless operation of a dream; none of its prodigies are accounted for: they take themselves for granted, and neither explain nor justify themselves. Here he is, that Connecticut man, foreman of one of the shops in Colt's pistol factory, and full to the throat of the invention and the self-satisfaction of the nineteenth century, at the court of the mythic Arthur. He is promptly recognized as a being of extraordinary powers, and becomes the king's right-hand man, with the title of The Boss; but as he has apparently no lineage or blazon, he has no social standing, and the meanest noble has precedence of him, just as would happen in England to-day. The reader may faintly fancy the consequences flowing from this situation, which he will find so vividly fancied for him in the book; but they are simply irreportable. The scheme confesses allegiance to nothing; the incidents, the facts follow as they will. The Boss cannot rest from introducing the apparatus of our time, and he tries to impart its spirit, with a thousand most astonishing effects. He starts a daily paper in Camelot; he torpedoes a holy well; he blows up a party of insolent knights with a dynamite bomb; when he and the king disguise themselves as peasants, in order to learn the real life of the people, and are taken and sold for slaves, and then sent to the gallows for the murder of their master, Launcelot arrives to their rescue with live hundred knights on bicycles. It all ends with the Boss's proclamation of the Republic after Arthur's death, and his destruction of the whole chivalry of England by electricity.

We can give no proper notion of the measureless play of an imagination which has a gigantic jollity in its feats, together with the tenderest sympathy. There are incidents in this wonder-book which wring the heart for what has been of cruelty and wrong in the past, and leave it burning with shame and hate for the conditions which are of like effect in the present. It is one of its magical properties that the fantastic fable of Arthur's far-off time is also too often the sad truth of ours; and the magician who makes us feel in it that we have just begun to know his power, teaches equality and fraternity in every phase of his phantasmagory.

He leaves, to be sure, little of the romance of the olden time, but no one is more alive to the simple, mostly tragic poetry of it; and we do not remember any book which imparts so clear a sense of what was truly heroic in it. With all his scorn of kingcraft, and all his ireful contempt of caste, no one yet has been fairer to the nobility of character which they cost so much too much to develop. The mainly ridiculous Arthur of Mr. Clemens has his moments of being as fine and high as the Arthur of Lord Tennyson; and the keener light which shows his knights and ladies in their childlike simplicity and their innocent coarseness throws all their best qualities into relief. This book is in its last effect the most matter-of-fact narrative, for it is always true to human nature, the only truth possible, the only truth essential, to fiction. The humor of the conception and of the performance is simply immense; but more than ever Mr. Clemens's humor seems the sunny break of his intense conviction. We must all recognize him here as first of those who laugh, not merely because his fun is unrivalled, but because there is a force of right feeling and clear thinking in it that never got into fun before, except in The Bigelow Papers. Throughout, the text in all its circumstance and meaning is supplemented by the illustrations of an artist who has entered into the wrath and the pathos as well as the fun of the thing, and made them his own.

This kind of humor, the American kind, the kind employed in the service of democracy, of humanity, began with us a long time ago; in fact Franklin may be said to have torn it with the lightning from the skies. Some time, some such critic as Mr. T. S. Perry (if we ever have another such) will study its evolution in the century of our literature and civilization; but no one need deny himself meanwhile the pleasure we feel in Mr. Clemens's book as its highest development.

LondonDaily Telegraph [unsigned]
1890: January 13

The stories of King ARTHUR that have come down to us represent in legendary form not any historical fact, but an ideal of kingship and knighthood which had birth in the hearts and aspirations of medi�val men. This was their ideal of what a King amongst his warriors ought to be, and the beautiful image has fired the thoughts and purified the imagination of millions of men and women for many generations. Will this shrine in human souls be destroyed because a Yankee scribe chooses to fling pellets of mud upon the high altar? The instincts of the past and the genius of TENNYSON have consecrated for ever "the goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this world holds record." The Round Table is dissolved, but we can still "delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds," as they at Camelot in the storied past. We can still apply the image of the ideal knight as a criterion of modern worth. King ARTHUR swore each of his followers to "reverence his conscience as his King, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To honour his own word as if his GOD'S, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity. To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds." Such an oath presented to a modern Yankee would seem to convey in almost every phrase a covert insult to American institutions. In a land where commercial fraud and industrial adulteration are fine arts we had better omit appeals to "conscience." The United States are not likely to "ride abroad redressing human wrong" -- as they never gave a dollar or a man to help Greece, Poland, Hungary, or Italy in their struggles to be free. "To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it," would utterly uproot America's free press -- based to a great extent on scandalous personalities. Loving one maiden only and cleaving to her must seem too "high-toned" in the States, where there are many facilities for ready divorce. So far MARK TWAIN is right as a Western iconoclast to pelt with sarcasm ideals which are not included in the Constitution or customs of the United States. Yet, in spite of all that America has done or can do to deface images of self-sacrifice and beauty, there are chosen souls in her own borders who have fulfilled the heroic ideals of the olden time. The Abolitionists of New England encountered great perils when they first set out to redress the great human wrong of negro slavery, and they fought as noble a contest against organised iniquity as any knight of ARTHUR'S Court. They faced political obloquy, mob violence, loss of limb, sometimes of life, and the falling away of friends and relatives, because they had inherited the old instinct of knights, to lead lives of duty to their fellow-men. They were jeered and derided by the MARK TWAINS of the day, but their foresight was proved at the end of the war, when the world recognised the two-fold result, "a nation saved, a race delivered." What, too, would have been the fate of the Republic if no ideal image of their country shone before the souls of the men who died to save the Union? Coward souls at the North said, "It will cost much money and many lives to re-conquer the South: let them go; let the Republic break up; what is a country to us?" but a chivalry that came down from British ancestors animated the men who followed GRANT, and they kept to their high purpose until the field was won. Where was MARK TWAIN then? Why did he not satirise the patriotism that would not let a Republic be mutilated? Why did he not sneer at Yankee reverence for a paper Constitution not a hundred years old? Why did he not sing the glories of trade as better than any preservation of the Union or liberation of negro slaves?

Even if we look at the real feudalism idealised in the legends of King ARTHUR, it was not all evil. No doubt there were licentious nobles at all times, and there were great landlords who were occasionally cruel to the peasants in their fields. The change to modern times, however, is not all a gain. A great lord of old held his possessions by "suit and service"; he was bound to follow his King to the wars. Now he owns his broad lands free of duty, and may live a life of shameful luxury when he likes. The peasant of the olden times was not always in distress. The country was thinly peopled; he had as much land as he wanted; the woods were full of wild game, the streams of fish; except on occasions of rare famine he was fed well. Such a thing as an eviction was unknown, and for one good reason -- the lord was not only bound to serve the King, but to bring men for his army; consequently he had an interest in raising on his estates a body of faithful followers. The modern landlord drives his peasants into the towns, where, uncared for by him, they degenerate and die in slums. We must remember, too, that the vices of the past were characteristic of rough times; they were the sins of brutality, not of fraud. A bad knight of the feudal age wronged a maid or widow, and refused redress; but what are the offences of a commercial age? In America and in England, to a lesser extent, financial swindling is elaborately organised. The wicked man of modern times does not couch his lance against the weak or lowly; he sends out a prospectus. In twelve months the widow and orphan are breadless; the promoter and the financier have added another twenty thousand to their stores. Were King ARTHUR to descend in New York to-morrow he would make for Wall-street, where he would find a host of men whose word is as good, and as bad, as their bond -- railway schemers who plunder the shareholders of a continent, and are ever intent by every device of falsehood and of plot to deceive each other and to defraud the public. Talk of the inequality of man! King ARTHUR and the meanest menial in his halls were nearer to each other in conditions of life than the cramp in the slums of New York and the ASTORS, VANDERBILTS, and JAY GOULDS who have piled up millions extracted from the pockets of less successful men. The Republic is a 'land of liberty,' yet its commerce, its railways, and is manufactures are in the hands of a few cliques of almost irresponsible capitalists, who control tariffs, markets, and politics in order that they may be enriched, to the disadvantage of the masses. Which, then, is to be most admired -- the supremacy of a knight or the success of a financier? Under which King will the Americans serve -- the ideal or the real? Will they own allegiance to King ARTHUR or JAY GOULD?

Plumas National [unsigned]
1890: July 5

Mark Twain has never written anything brighter and wittier than A Yankee in King Arthur's Court, his latest book, which is now issued with all the advantages of illustrations that add zest to the great humorist's fun and satire. The book is as able and original as The Innocents Abroad or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, while it bids fair to be fully as popular with the American public as either of these books. It is one long satire on modern England and Englishmen, under the clever guise of an attempt to picture the England of the sixth century and of Arthurian legend. It is said that Mark wrote the story about seven years ago, but about the time he had completed it he paid a visit to England and was received so handsomely that he didn't have the heart to print his bitter satire, that in places reminds one of Swift. Mark Twain has come up from the people. He is American to the backbone, and the assumption of natural superiority by titled English aristocrats and the terrible wrongs inflicted on the working people, evidently galled him beyond endurance. He has taken his revenge in this volume, and a thorough going over it is, for he has mercilessly flayed the follies, vices, cruelties and false pretensions of English royalty and aristocracy.

A mere statement of the plot of the story shows the ample field it gives for "most excellent fooling." Mark pretends to find a Connecticut Yankee in London who recalls his experiences in the age of King Arthur. The story is told with great realistic effect, and the extraordinary contrasts of modern slang and archaic speech, of nineteenth-century progress and sixth-century superstition, when developed by a master of the art of humor, are inexpressibly droll. The Yankee is captured by one of the Knights of the Round Table and brought to the court, where he is about to be executed as a curious monster, when he chances to remember that an eclipse occurs on that day. So he adopts the device which Rider Haggard has used with so much effect in his African romances, and threatens to destroy the sun unless he is released. The sun's disk begins to be obscured and before the eclipse is ended he has been made a great noble, Sir Boss, with ample revenue, and the office of chief adviser of the King. Then begin contests with jealous knights and especially bouts of witchcraft with Merlin, in which the famous magician is completely vanquished by modern science.

Mark's picture of the deficiencies of the Arthurian court in little conveniences is very droll. "No soap, no matches, no looking glass, except a metal one about as powerful as a pail of water, and not a chromo. I had been used to chromos for years and I saw now that without my suspecting it a passion for art had got worked into the fabric of my being and had become a part of me." And then the makeshifts for light -- "a bronze dish half full of boarding-house butter with a blazing rag floating in it was the thing that produced what is regarded as a light."

And here is the picture of the people of England at the time of King Arthur, which, curiously enough, is as applicable to the great body of Englishmen of to-day as to those of thirteen centuries ago:

These extracts give a fair idea of the sarcasm which the author heaps upon England. He is in dead earnest when he gets to tilting at the divine right of kings and aristocrats to make the people slave and sweat blood for them, but he unbends when he deals with chivalry. He has no more reverence for the beautiful legends which Tennyson has embalmed in his Idyles of the King than Bob Ingersoll has for St. Peter's or the best works of some of the old masters. Some of his caricature is very funny, as, for instance, this bit about the search for the Holy Grail:

In the last chapters the author puts no bridle on his extravagance, and the book ends in scenes of warfare that will make Haggard green with envy. The illustrations by Dan Beard are full of humor, and bring out the fun of the story. The book is finely printed and bound and lavishly illustrated. For sale by subscription only by A. L. Bancroft & Co., 132 Post Street, sole agents for the coast.

Review of Reviews [William T. Stead]
1890: February

In selecting as the Novel of the Month Mark Twain's new story, A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, I am aware that I expose myself to many remonstrances. There is a certain profanation in the subject, and withal a certain dulness in its treatment. It is not a novel; it is a ponderous political pamphlet, and so forth and so forth. Nevertheless, to those who endeavour to understand what the mass of men who speak English are thinking, as opposed to those who merely care about what they think they ought to be thinking, this book of Mark Twain's is one of the most significant of our time. It is notable for its faults quite as much as for its virtues, and for the irreverent audacity of its original conception as much as for the cumbrous and strenuous moralising which makes it at times more like one of Jonathan Edwards' sermons than a mere buoyant and farcical bubbling up of American humour.

Mark Twain is one of the few American authors whose writings are popular throughout the English-speaking world. Our superfine literary men of culture who pooh-pooh the rough rude vigour of the American humorist represent a small clique. Mark Twain gets "directlier at the heart" of the masses than any of the blue-china set of nimminy-pimminy criticasters. In his own country, if we may judge from the remarks in the January Harper, A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur has been received with an enthusiasm which it has hitherto failed to evoke on this side of the Atlantic. We read there that

the delicious satire, the marvellous wit, the wild, free, fantastic humour, are the colours of the tapestry, while the texture is a humanity that lives in every fibre. We can give no proper notion of the measureless play of an imagination which has a gigantic jollity in its feats, together with the tenderest sympathy. The humour of the conception and of the performance is simply immense; but more than ever Mr. Clemens's humour seems the sunny break of his intense conviction.

What a contrast this to the frigid condemnation of the Speaker: "In his last book Mr. Clemens fails to make us laugh by any method, even the worst. He is not only dull when he is offensive, but perhaps even more dull when he is didactic." Yet I make free to say that the vote of the mass of English people would be on the side of the American and against the English critic. For what our critical class has failed to appreciate is that the Education Act has turned out and is turning out millions of readers who are much more like the Americans in their tastes, their ideas, and their sympathies than they are to the English of the cultured, pampered, and privileged classes. The average English speaking man is the product of the common school in America, of the public elementary school in Britain and Australia. His literary taste is not classical but popular. He prefers Longfellow to Browning, and as a humorist he enjoys Mark Twain more than all the dainty wits whose delicately flavoured quips and cranks delight the boudoir and the drawing-room. This may be most deplorable from the point of view of the supercilious �sthetes, but the fact in all its brutality cannot be too frankly recognised.

Another circumstance which gives significance to the book is the fact that it is the latest among the volumes whereby Americans are revolutionising the old country. The two books which have given the greatest impetus to the social-democratic movement in recent years have both come to us from America. Henry George's land nationalisation theories were scouted by the superfine, but they have gained a firm hold of the public mind. His book has circulated everywhere, and is still circulating. Of another kind, but operating in the same direction, is Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards, which has supplied our people with a clearly written-out apocalypse of the new heaven and the new earth that are to come after the acceptance of the Evangel of Socialism. Mark Twain's book is a third contribution in the same direction. His Yankee is a fierce and furious propagandist of anti-monarchical and aristocratic ideas. Under the veil of sarcasms levelled at King Arthur we see a genial mockery of the British monarchy of to-day, with its Royal grants and all its semi-feudal paraphernalia. Nor is it only at British abuses Mark Twain levels his burly jests. He thwacks the protectionist American as readily as the aristocratic Briton. There is something infinitely significant in the very form of his satire. If there is nothing sacred to a sapper, neither can there be anything sacred to a descendant of the men of the Mayflower, who has all the fervour of Mr. Zeal-for-the-Lord-Busy and the confident, complacent assurance of Sam Slick, who dismissed unceremoniously the authority of Plato or Aristotle with the observation that we need not heed what they said as there were no railways in their times. Here is the New England Democrat and Puritan as passionately sympathetic with the common man as the nobles and knights whom he scourges were sympathetic with men of their order, determined to avenge the injustice of centuries and by holding the mirror up to fact to punish the chivalric age by showing how it treated the common man. It is not longer enough to judge systems of to-day by the effect which they have upon Hodge the ploughman and Bottom the weaver; the war must be carried into the enemy's camp, the verdict of history must be reversed, and all our ideals of the past transformed in the light of this new and imperious interrogation -- The labouring man, what did that age or that institution make of him?

Tennyson sang the idyls of the King, and as long as the world lasts Sir Thomas Malory's marvellous old Romance will fill the hearts and imaginations of men with some far-off reflection of the splendours and the glories of that child-like age. But truly he sang "the old order changeth, giving place to the new," of which can we have a more notable and even brutal illustration than the apparition of this vulgar Yankee realist, with his telephones and his dynamite, his insufferable slang and his infinite self-conceit, in the midst of King Arthur's Court applying to all the knighthood of the Round Table the measure of his yard-stick, -- the welfare of the common man? It is the supreme assertion of the law of numbers, of the application of the patent arithmetical proposition that ten is more than one, to the problems of politics and of history. Tennyson himself, in the "Last Tournament," supplied a vivid picture, which may well serve as a frontispiece of Mark Twain's vision:

Into the hall swaggered, his visage ribbed
From ear to ear with dog whip-weals, his nose
Bridge-broken, one eye out and one hand off,
And one with shattered fingers dangling, lame;
A churl, to whom indignantly the king,
"My churl, for whom Christ died; what evil beast
Hath drawn his claws athwart thy face? or fiend,
Man, was it who marr'd heaven's image in thee thus?"

The churl for whom Christ died is the centre of Mark Twain's story, which is a long and a passionate attempt to suggest that the evil beast who marred the visage of the poor wretch was the three-headed chimera of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Church. There is much strange misreading of history caused by the extent to which Mark Twain has allowed the abuses of institutions to obscure their use.

Scots Observer[unsigned]
1890: January 18

Mrs. Smedes' A Southern Planter and Mark Twain's new lapse into Ibsenity and the cultus of the thesis, A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, appear about the same time, and both are pretty sure to be widely read in Britain: the latter because Mark Twain is currently believed to have been once a writer of funny books, and the former because the Sage of Hawarden has blessed it. He is not always happy, is the Sage of Hawarden, in his selection of books to dignify with his imprimatur, having a natural and peculiar leaning to religious fiction; but in commending A Southern Planter to British readers he has done well. Mrs. Smedes' book and Mark Twain's have at first sight little enough in common but their transatlantic origin; but that view is naught. Nothing could be further removed from the blatant frivolity of the Yankee exwag -- "our arch-humourist," as Mr. de Howells styles him in the current Harper, not without a hint of unconscious pathos -- than the record of a noble life which Mrs. Smedes has written with such simple piety; and had Mr. Clemens been content to write about the court of King Arthur as he wrote about Arkansas and the Mexican Plug no one would have mentioned the two in the same breath.

For in those days Mr. Clemens lived to make the light-hearted laugh; and his life was a success. But he has exhausted his vein, and with faded cap and fools' bells jangled has got bewrayed with seriousness and bedevilled with a purpose. He treats you to a "lecture" in dispraise of monarchical institutions and religious establishments as the roots of all evil, and in praise of Yankee 'cuteness and Wall Street chicanery as compared to the simple fidelity and devotion of the knightly ideal. The key to this precious piece of apostolics is contained in a frontispiece where the Supreme Yank, the Connecticut man in a state of heroism, the Bagman in excelsis, is pictured in the act of tickling the nose of the British Lion with a switch. Now the life of Thomas Dabney -- Virginian aristocrat and slave-owner-- is an effective commentary on such violent vulgarity. He was full of just those qualities which make the memory of King Arthur fragrant. The mainspring of his life was not the almighty dollar but noblesse oblige. Amid the prosperity of his plantation times, as amid the havoc wrought on his and his country's fortunes by the war, his supreme purpose was to fulfil the honourable ideal of a gentleman. Such an ideal is no doubt inconsistent with the democratic notions of the superior Yank; but it is not the least precious heritage in the world's history for all that, and Mr. Clemens stamps himself when he makes the bagman's mistake of bedaubing it with cheap wit. It is the ideal which in English literature animated Sir Roger de Coverley, and Mr. Allworthy, and Colonel Newcome, of whose virtues, indeed, the life of Thomas Dabney was in many ways a realisation. Mrs. Smedes has done her part of the work very well, except that she might have cut down the correspondences with advantage. As for Mark Twain, he has turned didactic, and being ignorant is also misleading and offensive. His method, which was that of Hamibel Chollop, consists in attributing every social, political, and economic evil to the Crown and the Church. That slavery and Protection have flourished under American republican institutions does not hinder the ingenious creature from attributing their existence to monarchy and what he calls the Established Roman Catholic Church. To him that is decorous and just. But then he is a bagman with a thesis, and his notions of justice and decorum are of those that commend themselves to none but renegade Europians -- Europians of the stamp of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. To add to all this that Mr. W. de Howells has taken occasion to contrast him and his achievement in bagmanising with Cervantes and Don Quixote, somewhat to the disadvantage of the latter, is to begin to pity the poor devil. After all, he knows no better; after all, he is the parent of Huck Finn and Jim the Nigger and the genuine Mexican Plug and the incomparable Blue Jay. What should he do where Arthur first in court began whose proper place is the Capitol, or Tammany Hall, or the shadow of the Saint Louis Bridge? What should he do with a thesis? What he really wants is a wooden nutmeg or a razor-strop.

Speaker [unsigned]
1890: January

Mark Twain is also somewhat affected by the Spirit of his Time, which is didactic; and by the Spirit of his Nation, which is inventive, but not refined. Mr. Lewis Carroll is far beyond Mr. Clemens in points of delicacy and taste; but it may be doubted whether any English author of repute would have tried to win a laugh by an irreverant treatment of the legend of the Holy Grail, as Mr. Clemens has done in A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. It is quite certain that there are few English readers who will care to see the subject begrimed with prime American jests. Mr. Clemens used to be able to make us laugh without resorting to this easy and distressing method; in his last book he fails to make us laugh by any method, even the worst.

But Mr. Clemens is not only dull when he is offensive; he is perhaps even more dull when he is didactic. His views on the peerage, religious tolerance, republics, political economy, and the application of electricity to warfare, may be -- some of them are -- admirable. But they are out of place in a farcical book: the satire is not fresh; the information is second-hand or inaccurate; and the moral -- or immoral, as the case may be -- is clumsily enforced and unduly prominent. Tediousness is still further ensured by the length of the book. The joke is a long joke, and the author has not "gompressed him." It would be idle to point out that the book is not a sketch of the sixth century; because Mr. Clemens is careful to remove by a prefatory note any such objection. But he must not think that his confession of incompetence will make him seem any the less incompetent to the intelligent reader.

The illustrations to the book are occasionally allegorical, and remind us of the hieroglyphic which is to be found at the beginning of prophetic almanacks. In one of them the root of a tree is marked Religious Intolerence; but the artist spells quite as well as he draws. They are very badly arranged; they seldom occur at the right place; and they break into text, making the task of reading very difficult. The task was hard enough, too, without that. We hope -- we may even believe -- that we have seen the artist at his worst; we certainly have not seen the author at his best.

Sometimes we think that we shall never see the author at his best again. American humour depended much upon quaint and happy phrase. When these phrases are repeated ad nauseam, their quaintness and happiness seem to disappear. But we have been saddened and depressed by reading two long and humorous books, and are, perhaps unduly inclined to be pessimistic. We had expected to laugh a little; and, instead of that, we have learned much -- much that we knew before. And, after all, it must be easy for Mr. Clemens to do better; and we know why it must.

Truth[Desmond O'Brien]
1890: January 2

My dear Mr. Wyndham, -- It has occurred to a good many prophets since Lord Lytton wrote The Coming Race, --

To dip into the future, far as human eye could see,
Show the vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be.

but it was reserved, I think, for Mark Twain to put on Hans Andersen's Goloshes of Happiness and go back to the past, carrying with him all the wonders of the present. A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur is a bizarre book, full of all kinds of laughable and delightful incongruities -- the most striking of its incongruities, however, being unconscious, grim, and disenchanting. For Mark Twain, as he goes on, gets into a fury so ferocious (and natural) with the infernal oppression of the people by the Nobles, the King, and the Church that he passes in a sentence from laughing into raving at the "good old times"; and, like Macbeth at sight of Banquo's ghost, he "displaces the mirth" of the feast he had prepared for us. His fooling is admirable and his preaching is admirable, but they are mutually destructive. In every page he preaches pretty much what Richard Rumbold preached two centuries since -- "I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden" -- but Rumbold preached it from the most commanding of pulpits -- the scaffold -- whereas Mark Twain preaches it from the sawdust of the circus and in the intervals between a couple of jests or a couple of summersaults. But it is thoroughly sound doctrine, and is needed still so sorely in England and Ireland that it is ungracious to grumble at the mode of its delivery. It will reach a larger audience, and, perhaps, strike many of them more by its grotesque presentation than if the preacher wore a less bizarre garb than motley.

Ridentem dicere verum
Quid vetat?

Still, such frightful episodes as that of the woman who was burned to make a fire to warm a slave gang, or that of the hanging of the young mother -- wife of the "pressed" man-o'-war's man -- with her baby at her breast (an incident, by the way, Mr. Mark Twain, not of the sixth century, but of the beginning of the nineteenth), freeze the laughter on our lips.

The Hartford Courant[unsigned]
1885: February 20

In his latest story, Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade), by Mark Twain, Mr. Clemens has made a very distinct literary advance over Tom Sawyer, as an interpreter of human nature and a contributor to our stock of original pictures of Americ an life. Still adhering to his plan of narrating the adventures of boys, with a primeval and Robin Hood freshness, he has broadened his canvas and given us a picture of a people, of a geographical region, of a life that is new in the world. The scene of h is romance is the Mississippi river. Mr. Clemens has written of this river before specifically, but he has not before presented it to the imagination so distinctly nor so powerfully. Huck Finn's voyage down the Mississippi with the run away nigger Jim, an d with occasionally other companions, is an adventure fascinating in itself as any of the classic outlaw stories, but in order that the reader may know what the author has done for him, let him notice the impression left on his mind of this lawless, myste rious, wonderful Mississippi, when he has closed the book. But it is not alone the river that is indelibly impressed upon the mind, the life that went up and down it and went on along its banks are projected with extraordinary power. Incidentally, and wit h a true artistic instinct, the villages, the cabins, the people of this river become startlingly real. The beauty of this is that it is apparently done without effort. Huck floating down the river happens to see these things and to encounter the people a nd the characters that made the river famous forty years ago--that is all. They do not have the air of being invented, but of being found. And the dialects of the people, white and black--what a study are they; and yet nobody talks for the sake of exhibit ing a dialect. It is not necessary to believe the surprising adventures that Huck engages in, but no one will have a moment's doubt of the reality of the country and the people he meets.

Hartford Daily Courant [Charles Dudley Warner]
1876: December 27

Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published in England last June, and immediately many of the most easily detached and quotable portions of it found their way into the American press, and a wide circulation. The COURANT printed at the time two or three extracts from the book--Tom's adventure with the beetle in church, a most delightful study as well as a piece of profound philosophy, and the whitewashing of the fence, a bit of genuine fun with an artistic finish that would give the author a deserved reputation if he had never written anything else. The volume has just been brought out here in a very handsome style, copiously illustrated with drawings by Mr. J. W. Williams, who has happily entered into the spirit of the book, and produced excellent and on the whole the best set of character sketches we have ever seen from his pencil. The engravings do not all do justice to the original drawings, but they are more than fair, and as the text is beautifully printed on broad pages, the whole effect is very pleasing, and the volume is attractive at the first glance.

Tom Sawyer is in some respects an advance on anything that Mr. Clemens has before done--an advance we mean as a piece of literary work, careful in finish, and thought out more maturely. It has not the large, original force of the uncontrollable, spontaneous humor that in "The Innocents Abroad" carried an irrepressible burst of merriment round the globe, from San Francisco to India by way of Europe, but it has passages as exquisitely humorous as any in that book, and as a general thing it is more finely wrought. The passages we have spoken of above amply sustain this assertion; you can read them again and again with new delight, and indeed, we find it difficult not to read them every time we take up the book. They could not have been written without the spark of genius. We find in this book, too, the author's style, not more virile and sparklingly clear than formerly, but more carefully finished; and the author has toned down a little those excursions into the impossible, which are intensely amusing, but do not commend themselves to the judgment on a second reading. And in doing this he has lost nothing of his extraordinarily forceful use of the English language. There is no one writing today who has a finer intuitive sense of the right word in the right place.

The book is all about boys, and it is said to be written for boys. It is a masterly reproduction of boy's life and feeling, but, at the same time, it is written above boys: that is, the best part of it--the wit, the humor, the genius of it will fly miles above every boy's head in the country. The boys can appreciate the adventure in it as a mere narrative, but not that which makes the adventure valuable to older readers, who recall their own boyhood in it. The boy has not the least sense of humor; that is nothing funny to him in having his pocket in measure of useless trash; the tricks he plays upon his comrades are not amusing to him; he is a non-humorous, dead, in earnest creature, and it is this characteristic that makes him amusing to us (to himself in retrospect); but his serious life does not take in what we call humor. It is for this reason that we say that Tom Sawyer will be enjoyed most by mature readers, who will have a great delight in seeing how faithfully boy life is recalled.

Boy nature is the same everywhere, and the characteristics here given are of universal acceptance; but local coloring (as it is now called) is different, and the boys of this book are of Missouri and not of New England in a good many of their ways; and so they ought to be, being studies from life. We should not counsel New England boys to expect or to imitate some of the adventures in this book, but they doubtless are true enough to the society they sketch. The Missouri boy who has mighty stirrings in his soul and feels deeply the desperate injustice of his tender home, may want to go away and be a noble river pirate, just as the New England boy is sometimes moved to run away to sea. But neither of them we fancy ever finds or makes a pot of money by any sudden streak of luck.

We do not believe that Tom Sawyer or his comrades have the least idea how bright a boy he is, or what exceedingly funny things he says; he is as bright as Mark Twain himself. And probably no boy will appreciate the deep fun and satire of the following passage. In a midnight adventure of Tom and his companion, Huckleberry, the boys think they are lost and fall into a panic. Huckleberry whispers:--

The Sunday-school chapter, in which Tom's financial abilities come out strong, and he trades himself into the possession of the first prize, and in which he exhibits his Biblical knowledge, is saturated with the keenest humor; but a boy will hardly comprehend the fine observation and deep satirical humor of the scene. It is prize day and company is present. On the platform is the great Judge Thatcher, the county judge, and it is an important hour for Mr. Walters, the superintendent, and for the whole school. It was an impressive silence when Jeff Thatcher, the brother of the judge, observed by "ranks of staring eyes," went forward to be familiar with the great man and be envied by the school:--

Tom is a genuine boy and his Aunt Polly is a genuine woman; both are capitally drawn; and the author has given to both some noble traits and elements of pathos which make them remain our friends long after the laughter they excite has ceased. The book is full of quotable things, scenes as amusing as anything Mr. Clemens has written, with now and then a stroke of good humored satire that is as well deserved as it is artistically administered--take the school examination and exhibition as a specimen; the remarks on the "compositions" of the young ladies might well be framed and hung up in every school room. But it is unnecessary to quote from a book which everybody will read.

Hartford Daily Times [unsigned]
1876: December 20

The American Publishing company of this city have just issued Mark Twain's book, "Tom Sawyer." It is a beautiful book, both outside and in, as one might naturally expect to find it on seeing the imprint of this publishing house upon it--a house that has established a well-earned reputation in the book publishing lines. The illustrations in the book are of a merit beyond praise. They are of the eloquent kind that speak for themselves, as well as for the print they illustrate. Those who imagine this to be a tame story for little boys will discover their mistake on reading it. It is safe to predict that no one will read the first page without reading all the rest. There is a power of attraction about it that doesn't "let up," but grows stronger to the end. Though claiming to be a book for boys and girls it will not be monopolized by them. There's rich entertainment in it for both young and old. The author says most of the adventures recorded in it really occurred, and that one or two of them were his own. Perhaps his well-known modesty forbids his claiming any larger proportion. The story dates back some forty years ago, in one of the southwestern slave states. The hero, Tom Sawyer, is a unique individual, to state it mildly. The author says he belongs to the composite order of architecture. Perhaps that is as good a description of him as can be given in brief. He isn't one of the orthodox boys who love their Sunday schools, and love to read about the good little boys who die early and go to heaven. He evidently preferred the other place where they don't have any Sunday schools, and the boys don't have to keep quiet every seventh day in the week. He doesn't believe in early deaths, nor early piety. Tom is a reckless, daredevil fellow, ready to hazard life for an adventure any time; but under the rollicking air of the book there appears an occasional bit of philosophy in the peculiarly dry, sarcastic vein of the author, as this, for instance:

The account, some chapters further along, of the village school graduating exercises, and the prize poems and compositions of the young ladies, is racy and rich, but not in the least exaggerated. Its beauty consists in its truth to life. The slim, melancholy girl, with a cast of countenance "that comes of pills and indigestion," who reads a poem as indigestible as her ordinary diet, is to be found in any average school of the present day, as can likewise be found her bilious companion who reads a composition which "wound up with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took the first prize."

Perhaps the most pointed paragraph in the book is the following in relation to a petition for pardon for a murderer:

If there is any defect in the book it is in the love scenes, where a boy of Tom Sawyer's size wanders off to be an outlaw. This part is a little overdrawn. But the whole story is so exquisitely told that the book will be widely sought. It is a capital gift for the holidays.

[Transcribed from Pond's broadside poster.]

A very large and fashionable audience assembled in Concert Hall last night to hear that prince of humor, Mark Twain (Samuel M. Clemens), and that celebrated novelist, George W. Cable, in their joint readings. They went expecting a treat and they got decidedly more than they bargained for. A more delighted, amused, thoroughly satisfied audience never filled the auditorium of any building in Buffalo. Mark Twain, like old wine, or old friends, seems to improve with age, and his dry, unconscious, apparently spontaneous humor kept the audience in convulsions of laughter. With the exception of his first reading, given in the program below, most of the great humorist's admirers have heard or read the selections he gave last night, but they are of the kind that never grow "stale, flat or unprofitable" by repetition.

Mr. Cable's readings were not one whit less appreciated than were Twain's. His style of rendition is different, of course; his genius for description and natural intuition of the exact phases and character of all men are wonderful, and when his own writings are given with the exactitude and faithfulness he would have them, his genius and power stand out, and one can easily perceive the living images molded and shaped by his artist hands and master brain. Those who have read Mr. Cable's novels of Southern life, and have fancied they have struck the exact chord, even to the peculiar Creole patois and Creole life, need to hear the man who conceived the works to find that, no matter how careful may have been their study, they are somewhat mistaken.

As the two distinguished men of letters came upon the stage a volley of rattling applause greeted their ears. Bowing low, Mark Twain introduced his friend and brother lecturer with a few remarks that tickled the risibilities of the audience into immediate good humor. "Allow me to introduce to you, ladies and gentlemen," said Mark, "one whom I regard, the world regards, and you regard, as the greatest modern writer of ancient fiction, and likewise the greatest ancient writer of modern fiction the world has ever known. One who has all the talent, all virtues and all vices blended together to make the perfect man -- Mr. Geo. W. Cable," and Mark bowed himself off the stage amidst prolonged laughter.

"I am very glad he mentioned my name at the last minute," said Mr. Cable, "or you might have supposed it was the other man!" He then gave with all the power of the consummate elocutionist and the author a selection from Dr. Sevier. Presuming that Mr. Cable's life among the people of Louisiana, and more particularly among the Creoles, has given him a thorough acquaintance with their peculiar life and dialect, his rendering of the conversation of Narcisse, the Creole, was admirable and true. Mr. Cable makes a fine appearance on the stage, has a very clear, musical voice, and never fails for an instant to keep his audience absorbed in his word painting processes; so absorbved that they too can see as he saw with his genius when he brought them before life with his pen and ink, his characters and the scenes surrounding them; see them arise before their eyes and live and move and talk until he finishes his recital.

When the applause had died away somewhat, Mr. Cable introduced Mark Twain with a few felicitously chosen words. Said Mark (half the humor is lost in the cold type): "I notice many changes in the city in the last fourteen or fifteen years since I was here. I miss many old friends. Some have gone to the tomb, some to the gallows, and some to the White House. [Laughter.] Thus far, " he continued, with a long-drawn sigh, "the rest are spared. Over us all, my friends, hangs the same awful, uncertain fate; let us be secure against error, and prepare for the worst. I remember a certain circumstance of that by-gone time which I shall never forget. I arrived here after dark one night in 1870, with my wife. We were met by several friends, and I asked Mr. Slee to get us a cheap boarding-house, because it's always a good thing to practise economy. Then they drove us around through all the back streets of Buffalo for about four hours. It seems that my friends kept up a joke on me, and a real good joke it was, too. My father-in-law, Mr. Jarvis Langdon, had clandestinely bought a house on Delaware Avenue and furnished it up for us. It was a great secret -- so secret that I guess every man this side of Niagara Falls knew about it, except myself. They drove us up to the house, and when the door was opened by the supposed landlady, and I saw the elegant furniture, my opinion of Mr. Slee, and his ideas of a cheap boarding-house, went way down to zero. I told Mrs. Thompson, or Mrs. Jenkins, or whatever the landlady's name was, that we could only stay a week: I had lots of talent, but not enough money to stay at such a palatial residence. My friends, who had assembled there before I had arrived, then explained the joke. Now," continued the speaker, "that was really a fine joke; but those kind are all too scarce nowadays. It was an admirable joke, admirably conceived, admirably conveyed, and admirably carried out. The house doesn't belong to us now, but the coachman we still have. He has been lavishly endowed by fortune; why, that man has a wife and nine children!" He then read a short chapter from the "Adventures of Huckelberry Finn," which was sufficient proof to show that in this, Mark Twain's latest literary effort, his fund of humor has not yet left him.

In place of No. 5 on the programme, Mr. Cable gave a Creole song, which was so admirable and beautiful that he was obliged to answer the encore by giving another. Besides having proven himself an author, elocutionist, and man of great genius, he proved himself a splendid singer, with a soft, clear, beautiful voice. "Mary's Night Ride" was grand. Mr. Cable painted with his author's brush the thrilling incident of that ride through the Confederate lines, as found in Dr. Sevier.

Mark Twain concluded with one of his ghost stories. He said it was growing late, and he would have to tell a short one, and not the one a morning paper (it was the Times, by the way) said he would give about the North Street burying-ground. It is needless to say it was told in his usual inimitable style.

Those who want a good laugh, and have a literary turn of mind, should go to-night.

The audience that greeted "Mark Twain" and George W. Cable at Concert Hall last evening was as fine a one as the most fastidious could desire, and that it was appreciative the spontaneous applause and constant bursts of laughter that greeted each alternate speaker fully testified. When everybody was well seated the two made their appearance together, and as Mr. Cable was down for the first reading, it devolved on Mr. Clemens to introduce him, which he did in his own peculiar style. He began in much the usual fashion, but soon ran into an erratic eulogy of Mr. Cable, characterizing him as one that "I regard, you regard, the world regards as the most gifted ancient writer of modern fiction, the most gifted modern writer of ancient fiction, in whom all talent, all viture, all vice is blended to form the perfect man."

Mr. Cable's readings were from his latest novel, "Dr. Sevier," except in the third appearance when he varied the printed programme by an African Creole song, which he rendered very finely. It was a peculiar bit of plaintive minor music, and the light soft voice of the novelist was well adapted to it. Responding to the encore he sang a short bit representing the wail of a Creole mother for her lost child.

"Mark Twain," as an old resident of Buffalo, felt it necessary to renew former acquaintances. He scanned the audience from beneath those heavy brows and said that he missed many faces that he knew so well here fourteen or fifteen years ago. They had gone, gone to the tomb, to the gallows -- or to the White House. All of us must at last go to one or another of these destinations, and he advised his audience to be wise and prepare for them all.

The lecturer closed this grave introduction of himself by wishing his audience the same prosperity his coachman enjoyed and then plunged into "Huck Finn," relating his original notions of "King Sollermun" to Negro Jim.

Had a search been made for two men of letters more unlike in appearance that "Twain" and Cable the result would have been a total failure. The Southern novelist is the precise, alert, brisk man of style, keenly alive dto his part in the entertainment, his voice full of quavers and graceful turns of enunciation, his rendering as dramatic as he could make it, which came near the tragic in his rendering of "Mary's Night Ride." On the other hand, "Mark Twain" is the man from way back who has sat down by the stove at the corner grocery, gathered his cronies about him, and is telling a story as only he can tell it. Grim, slow, solemn, not a smile or an apparent attempt to dress up his lines, yet doubtless as keenly alive to the effect as the other. The one is of the dapper sort, as polite as a dancing master, and the other is ponderous and heavy, who for an obeisance merely works his head to a certain noticeable angle.

The two in this way form a splendid contrast and relieve each other very acceptably. If the applause and amused smiles aroused by Mr. Cable and the hearty laughter given in response to "Mark Twain" humor measure the enjoyment of the audience, that enjoyment was very great.

[Transcribed from Pond's broadside poster.]

The scene at the "front of the house" in Whitney's last night was enough to make glad the heart of a manager. The sharp cries of "one, two, one, three" of the head usher rang out as he turned the well-dressed stream in ones and twos to the under-ushers. He stood like a rock at the head of the centre aisle and the stream poured in on him. It surged around him, but calm and immovable he stood, and it broke around him. He utilized it and turned the steam into rivulets that trickled down the different aisles like the separate arms of the delta of the great river beside which the Twain authors won their fame. The stream went in graceful cascades down the steps of the different channels into the parquet and innundated it. The theatre was a sea of faces.

The stage setting for this drama by two was of a nature calculated to inspire the authors with wonder at the wealth and splendor of Detroit interiors. Could Hartford insure a lovelier blue satin parlor suite? Could New Orleans exhibit a more gorgeous table-cover with a redder embroidered rose? The doors at the back were twain, and the lace hung in cables over the middle entrance.

A man, whose shadow was now and then projected against the wings, snapped on the footlight gas. Then with a crack the overhead illumination flooded the stage with light, and a third thrill awaited the audience when the same invisible magician with the lightning touch sprang the big chandelier into a dazzling combination of jets. "It is like the President at Washington starting the exhibition in the South to-day," said a lady to her escort.

These little electric excitements led up the audience to the event of the evening -- the entrance of the great American novelist, the humorist leading slightly, as they say in sporting circles. The sensation that had been caused by a brilliant-headed stage boy coming in and moving one of the blue chairs up to the footlights had subsided, and when the real actors came on there was a grand burst of applause. Mark Twain, drifting round the table to the front, leaving Cable kind of straddled on the other side, drawled out:

"Lays sun gen'lmen, I introduce to you Mr. Caaa-ble."

And with a wave of his hand he left his partner before the multidude, and retired R.E.

Mr. Cable looked down into the empty orchestra and saw on the chairs where the fiddlers used to sit a motley array of overcoats and sacques that showed him plainly that he was not in the balmy climate of the sunny South. Then he lifted his face, and the audience got a good, square look at him.

His make-up was good. The wrinkiles on his brows looked for all the world as if he had been for years in constant surprise at his own success. His whiskers were long and pointed, and they ran up his cheek on either side until they met the smooth black hair. A person had the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps they were held in place by a string concealed over the top of his head, and that they might at any moment drop off. His moustaches were of the St. John (not the Evangelist, but the Prohibitionist) type, and their parted ends drooped down to a level with his pointed beard -- three peculiar points about Cable.

He seemed just a trifle like a nervous man who had got his nervousness under pretty good control, but couldn't quite make up his mind whether it was better to keep his hands clasped behind his dress-coat, or in front of it with his thumbs up.

The first Cable dispatch was that exquisite conversation between Narcisse and the Richlings, where the former tries to get John to "baw" him some of the cash Dr. Sevier has placed to the credit of the unfortunate couple.

"I wuz juz coming at yo' 'ouse, Mistoo Itchlin. Yesseh, I wuz juz sitting in my 'oom afteh dinneh, envelop'in in my 'obe de chambre, when all at once I says to myself, 'Faw distwaction I will go and see Mistoo Itchlin.'" It was distraction indeed to the Richlings. He saw "Mistoo Itchlin" in every sense of the word, and "baw'd" the last cent he had.

If Mr. Cable would come on the stage and sit down on the chair and have a good actor do the talking there might be some improvement. There was a touch here and there of amateurishness and a certain self-consciousness that rather interfered with the recital. Still, it is doubtful if any one could have given the Creole dialect as well as Cable himself.

In retiring, amidst most enthusiastic applause, he took three backward steps, made a bow, three more, then another bow, three more, and out.

There was no burst of music between the acts. The overcoats and things occupied the orchestra chairs with discretion and silence. This, of course, gave Mark a great advantage. The people were in good humor from the start.

"Mark the Perfect Man," saith the quotation. For "man" read "humorist." Nothing could be more deliciously droll than his very movement toward that embroidered tablecloth. He came in with his head forward and looked like a man who had lost something on the stage and wasn't exactly sure that he would be able to find it. When he faced the music -- or rather the place where the music used to be -- he looked at the audience with a puzzled, half-careworn expression, as if he had met the people before, but couldn't just at the moment recall their names. His half-closed eyes appeared to peer out from under the bushy eyebrows with a puzzled gaze that had been regarding life seriously for forty odd years, and couldn't quite make it out. His bristly, plentiful hair was brushed back as if he had been born that way. It looked as if it never could become towsled up or come down over his eyes, and it was tinged with gray. It seems incredible that Mark Twain should ever have gray hair, but such are the indications.

His left hand automatically sought his trousers pocket, and slid in there, leaving the thumb at liberty.

He told his stories with that inimitable Down East drawl of his, and took his audience into his confidence with a serious unconventionality that was most delightful. When he got through he ambled off the stage with a little trot that was as funny as his altogether diffident entrance. He reminds one in his serious fun remotely of Raymond in "Mulberry Sellers." He also reminds you of someone you have seen before, you can't tell who, but you are friends with him, for old acquaintance sake, from the first. The audience laughed so heartily at his stories that laughing became a pain, and then, as Saxe says, "Cable like a poultice came, to heal the blows of Twain."

The Creole songs that Cable sang in place of one of his recitations were enthusiastically encored.

Mr. Cable should give up the funny business entirely to Twain. He should stick to the serious parts of his book with the exception of Narcisse, and let Mark bring the laughter. He is enough and several to spare.

"Mary's Night Ride" was most graphically given by Mr. Cable. He brought the picture vividly before the eyes of his audience and held them spell-bound to the last word. It was the very perfection of intense word-painting. Still he should have shot that navy six a little quicker. The "once--twice--thrice" should have been given with every spring of the flying horse. "The tart rejoinders of his navy six" rang out in the night air, you may depend on it, Mr. Cable, as quickly as the brave spy could pull the trigger, and by the way, that sentence, "The tart rejoinders of his navy six," is one of the most graphic ever penned by the hand of man.

Twain gave his version of the celebrated st---st---st---st---whe-e-w-a--ammering story, which differs from that of Col. Sellers, and is infinitely better than Raymond's way of it.

In conclusion it may be said that while the stage settings had somewhat of a sameness in them to a people educated up to the scenery of the "Silver King" and such, still the combination must save a good deal in baggage cars, and if we missed the background of the Alps while Twain was in his "Trying Situation," or "The Street in New Orleans" while Ristofalo was before us, we should remember that our loss was their gain. Taking it from first to last the Twain-Cable entertainment was by all odds the most enjoyable thing of the season, a sweet boon to the tired theatre-goer and a joy forever to the callous cynical man in the box office. When shall we, Twain, meet again?

[Transcribed from Pond's broadside poster.]

The very unique and happy entertainment afforded by Mark Twain and Mr. Cable in their joint recitations deserves the warmest praise the press can give it. The former's manner and speech on the platform, which are clearly unaffected, admirably supplement the humor of his thought and language. His style is evidently an expression of himself. The gravity of his features while reciting his side-splitting productions, is equal to the apparent sincerity and frankness with which he guyed that interviewer, and even occasionally draws his audience into a trap and then inwardly laughs at them. The most of his hearers Saturday afternoon and evening endured all in the way of laughter to which it was safe for Mr. Clemens to expose them. But they will be ready to take a second dose whenever he can conventiently visit us again.

Whoever has read Mr. Cable's "Grandissimes" and his "Dr. Sevier" was prepared to find in their author a man of talent and culture. But we confess our own surprise over his remarkable powers as an elocutionist. He has the delicate form, the small hands and feet, the keen, intellectual features that excite remark from a stranger in first seeing General Mahone, of Virginia. His voice, though pitched on a high key, is sweet, musical, and flexible, and in his recitiations he is equally happy in portraying the humorous and the pathetic features of his works. His Creole songs are, to those who have never heard them, a revelation of a new and delicious charm in music. In gentle, genial humor nothing could well have been happier than his representation of the courting scene between Ristofalo and the delightful Irish widow in his Dr. Sevier, but for dramatic fire, his rendering of the passage describing the encounter of Mrs. Richling and her friend, the scout, with the Confederate pickets, and the subsequent ride for life could not well be surpassed.

It is rare that authors are endowed as these gentlemen are, with the power of interpreting their own creations to public gatherings. We have no doubt that they enjoy it as much as their hearers do, and they have the satisfaction of knowing that the entertainment, in all its features, is solely due to their own genius.

Athenaeum [unsigned]
1884: December 27

For some time past Mr. Clemens has been carried away by the ambition of seriousness and fine writing. In Huckleberry Finn he returns to his right mind, and is again the Mark Twain of old time. It is such a book as he, and he only, could have written. It is meant for boys; but there are few men (we should hope) who, once they take it up, will not delight in it. It forms a companion or sequel, to Tom Sawyer. Huckleberry Finn, as everybody knows, is one of Tom's closest friends; and the present volume is a record of the adventures which befell him soon after the event which made him a person of property and brought Tom Sawyer's story to a becoming conclusion. They are of the most surprising and delightful kind imaginable, and in the course of them we fall in with a number of types of character of singular freshness and novelty, besides being schooled in half a dozen extraordinary dialects -- the Pike County dialect in all its forms, the dialect of the Missouri negro, and 'the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect,' to wit. Huckleberry, it may be noted, is stolen by his disreputable father, to escape from whom he contrives an appearance of robbery and murder in the paternal hut, goes off in a canoe, watches from afar the townsfolk hunting for his dead body, and encounters a runaway negro -- Miss Watson's Jim -- an old particular friend of Tom Sawyer and himself. With Jim he goes south down the river, and is the hero of such scrapes and experiences as make your mouth water (if you have ever been a boy) to read of them. We do not purpose to tell a single one; it would be unfair to author and reader alike. We shall content ourselves with repeating that the book is Mark Twain at his best, and remarking that Jim and Huckleberry are real creations, and the worthy peers of the illustrious Tom Sawyer.

Life [unsigned]
1885: February 26

Mark Twain is a humorist or nothing. He is well aware of the fact himself, for he prefaces the "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" with a brief notice, warning persons in search of a moral, motive or plot that they are liable to be prosecuted, banished or shot. This is a nice little artifice to scare off the critics--a kind of "trespassers on these grounds will be dealt with according to law."

However, as there is no penalty attached, we organized a search expedition for the humorous qualities of this book with the following hilarious results:

A very refined and delicate piece of narration by Huck Finn, describing his venerable and dilapidated "pap" as afflicted with delirium tremens, rolling over and over, "kicking things every which way," and "saying there are devils ahold of him." This chapter is especially suited to amuse the children on long, rainy afternoons.

An elevating and laughable description of how Huck killed a pig, smeared its blood on an axe and mixed in a little of his own hair, and then ran off, setting up a job on the old man and the community, and leading them to believe him murdered. This little joke can be repeated by any smart boy for the amusement of his fond parents.

A graphic and romantic tale of a Southern family feud, which resulted in an elopement and from six to eight choice corpses.

A polite version of the "Giascutus" story, in which a nude man, striped with the colors of the rainbow, is exhibited as "The King's Camelopard; or, The Royal Nonesuch." This is a chapter for lenten parlor entertainments and church festivals.

A side-splitting account of a funeral, enlivened by a "sick melodeun," a "long-legged undertaker," and rat episode in the cellar.

London Examiner [unsigned; Moncure D. Conway]
1876: June 17

This newest work of Mark Twain increases the difficulty of assigning that author a literary habitat. "American humorist" has for some time been recognised as too vague a label to attach to a writer whose "Jumping Frog" and other early sketches have been reduced to mere fragments and ventures by such productions as The Innocents Abroad and The New Pilgrim's Progress, in which, while the humour is still fresh, there is present an equal art in graphic description of natural scenery, and a fine sense of what is genuinely impressive in the grandeurs of the past. Those who have travelled with Mark Twain with some curiosity to observe the effect of the ancient world interpreted by a very shrewd eye, fresh from the newest outcome of civilisation, may have expected to find antiquity turned into a solemn joke, but they can hardly have failed to discover a fine discrimination present at each step in the path of the "new pilgrim"; while he sheds tears of a kind hardly relished by the superstitious or sentimental over the supposed grave of his deceased parent Adam, he can "listen deep" when any true theme from the buried world reaches his ear. Without being pathetic he is sympathetic, and there is also an innate refinement in his genius felt in every subject it selects and in his treatment of it. Tom Sawyer carries us to an altogether novel region, and along with these characteristics displays a somewhat puzzling variety of abilities. There is something almost stately in the simplicity with which he invites us to turn our attention to the affairs of some boys and girls growing up on the far frontiers of American civilisation. With the Eastern Question upon us, and crowned heads arrayed on the political stage, it may be with some surprise that we find our interest demanded in sundry Western questions that are solving themselves through a dramatis personae of humble folk whose complications occur in a St. Petersburg situated on the Missouri river. Our manager, we feel quite sure, would not for a moment allow us to consider that any other St. Petersburg is of equal importance to that for which he claims our attention. What is the deposition, death, or enthronement of a Sultan compared with the tragical death of "Injun Joe," the murderer, accidentally buried and entombed in the cavern where his stolen treasures are hid? There he was found.

London Times [unsigned]
1876: August 28

Mark Twain belongs to a somewhat different school of writers from Miss Yonge, and Tom Sawyer is a characteristic production of his genius. We recognize the germ of it in the stories of the good and bad little boys, which went some way towards making their author's popularity. Tom Sawyer, as we are told in the Preface, is intended primarily for the amusement of children, but it is hoped that "it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try pleasantly to remind adults of what they once were themselves." How far Master Sawyer's eccentric experiences may come home in that way to American citizens we cannot pretend to say. To our English notions, Tom appears to have been a portentous phenomenon, and his eventful career exhibits an unprecedented precocity. His conceptions were as romantic as their execution was audacious. Holding all sedentary occupations in aversion, his cast of thought was as original as his quaint felicity of picturesque expression. We are very sure there are no such boys in this country, and even in the States it may be supposed that the breed has been dying out, for fully more than a generation has gone by since Tom was the glory and plague of his native village on the Mississippi. His remarkable talent for mischief would have made him an intolerable thorn in the flesh of the aunt who acted as a mother to him had it not been that his pranks and misconduct endeared him to that much-enduring woman. "Cuteness" is scarcely the word for Tom's ingrained artfulness. Take, by way of example, one of his earliest achievements. He is caught by his aunt in some flagrant delict, and condemned to whitewash the fence that runs in front of her cottage. Tom had planned to make one of a swimming party, and, what is more, he knows that he will be jeered by his playmates, and contempt is intolerable to his soaring spirit. So, when he sees Ben Rogers, whose satire he stands most in dread of, come puffing along the road, personating a high-pressure steamer, Tom buckles himself to his task with a will. He is so absorbed, in fact, in artistic enthusiasm that Ben's ribald mockery falls on unheeding ears, and Tom has actually to be twitched by the jacket before he turns to recognize his friend. Ere long Ben, who was bound for the river, is begging and praying to be permitted to have a turn with the brush. Tom is slow to be persuaded; had it been the back fence it might have been different, but his aunt is awful particular about this front one --

"Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly -- well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him. Sid wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let Sid. Now, don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it."

The result is that Tom, as an immense favour, trades the privilege of a few minutes' painting for an apple. Each of the other boys, as he comes up in Ben's wake, makes a similar deal on his own account. Tom amasses a wealth of miscellaneous treasure, which he subsequently barters for a sufficiency of tickets of merit at the Sunday school to entitle him to walk off with the honours for which meritorious children have been toiling; while his aunt, to her intense surprise, finds her fence covered with several coatings of whitewash, and goes into raptures over Tom's capacity for work on the rare occasions when he chooses to apply himself. But, though anything but a bookish boy, Tom had paid considerable attention to literature of an eccentric kind, and, indeed, his knowledge of men and things was very much taken from his favourite authors. He runs away with a couple of comrades to follow the calling of pirates on an island of the Mississippi, the grand inducement being "that you don't have to get up mornings, and you don't have to go to school and wash and all that blame foolishness." After some days, when the trio are bored and half-starved and rather frightened, Tom plans a melo-dramatic return, and the missing ones emerge from the disused gallery of the church and present themselves to the congregation of weeping mourners, just as the clergyman's moving eloquence is dwelling on the virtues of the dear departed. Afterwards Tom, who "all along has been wanting to be a robber," but has never been able to find the indispensable cave, stumbles on the very thing to suit him. So he carries off a devoted follower who has been hardened for an outlaw's life by the habit of living on scraps and sleeping in empty hogsheads -- Republican freedom from class prejudices seems to have been a marked feature among the boys of the Transatlantic St. Petersburg. He teaches Huck his duties as they are flying from the society of their kind out of the accumulated stores of his own erudition. "Who'll we rob?" asks Huck. "Oh, most anybody -- waylay people; that's mostly the way." "And kill them?" "No, not always. Hide them in the cave till they can raise a ransom. You make them raise all they can off o' their friends, and after you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised, then you kill them. That's the general way. Only you don't kill the women; you shut up the women, but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful and rich and awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take off your hat and talk polite. There ain't everybody as polite as robbers; you'll see that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you; and after they've been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying, and after that you couldn't get them to leave. If you drove them out they'd turn right round and come back. It's so in all the books.' In the course of their researches in the cavern they come on what Tom pronounces "an awful snug place for orgies." "What's orgies?" inquires Huck. "I dunno," says Tom very frankly; "but robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got to have them too."

We fear these elegant extracts give but a faint idea of the drollery in which the book abounds; for the fact is that the best part of the fun lies in the ludicrous individuality of Tom himself, with whom we have been gradually growing familiar. But we should say that a perusal of Tom Sawyer is as fair a test as one could suggest of anybody's appreciation of the humorous. The drollery is often grotesque and extravagant, and there is at least as much in the queer Americanizing of the language as in the ideas it expresses. Practical people who pride themselves on strong common sense will have no patience with such vulgar trifling. But those who are alive to the pleasure of relaxing from serious thought and grave occupation will catch themselves smiling over every page and exploding outright over some of the choicer passages.

Illustrated London News [unsigned]
1876: June 24

"Mark Twain" has dropped the humorous exaggerations of his "Jumping Frog" and "Innocents Abroad" in his fresh and racy story of Tom Sawyer (Chatto and Windus). "Although," writes this popular American humorist in his preface, "my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account; for part of my plan has been to try to write pleasantly, to remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in." So very human is "Tom Sawyer" in its faithful delineation of boy-life that it cannot fail to realize the hope of "Mark Twain," and amuse everyone who in the words of the song, "would" he "were a boy again." All the love of mischief, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, foolhardy pranks and acts of bravery that make Tom Sawyer stand out as a veritable portrait from the life are set down by Mr. Clemens with unfailing fidelity to nature; and that element of adventure so dear to boys is supplied in a manner to satisfy the appetite for the strangest sensational fare. It is the faithful portrayal of boy-life, however--not the midnight murder in a churchyard of which Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are eye-witnesses, nor the piratical venture of Tom and his mates, nor even the wanderings of Tom and his sweetheart whilst lost in the cave--that makes "Mark Twain's" last volume so welcome, and that will, doubtless, win for him even a wider circle of readers that he has at present.

During his description of the topography of the Sandwich Islands, the lecturer surprised his hearers by a graphic and eloquent description of the irruption of the great volcano which occurred in 1840, and his language was loudly applauded.

Judging from the success achieved by the lecturer last evening, he should repeat the experiment at an early day.

His writings being comparatively new to the public, and his position having been so recently established, it might perhaps, have been doubted whether his name would at present be sufficient to attract an audience of any magnitude to witness his debut as a lecturer. But the proof of the general good-will in which he is already held was manifested last Monday evening by his brilliant reception at the Cooper Institute. The hall was crowded beyond all expectation. Not a seat was vacant, and all the aisles were filled with attentive listeners. The chance offering of "The Jumping Frog," carelessly cast, eighteen months ago, upon the Atlantic waters, returned to him in the most agreeable form which a young aspirant for popular fame could desire. The wind that was sowed with probably very little calculation as to its effect upon its future prospects, now enables him to reap quite a respectable tempest of encouragement and cordiality. His greeting was such as to inspire the utmost ease and confidence, and it is pleasant to add that his performance in every way justified the favor bestowed upon him. No other lecturer, of course excepting Artemus Ward, has so thoroughly succeeded in exciting the mirthful curiosity, and compelling the laughter of his hearers.

The subject of his address, "The Sandwich Islands," was treated mainly from a comic stand-point, although scraps of practical information and occasional picturesque descriptions of scenery and natural phenomena peculiar to that region were liberally interspersed. The scheme of the lecturer appeared to be to employ the various facts he had gathered as bases upon which to build fanciful illustrations of character, which were furthermore embellished with a multitude of fantastic anecdotes and personal reminiscences. The frequent incongruities of the narration--evidently intentional--made it all the more diverting, and the artifice of its partial incoherence was so cleverly contrived as to intensify the amusement of the audience, while leaving them for the most part in ignorance of the means employed. As to the manner of the speaker, it is difficult to write explicitly. It was certainly peculiar and original. Perhaps no better idea of it could be conveyed than by saying it is in almost every respect the exact opposite to that of the late Artemus Ward. It suited that admirable lecturer's humor to exhibit a nervous quickness and a vivacity which always communicated itself to those who surrounded him, and his best "points" were made by the droll affection of complete unconsciousness with which he uttered the most telling jests. Mark Twain's delivery, on the other hand, is deliberate and measured to the last degree. He lounges comfortably around his platform, seldom referring to notes, and seeks to establish a sort of button-hole relationship with his audience at the earliest possible moment. He is even willing to exchange confidences of the most literal nature. Having made an accidental error in figures, last Monday evening, at which there was great laughter, he paused and requested to be informed "what he had said," and was indisposed to proceed until his curiosity should be gratified. Instead of manifesting indifference to his own good jokes, he appears to relish them as heartily as anybody--a characteristic, by the bye, which also belongs to the most eminent "reader" now known to the British public. The only obvious preconcerted "effect" which he employs is a momentary hesitation or break in his narration before touching the climax of an anecdote or a witticism. But his style is his own, and needs to be seen to be understood. A second opportunity for this, we learn, is presently to be afforded, to which, when it approaches, we shall invite particular attention.

Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, who is known to many of us, and ought to be known to all of us, as Mark Twain, was one of the passengers on the Quaker City when she took her ill-assorted party of excursionists to Europe and the East, and he has just given us, in a thick book of more than six hundred pages, a record of the tour. It might better have been a thinner book, for there is some dead wood in it, as there has to be in all books which are sold by book-agents and are not to be bought in stores. The rural-district reader likes to see that he has got his money's worth even more than he likes wood-engravings. At least, such is the faith in Hartford; and no man ever saw a book-agent with a small volume in his hand.

But if some of the book is needless, none of it is really poor, and much of it very good. Mr. Clemens's plan of delivering an unvarnished tale, of giving just his own impressions of what he saw, at once made his work sure of some real value as well as much freshness, and his book is one to be commended merely as a book of travels. But, of course, the "American humor" is the great thing. It is not in the light of a traveller that one regards a gentleman who when during his wanderings in the Holy Land he comes upon the "tomb of Adam," which the monks exhibit, thus gives utterance to a natural burst of sentiment:

All the prominent characteristics of our peculiar school of humorists -- their audacity, their extravagance and exaggeration -- Mr. Clemens displays in fulness in the course of his ramblings, and he has some merits which belong to his individual self, and which make him a very agreeable companion when he is at ease and natural -- which is not always; for as he pads so, we must make free to tell him, does he sometimes grimace, and is professionally a humorist as he was professionally a book-maker. It will be a just punishment for him to reflect that no doubt many a farmer will read all his jokes -- the good ones as well as these bad ones we are speaking to him about -- with profound gravity and unshaking belief in them as so much serious log-book.

There is, besides those we have mentioned, another characteristic of "American humor," which consists in a certain sort of what may be called fatuousness. When the man in the stage-coach, riding along with "the great moral showman" without knowing him, kept on telling him, "some of Artemus Ward's jokes," and at the end of each one of them punched his companion in the side and said, "What a damned fool the fellow is!" he was not the worst critic that Artemus ever had. NearIy all his jokes have in them a display of mental helplessness -- not to say imbecility -- a drifting along of the mind from one topic to another, suggested but not really connected, topic, and are largely dependent upon this for their humorous effect. The same thing may be seen -- though not nearly so unmixed nor so often -- in the efforts of Mr. Josh Billings. The humor in the Nasby Papers consists rather in Mr. Locke's conception of the low, "dough-face" Democrat than in anything strictly humorous that is said or done by him after he is made, and the Cross-roads pastor and postrmaster gives no exhibition of the trait mentioned. But the author of The Innocents Abroad has some of it -- though something of what he has is acquired and imitative, we should say -- and may be taken to be rather more nearly Artemus Ward's successor in this line than either of the other humorists to whom we have referred.

New Haven Morning Journal and Courier [unsigned]
1876: December 21

We have already alluded to Mark Twain's new book, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." The work has just been published, and is a most capital subject for a holiday gift. Like all of its author's works, it overflows with rare and quaint humor; and, in addition to its attractive subject-matter, it has the advantage of being bound very handsomely, printed on heavy tinted paper, and beautified with 150 illustrations, and is to be obtained at a far lower price than Twain's other works. It contains about 300 pages. The lady agent for this city may be found at 88 Court Street, where any subscriber omitted by her may obtain the book.

New York Times [unsigned]
1877: January 13

Shades of the venerable Mr. Day, of the instructive Mrs. Barbauld, of the persuasive Miss Edgeworth! Had you the power of sitting today beside the reviewer's desk, and were called upon to pass judgment on the books written and printed for the boys and girls of today, would you not have groaned and moaned over their perusal? If such superlatively good children as Harry and Lucy could have existed, or even such nondescript prigs as Sandford and Merton had abnormal being, this other question presents itself to our mind: "How would these precious children have enjoyed Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer"? In all books written for the amusement of children there are two distinct phases of appreciation. What the parent thinks of the book is one thing; what the child thinks of it is another. It is fortunate when both parent and child agree in their conclusions. Such double appreciation may, in most instances, simply be one in regard to the fitness of the book on the part of the parent. A course of reading entirely devoted to juvenile works must be to an adult a tax on time and patience. It is only once in many years that such a charming book as Little Alice in Wonderland is produced, which old and young could read with thorough enjoyment. If, thirty years ago, Tom Sawyer had been placed in a careful father's hands to read, the probabilities would have been that he would have hesitated before giving the book to his boy -- not that Mr. Clemens' book is exceptional in character, or differs in the least, save in its cleverness, from a host of similar books on like topics which are universally read by children today. It is the judgment of the book-givers which has undoubtedly undergone a change, while youthful minds, being free from warp, twist, or dogma, have remained ever the same.

Returning then to these purely intellectual monstrosities, mostly the pen-and-ink offspring of authors and authoresses who never had any real flesh and blood creations of their own, there can be no doubt that had Sandford or Merton ever for a single moment dipped inside of Tom Sawyer's pages, astronomy and physics, with all the musty old farrago of Greek and Latin history, would have been thrown to the dogs. Despite tasseled caps, starched collars, and all the proprieties, these children would have laughed uproariously over Tom Sawyer's "cat and the pain-killer," and certain new ideas might have had birth in their brains. Perhaps had these children actually lived in our times, Sandford might have been a Western steam-boat captain, or Merton a fillibuster. Tom Sawyer is likely to inculcate the idea that there are certain lofty aspirations which Plutarch never ascribed to his more prosaic heroes. Books for children in former bygone periods were mostly constructed in one monotonous key. A child was supposed to be a vessel which was to be constantly filled up. Facts and morals had to be taken like bitter draughts or acrid pills. In order that they should be absorbed like medicines it was perhaps a kindly thinker who disguised these facts and morals. The real education swallowed in those doses by the children we are inclined to think was in small proportion to the quantity administered. Was it not good old Peter Parley who in this country first broke loose from conventional trammels, and made American children truly happy? We have certainly gone far beyond Mr. Goodrich's manner. There has come an amount of ugly realism into children's story-books, the advantages of which we are very much in doubt about.

Now, it is perfectly true that many boys do not adopt drawing-room manners. Perhaps it is better that little paragons -- pocket Crichtons -- are so rare. Still, courage, frankness, truthfulness, and self-reliance are to be inculcated in our lads. Since association is everything, it is not desirable that in real life we should familiarize our children with those of their age who are lawless or dare-devils. Granting that the natural is the true, and the true is the best, and that we may describe things as they are for adult readers, it is proper that we should discriminate a great deal more as to the choice of subjects in books intended for children. Today a majority of the heroes in such books have longings to be pirates, want to run away with vessels, and millions of our American boys read and delight in such stories. ln olden times the Pirate's Own Book with its death's-head and crossbones on the back had no concealment about it. It is true, edition after edition was sold. There it was. You saw it palpably. There was no disguise about it. If a father or mother objected to their child's reading the Pirate's Own Book, a pair of tongs and a convenient fireplace ended the whole matter. Today the trouble is: that there is a decidedly sanguinary tendency in juvenile books. No matter how innocent, quiet, or tame may be the title of a child's book, there is no guarantee that the volume your curlyhcaded little boy may be devouring may not contain a series of adventures recalling Capt. Kidd's horrors. In the short preface of Tom Sawyer Mr. Clemens writes, "Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account." We have before expressed the idea that a truly clever child's book is one in which both the man and the boy can find pleasure. No child's book can be perfectly acceptable otherwise. Is Tom Sawyer amusing? It is incomparably so. It is the story of a Western boy, born and bred on the banks of one of the big rivers, and there is exactly that wild village life which has schooled many a man to self-reliance and energy. Mr. Clemens has a remarkable memory for those peculiarities of American boy-talk which the grown man may have forgotten, but which return to him not unpleasantly when once the proper key is sounded. There is one scene of a quarrel, with a dialogue, between Tom and a city boy which is perfect of its kind. Certain chapters in Tom's life, where his love for the schoolgirls is told, make us believe that for an urchin who had just lost his milk-teeth the affections out West have an awakening even earlier than in Oriental climes. In fact, Tom is a preternaturally precocious urchin. One admirable character in the book, and touched with the hand of a master, is that of Huckleberry Finn. Thcre is a reality about this boy which is striking. An honest old aunt, who adores her scapegrace nephew, is a homely picture worked with exceeding grace. Mr. Clemens must have had just such a lovable old aunt. An ugly murder in the book, overminutely described and too fully illustrated, which Tom and Huck see, of course, in a graveyard, leads, somehow or other, to the discovery of a cave, in which treasures are concealed, and to which Tom and Huck fall heirs. There is no cant about Mr. Clemens. A description of a Sunday-school in Tom Sawyer is true to the letter. Matters are not told as they are fancied to be, but as they actually are.

If Mr. Clemens has been wanting in continuity in his longer sketches, and that sustained inventive power necessary in dovetailing incidents, Tom, as a story, though slightly disjointed, has this defect less apparent. As a humorist, Mr. Clemens has a great deal of fun in him, of the true American kind, which crops out all over thc book. Mr. Clemens has an audience both here and in England, and doubtless his friends across the water will re-echo "the hearty laughs which the reading of Tom Sawyer will cause on this side of the world." We are rather inclined to treat books intended for boys and girls, written by men of accredited talent and reputation, in a serious manner. Early impressions are the lasting ones. It is exactly such a clever book as Tom Sawyer which is sure to leave its stamp on younger minds. We like, then, the true boyish fun of Tom and Huck, and have a foible for the mischief these children engage in. We have not the least objection that rough boys be the heroes of a story-book. Restless spirits of energy only require judicious training in order to bring them into proper use. In the books to be placed into children's hands for purposes of recreation, we have a preference for those of a milder type than Tom Sawyer. Excitements derived from reading should be administered with a certain degree of circumspection. A sprinkling of salt in mental food is both natural and wholesome; any cravings for the contents of the castors, the cayenne and the mustard, by children, should not be gratified. With less, then, of Injun Joe and "revenge," and "slitting women's ears," and the shadow of the gallows, which throws an unnecessarily sinister tinge over the story, (if the book really is intended for boys and girls) we should have liked Tom Sawyer better.

Six hundred and fifty pages of open and declared fun -- very strongly accented with wood-cuts at that -- might go far toward frightening the fastidious reader. But the Hartford publishers, we imagine, do not print for the fastidious reader, nor do traveling book agents sell much to that rarely occurring man, who prefers to find books rather than let them find him. So that, unless he has already made "Mark Twain's" acquaintance through the press, he will not probably meet him until, belated in the rural districts, he takes from the parlor table of a country farm-house an illustrated Bible, Greeley's American Conflict, Mr. Parton's apocryphal Biographies, successively and listlessly, and so comes at last upon "Mark Twain's" Innocents like a joyous revelation -- an Indian spring in an alkaline literary desert. For the book has that intrinsic worth of bigness and durability which commends itself to the rural economist, who likes to get a material return for his money. It is about the size of The Family Physician, for which it will doubtless be often mistaken -- with great advantage to the patient. The entire six hundred and fifty pages are devoted to an account of the "steamship Quaker City's excursion to Europe and the Holy Land," with a description of certain famous localities of which a great many six hundred and fifty pages have been, at various times, written by various tourists. Yet there is hardly a line of Mr. Clemens' account that is not readable; and none the less, ccrtainly, from the fact that he pokes fun at other tourists, and that the reader becomes dimly conscious that Mr. Clemens' fellow-passengers would have probably estopped this gentle satirist from going with them could they have forecast his book. The very title -- The Innocents Abroad -- is a suggestive hint of the lawlessness and audacity in which the trip is treated. We shall not stop to question the propriety of this feature: it is only just to Mr. Clemens to say, that the best satirists have generally found their quarry in thc circle in which they moved, and among their best friends; but we contend that if he has, by this act, choked off and prevented the enthusiastic chronicling of the voyage by any of his fellow-passengers, who may have been sentimentally inclined, he is entitled to the consideration of a suffering world; and it shall stand in extenuation of some mannerism that is only slang, some skepticism that lacks the cultivation which only makes skepticism tolerable, and some sentiment that is only rhetoric. And so, with an irreverence for his fellow-pilgrims which was equaled only by his scorn for what they admired, this hilarious image-breaker started upon his mission. The situation was felicitous, the conditions perfect for the indulgence of an humor that seems to have had very little moral or esthetic limitation. The whole affair was a huge practical joke, of which not the least amusing feature was the fact that "Mark Twain" had embarked in it. Before the Quaker City reached Fayal, the first stopping-place, he had worked himself into a grotesque rage at every thing and every body. In this mock assumption of a righteous indignation, lies, we think, the real power of the book, and the decided originality of Mr. Clemens' humor. It enables him to say his most deliberately funny things with all the haste and exaggeration of rage; it gives him an opportunity to invent such epithets as "animated outrage," and "spider-legged gorilla," and apply them, with no sense of personal responsibility on the part of reader or writer. And the rage is always ludicrously disproportionate to the cause. It is "Mr. Boythorn," without his politeness, or his cheerful intervals. For, when "Mark Twain" is not simulating indignation, he is really sentimental. He shows it in fine writing -- in really admirable rhetoric, vigorous and picturesque -- but too apt, at times, to suggest the lecturing attitude, or the reporter's flourish. Yet it is so much better than what one had any right to expect, and is such an agreeable relief to long passages of extravagant humor, that the reader is very apt to overlook the real fact, that it is often quite as extravagant. Yet, with all his independence, "Mark Twain" seems to have followed his guide and guidebooks with a simple, unconscious fidelity. He was quite content to see only that which every body else sees, even if he was not content to see it with the same eyes. His record contains no new facts or features of the countries visited. He has always his own criticism, his own comments, his own protests, but always concerning the same old facts. Either from lack of time or desire, he never stepped out of the tread-mill round of "sights." His remarks might have been penciled on the margins of Murray. This is undoubtedly a good way to correct the enthusiasm or misstatements of other tourists; but is, perhaps, hardly the best method of getting at the truth for one's self. As a conscientious, painstaking traveler, "Mark Twain," we fear, is not to be commended. But that his book would have been as amusing, if he had been, is a matter of doubt. Most of the criticism is just in spirit, although extravagant, and often too positive in style. But it should be remembered that the style itself is a professional exaggeration, and that the irascible pilgrim, "Mark Twain," is a very eccentric creation of Mr. Clemens'. We can, perhaps, no more fairly hold Mr. Clemens responsible for "Mark Twain's" irreverence than we could have held the late Mr. Charles F. Browne to account for "Artemus Ward's" meanness and humbuggery. There may be a question of taste in Mr. Clemens permitting such a man as "Mark Twain" to go to the Holy Land at all; but we contend that such a traveler would be more likely to report its external aspect truthfully than a man of larger reverence. And are there not Lamartines, Primes, and unnumbered sentimental and pious pilgrims to offset these losel skeptics -- or, as our author would say, such "animated outrages" -- as Ross Browne, Swift, "Mark Twain," et al.

To subject Mr. Clemens to any of those delicate tests by which we are supposed to detect the true humorist, might not be either fair or convincing. He has caught, with great appreciation and skill, that ungathered humor and extravagance which belong to pioneer communities -- which have been current in bar-rooms, on railways, and in stages -- and which sometimes get crudely into literature, as "a fellow out West says." A good deal of this is that picturesque Western talk which we call "slang," in default of a better term for inchoate epigram. His characters speak naturally, and in their own tongue. If he has not it that balance of pathos which we deem essential to complete humor, he has something very like it in that serious eloquence to which we have before alluded. Like all materialists, he is an honest hater of all cant -- except, of course, the cant of materialism -- which, it is presumed, is perfectly right and proper. To conclude: after a perusal of this volume, we see no reason for withholding the opinion we entertained before taking it up, that Mr. Clemens deserves to rank foremost among Western humorists; and, in California, above his only rival, "John Phoenix," whose fun, though more cultivated and spontaneous, lacked the sincere purpose and larger intent of "Mark Twain's."

The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrim's Progress, is the title of Mark Twain's latest appearance between covers. The book is a ponderous one, containing over 650 pages, splendidly illustrated, and produced in the best style of art by the American Publishing Company, of Hartford. No ordinary "notice" can do justice to this work. In the language of many others, "it must be seen (and read) to be appreciated." It is a curious account of the famous Quaker City pleasure trip to the Mediterranean and the Holy Land, which was conceived by and executed under command of Captain Duncan, in the summer of 1867. There were many intelligent sight-seers among "the innocents"; but few, we are inclined to believe, who got as much out of the trip as did the author of this book. Mark Twain is a born journalist, besides being at the present time first among American humorists. It is, indeed, doubtful if he has ever had an equal; he certainly has not had in his line -- that of dry, self-contained, unobtrusive and pervading fun. There is no glare in his emanations -- no blinding coruscations of wit, which, flashing suddenly upon you, as suddenly go out, leaving you in darkness and uncertainty; no apparent striving after sharp effects; no digging in poor soil for poorer puns. What is said is most naturally said, and if there is humor in it, it is because the writer could not express it otherwise. Whatever may be the quality of the wine which fills your glass, you never feel that it is being drawn from an empty cask, or that its flavor is at all dependent upon the abundance of its supply. When Mr. Beecher was reprimanded for saying so many funny things in the pulpit, he replied, "Oh, but if you only knew the number of funny things I do not say!" And this is the impression left upon the reader of Mark Twain. Whatever good things he may choose to fasten with his pen, one cannot but feel that his best things are yet untold. There is one species of poor wit that Mark has not yet found it necessary to attempt, and we trust he never will, and that is poor orthography and worse grammar. It is not to be denied that a telling point may sometimes be made by a violent assault upon the barriers of "good English." Artemus Ward achieved some glory in this field; and his literary successor, Josh Billings, sometimes unearths a nugget; but the game thus far has not been worth the candle, and we doubt if it ever will be. At all events, Mark Twain has no such weak necessity, and we are glad of it. Some portions of the book are devoted to correct, unexaggerated descriptions of the country, and matters requiring historical accuracy; but there is no pretence, other than of a humorous and extravagant account of a memorable voyage. There will be those who will see in the descriptions of the Holy Land a conspicuous lack of reverence for sacred associations, and the contrast between this and ordinary guide-books will not need to be pointed out; but the artistic and effectual disposal of the romantic tales of tourists, which have enveloped these scenes with a mysterious beauty and awe not to be penetrated or approached, will be at least satisfactory to the matter-of-fact reader.

Here is his quiet style of getting down from a high state of mental exhilaration to every-day considerations:

The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, T. S. Perry
1885: May

MARK TWAIN'S "Tom Sawyer" is an interesting record of boyish adventure; but, amusing as it is, it may yet be fair to ask whether its most marked fault is not too strong adherence to conventional literary models? A glance at the book certainly does not confirm this opinion, but those who recall the precocious affection of Tom Sawyer, at the age when he is losing his first teeth, for a little girl whom he has seen once or twice, will confess that the modern novel exercises a very great influence. What is best in the book, what one remembers, is the light we get into the boy's heart. The romantic devotion to the little girl, the terrible adventures with murderers and in huge caves, have the air of concessions to jaded readers. But when Tom gives the cat Pain-Killer, is restless in church, and is recklessly and eternally deceiving his aunt, we are on firm ground--the author is doing sincere work. This later book, "Huckleberry Finn," has the great advantage of being written in autobiographical form. This secures a unity in the narration that is most valuable; every scene is given, not described; and the result is a vivid picture of Western life forty or fifty years ago. While "Tom Sawyer" is scarcely more than an apparently fortuitous collection of incidents, and its thread is one that has to do with murders, this story has a more intelligible plot. Huckleberry, its immortal hero, runs away from his worthless father, and floats down the Mississippi on a raft, in company with Jim, a runaway negro. This plot gives great opportunity for varying incidents. The travelers spend some time on an island; they outwit every one they meet; they acquire full knowledge of the hideous fringe of civilization that then adorned that valley; and the book is a most valuable record of an important part of our motley American civilization. What makes it valuable is the evident truthfulness of the narrative, and where this is lacking and its place is taken by ingenious invention, the book suffers. What is inimitable, however, is the reflection of the whole varied series of adventures in the mind of the young scapegrace of a hero. His undying fertility of invention, his courage, his manliness in every trial, are an incarnation of the better side of the ruffianism that is one result of the independence of Americans, just as hypocrisy is one result of the English respect for civilization. The total absence of morbidness in the book--for the mal du siecle has not yet reached Arkansas--gives it a genuine charm; and it is interesting to notice the art with which this is brought out. The best instance is perhaps to be found in the account of the feud between the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords, which is described only as it would appear to a semi-civilized boy of fourteen, without the slightest condemnation or surprise,--either of which would be bad art,--and yet nothing more vivid can be imagined. That is the way that a story is best told, by telling it, and letting it go to the reader unaccompanied by sign-posts or directions how he shall understand it and profit by it. Life teaches its lessons by implication, not by didactic preaching; and literature is at its best when it is an imitation of life and not an excuse for instruction. As to the humor of Mark Twain, it is scarcely necessary to speak. It lends vividness to every page. The little touch in "Tom Sawyer," page 105, where after the murder of which Tom was an eye-witness, it seemed "that his school-mates would never get done holding inquests on dead cats and thus keeping the trouble present to his mind," and that in the account of the spidery six-armed girl of Emmeline's picture in "Huckleberry Finn," are in the author's happiest vein. Another admirable instance is to be seen in Huckleberry Finn's mixed feelings about rescuing Jim, the negro, from slavery. His perverted views regarding the unholiness of his actions are most instructive and amusing. It is possible to feel, however, that the fun in the long account of Tom Sawyer's artificial imitation of escapes from prison is somewhat forced; everywhere simplicity is a good rule, and while the account of the Southern vendetta is a masterpiece, the caricature of books of adventure leaves us cold. In one we have a bit of life; in the other Mark Twain is demolishing something that has no place in the book. Yet the story is capital reading, and the reason of its great superiority to "Tom Sawyer" is that is it, for the most part, a consistent whole. If Mark Twain would follow his hero through manhood, he would condense a side of American life that, in a few years, will have to be delved out of newspapers, government reports, county histories, and misleading traditions by unsympathetic sociologists.

Athenaeum [unsigned]
1895: January 19

The best thing in Pudd'nhead Wilson, by Mark Twain (Chatto & Windus), is the picture of the negro slave Roxana, the cause of all the trouble which gives scope to Mr. Wilson's ingenious discovery about finger-marks. Her gusts of passion or of despair, her vanity, her motherly love, and the glimpses of nobler feelings that are occasionally seen in her elementary code of morals, make her very human, and create a sympathy for her in spite of her unscrupulous actions. But hers is the only character that is really striking. Her son is a poor creature, as he is meant to be, but he does not arrest the reader with the same unmistakable reality: his actions are what might be expected, but his conversations, especially with Wilson and the Twins, seem artificial and forced. Wilson, the nominal hero, appears to most advantage in the extracts from his calendar which head the chapters, but as a personage he is rather too shadowy for a hero. And what has to be said about the book must be chiefly about the individuals in it, for the story in itself is not much credit to Mark Twain's skill as a novelist. The idea of the change of babies is happy, and the final trial scene is a good piece of effect; but the story at times rambles on in an almost incomprehensible way. Why drag in, for example, all the business about the election, which is quite irrelevant? and the Twins altogether seem to have very little raison d'etre in the book. Of course there are some funny things in the story, it would not be by Mark Twain if there were not, but the humour of the preface might very well be spared; it is in bad taste. Still, if the preface be skipped the book well repays reading just for the really excellent picture of Roxana.

The Bookman [unsigned]
1895: January 7

Every scientific experiment or discovery of direct human import is soon followed by fiction of which it forms the basis. That the finger-print method of identification has not sooner provided the matter of a tale is surprising. Mark Twain uses it here ingeniously. "Pudd'nhead" is another name for fool; it is applied hastily to Mr. David Wilson, a lawyer and surveyor, who in his leisure hours amuses himself with making "records" of the finger tips of his acquaintances. In the case of two children born on the same day, and bearing a strong resemblance to each other, one a child of consequence, the other the child of a slave girl, he made continuous records. Then one of them, the wrong one of course, was sold with the slave mother. The reader can develop the story from that point, or if not, Mark Twain will do it for him. As the mistake lasts for twenty-three hard years, in spite of Pudd'nhead Wilson's cleverness, the end is prevented from being a very cheerful one.

Cosmopolitan [H.H. Boyesen]
1895: January 18

Let me add, for the sake of a transition, that Mark Twain, whose "Puddin'-Head Wilson" I have just finished, is even more unique among humorists. Here we have a novel of the ante-bellum days in Missouri, rather melodramatic in plot, and full of the liveliest kind of action. If anybody but Mark Twain had undertaken to tell that kind of story, with exchanges of infants in the cradle, a hero with negro taint in his blood substituted for the legitimate white heir, midnight encounters in a haunted house between the false heir and his colored mother, murder by the villain of his supposed uncle and benefactor, accusation of an innocent foreigner, and final sensational acquittal and general unraveling of the tangled skein -- if, I say, anybody else had had the hardihood to utilize afresh this venerable stage machinery of fiction, we should have been tempted to class his work with such cheap stuff as that of Wilkie Collins, Hugh Conway, and the dime novelists. But Mark Twain, somehow, has lifted it all into the region of literature. In the first place, the alleged extracts from Puddin'-Head Wilson's calendar are inimitably droll and witty. Take, for instance, this:

"There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect; he is the choicest spirit among the humbler animals; yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented, when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt."

Then again, the Missouri village in which the scene is laid, is so vividly realized in its minutest details; and the people, in all their fatuous prejudice and stolidity, are so credible and authentic, so steeped in the local atmosphere, that the illusion becomes perfect, and we swallow the melodrama without a qualm, -- exchange of heirs, haunted house, murder, and all, -- and scarcely dream that we have been duped, until we wake up with a start at the end of the last chapter. "Tell the truth, or trump, -- but take the trick," is one of Puddin'-Head Wilson's maxims; and the author, to make assurance doubly sure, has done both. He evidently has an ample fund of experience to draw upon; and he possesses, also, that high imaginative faculty which does not consist in crude invention, but in shaping remembered truth into logical and artistic coherence. His people stand squarely upon their feet, not because he has so constructed them, but because he has known their type and been familiar with their looks, speech, and habits. How deliciously rich, racy, and copious is, for instance, his negro talk. The very gurgling laugh and cooing cadence seem, somehow, implied in the text; and the fancy instinctively adds the vivid miens and gestures. Since Mark Twain wrote his "Tom Sawyer" and "Roughing It," he has published no book comparable in interest to "Puddin'-Head Wilson."

-- Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

Critic [unsigned]
1895: May 11

The literary critic is often puzzled how to classify the intellectual phenomena that come within his ken. His business is of course primarily with literature. A work may be infinitely amusing, it may abound even with flashes and touches of genius, and yet the form in which it comes into the world may be so crude, so coarse, so erring from the ways of true classicism, so offensive to immemorial canons of taste, that the critic, in spite of his enjoyment and wonder, puts it reluctantly down in the category of unclassifiable literary things only to take it up and enjoy it again!

Of such is Pudd'nhead Wilson, and, for that matter, Mark Twain in general. The author is a signal example of sheer genius, without training or culture in the university sense, setting forth to conquer the world with laughter whether it will or no, and to get himself thereby acknowledged to be the typical writer of the West. He is the most successful of a class of American humorists whose impulse to write off their rush of animal spirits is irresistible, and who snatch at the first pen within reach as the conductor of their animal electricity. If we look at other national humorists, like Aristophanes, Cervantes, Moliere or Swift, we find their humor expressed in an exquisite literary form, in which a certain polish tempers the extravagance, and annoying metrical (or it may be imaginative) difficulties have been overcome. What wonderful bird-rhythms and wasp melodies and cloud-architecture, so to speak, emerge from the marvellous choral interludes of the Greek comedian; what suave literary graces enclose the gaunt outlines of Don Quixote; in what honeyed verse are Alceste and Tartuffe entangled, and what new, nervous, powerful prose describes the adventures of Gulliver! When we turn our eyes westward we encounter Judge Haliburton, Hosea Biglow, Uncle Remus, Mark Twain -- an absolutely new genre distinct from what we had previously studied in the line of originalities. The one accomplished artist among these is Lowell, whose university traditions were very strong and controlled his bubbling humor. The others are pure "naturalists" -- men of instinctive genius, who have relied on their own conscious strength to produce delight in the reader, irrespective of classicity of form, literary grace or any other of the beloved conventions on which literature as literature has hitherto depended. This is true in a less degree of Uncle Rcmus than of Judge Haliburton and Mark Twain.

Pudd'nhead Wilson is no exception to the rule. It is a Missouri tale of changelings "befo' the wah," admirable in atmosphere, local color and dialect, a drama in its way, full of powerful situations, thrilling even; but it cannot be called in any sense literature. In it Mark Twain's brightness and grotesqueness and funniness revel and sparkle, and in the absurd extravaganza, "Those Extraordinary Twins," all these comicalities reach the buffoon point; one is amused and laughs unrestrainedly but then the irksome question comes up: What is this? is it literature? is Mr. Clemens a "writer" at all? must he not after all be described as an admirable after-dinner storyteller -- humorous, imaginative, dramatic, like Dickens -- who in an evil moment, urged by admiring friends, has put pen to paper and written down his stories? Adapted to the stage and played by Frank Mayo, the thing has met with immediate success.

Idler [unsigned]
1894: August

[This review seems to be based on the story's serial publication in The Century, where it had just finished appearing in June. The novel was not published until November.]

Puddenhead Wilson, Mark Twain's latest story, is the work of a novelist, rather than of a "funny man." There is plenty of humour in it of the genuine Mark Twain brand, but it is as a carefully painted picture of life in a Mississippi town in the days of slavery that its chief merit lies. In point of construction it is much the best story that Mark Twain has written, and of men and women in the book at least four are undeniably creations, and not one of them is overdrawn or caricatured, as are some of the most popular of the author's lay figures. There is but one false note in the picture, and that is the introduction of the two alleged Italian noblemen. These two young men are as little like Italians as they are like Apaches. When challenged to fight a duel, one of them, having the choice of weapons, chooses revolvers instead of swords. This incident alone is sufficient to show how little Italian blood there is in Mark Twain's Italians. But this is a small blemish, and if Mark Twain, in his future novels, can maintain the proportion of only two lay figures to four living characters, he will do better than most novelists. The extracts from "Puddenhead Wilson's Almanac," which are prefixed to each chapter of the book, simply "pizon us for more," to use Huck Finn's forcible metaphor. Let us hope that a complete edition of that unrivalled almanac will be issued at no distant day.

New York Times [unsigned]
1895: January 27

They may see that "well-fed, well-petted, and properly-revered" cat stretched at full length on the window ledge, "asleep and blissful with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose." That was one of the sight's of Dawson's Landing. They may see the tinmonger's pole standing on one of the chief corners of the village, "wreathed from top to bottom with tin pots and pans and cups," giving noisy notice to the world, when the wind blew, that the tinmonger was close at hand ready for business. They may look upon Wilson when, as he entered the village intent upon establishing himself in the law business, he made the remark that ruined him for the time being. "I wish I owned half that dog," said Wilson. "Why?" somebody asked. "Because," answered Wilson, "I'd kill my half." The villagers decided promptly that a man who did not know that to kill half a dog would be death to the entire animal was without that important requisite for a lawyer, a legal mind.

So all through the story the illustrator accompanies the text. He shows the village firemen drowning the old market house with water pumped through the little hand engine; he shows Wilson, when he had come to be somebody, addressing a mass meeting, a flag flying over him bearing the announcement that he is conducting a campaign for the Mayoralty, and in one of his best pictures he illustrates the text, "A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them before long; but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them and remains so through thick and thin."

But it is in "Those Extraordinary Twins," which is the second part of the volume, that the artist has done his cleverest work. This undoubtedly is because the story is the funnier of the two. There is an almost infinite amount of suggestion for an artist of the humorous vein in the story of the two-headed man whom Twain persists in regarding as really two men -- making one man sick while the other is well; making one fight a duel while the other protests against the performance; baptizing the good one while the other sputters curses; hanging the bad one while the other looks indignant, though he finally does consent to join in the kicking.

Cincinnati Commercial Gazette [unsigned]
1895: 3 February

Mark Twain's New Book In starting out to set down the adventures and observations of "Pudd'nhead Wilson," Mark Twain had in mind the production of a short story, but "Pudd'nhead Wilson" refused to confine himself to the limits of a magazine sketch, and now he has become a large book, a part of which is a spirited farce called Those Extraordinary Twins. "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is one of the wittiest and most original characters Twain has produced. There was not in him the capacity to be grave, despite the solemnity of some of the positions in which he found himself. This curious volume is as full of the characteristic humor of Twain as is the best of his work. In this book he seems to have recovered much of his old-time spirit--spirit that has been conscpicous by its absence in a great deal of Twain's work printed during the past ten years. The artist that illustrates this work has a very keen sense of humor; indeed, his appreciation of the author's humor is greater than his skill as a draughtsman. The outline drawings are often crude, but there is humor in every line of them.

Springfield (Mass.) Republican [unsigned]
1895: 3 February

About Pudd'nhead Wilson Mark Twain gives in his new edition of Pudd'nhead Wilson, now reprinted in book form, a full explanation of a feature which must have puzzled many of the readers of the remarkable story which appeared in the Century last year. The feature referred to is the appearance of the extraordinary Italian twins, Luigi and Angelo, who seemed so absurdly out of place in the story. The mystery of their presence is now made clear by the publication in the same volume of a farce, Those Extraordinary Twins, which originally formed part of Pudd'nhead Wilson, but was excised for lack of congruity. The author gives us an interesting glimpse into his workshop and lets us see that his ideas grow in precisely the erratic manner that we should expect. The reader has been told many a time, says Mr. Clemens, how the born-and-trained novelist works; "won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him how the jack-leg does it?" "He goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale; a very little tale; a six-page tale. But as it is a tale he is not acquainted with and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this because it has happened to me so many times." But the reader will hardly be prepared for the discovery that the kernel, the starting point of Pudd'nhead Wilson was these same twins, or more properly a twin, for in the original form they were a freak of the Barnum variety with two heads and four arms but only one body and one pair of legs. One was fair complexioned, timid, very good and a total abstainer; the other dark, bold, wicked, or at least approaching that state, and given to drinking and smoking which did not affect him but made his unfortunate fellow-tenant very sick. The consequences of having Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tenants of the same body at the same time were of course distressing indeed, and each led the other a life of it during the week in which he had control of the trunk and legs. While Luigi was fighting a duel Angelo nearly died of terror, and as the week expired between shots and he came into control of the body he precipitately ran away from the field of honor, thereby sadly injuring his brother's reputation, and he squared up the matter of the duel by being baptized on a bitterly cold day, to Luigi's intense disgust. Of course with such a motif, the story started out as pure farce, but as the author says, other people kept intruding themselves into the story. Among these came a stranger named Pudd'nhead Wilson, a woman named Roxana; "and presently the doings of these two pushed up into the prominence of a young fellow named Tim Driscoll, whose proper place was away in the obscure background. Before the book was half finished, those three were taking things almost entirely into their own hands and working the whole tale as a private venture of their own." The story now began to take on a tragic complexion, and the grotesque farce of the freak twins was out of place, but the author carried the manuscript back and forth across the ocean twice before he discovered what the matter was, that he was trying to make one story out of what was properly two. Then by degrees he began to cut out the farcical parts, and what humor was left in the serious story was that of Pudd'nhead and his calendar, while the twins took a minor part. Now their history is given in the original form, which is by no means complete, but serves to give a good notion of what the author had in mind. It is of no great consequence, but is a fair specimen of the grotesque drolleries with which Mark Twain used to regale his readers in his earlier days. As for Pudd'nhead Wilson itself, it is not necessary to speak at length, for it has attracted much attention as any of last year's serials except Trilby. It is a vivid picture of the South of slavery days, and is full of the quaint paradoxes which we always look for in Mark Twain's work. The famous calendar itself is full of aphorisms worthy of George Meredith, though cast in the American vernacular. Not all of them are worthy of Pudd'nhead, but such remarks as, "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education"; "Let us endeavor to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry"; "Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved"; "When angry, count four; when very angry, swear"; "When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people I know who have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life."--these are in the familiar whimsical vein of humor and keen wit intermingled which have delighted so many hundreds of thousands of readers.

(Washington, D.C.) Public Opinion
[unsigned]
1895: 14 February

Mark Twain is an apostle of the unconventional, and he tells uncommon stories in uncommon ways. Being free from reverence for anything merely because it is customary, and being blessed with a fancy which knows no bounds, his readers are sure of meeting improbable situations, treated with a gravity beyond their deserts. It is one of the unexplained facts in the history of American literature that he has had no imitators. Possibly it is because his audacious extravagance has become so marked a characteristic that mimicry would be obvious at sight. Of late years his writings have shown a moral or social aim which, while it is sometimes overwrought and made to bear undue burden, is always of healthy tone. In Pudd'nhead Wilson if we reflect upon the career--but lightly sketched--of the rightful heir, it seems to teach the greater force of education and habit than blood or heredity; certainly his pure white blood never taught him to feel his superiority over his surroundings. But the more minutely detailed behavior of his substitute appears to lead to the belief that antecedents and the inherited moral weakness of the slave were too much for training and environment. Perhaps the author would have smiled in his cynical way had he supposed that any attempt would be made at deductions of this nature, when his object, primarily at least, was to entertain. In this object, at least, he never fails, and while the story differs materially from the manner of his early works, it is as full as ever of his quips and shrewd jests on the weaknesses of human nature. One of the most characteristically funny features is the absurd explanation in which he takes his reader into his confidence by explaining how this story got away from him and left some of his people stranded, so that he had to retrace his steps and drown them at different times in the same well. This proving unsatisfactory because it was not a large well and would not hold any more, and recognizing the fact that he had got two stories entangled, he gravely "cures the defect" by pulling out the the farce and leaving the tragedy. What he calls the tragedy is much the best piece of work--in many respects he has written nothing better--but the appended story or farce is extravaganza run mad without sufficient base. It would have been more amusing if it had been shorter, but Pudd'nhead Wilson is good and the irony of the calendar is delicious. In these days of authors' block calendars, Pudd'nhead's sayings will well bear amplification for 1896. The illustrations are remarkably abundant, being in the form of marginal sketches on every page, and are in the main very satisfactory.

Hartford Times [unsigned]
1895: 18 February

Mark Twain's serial magazine story of Missouri life in a river town, in slavery days "befo'de wah," is now issued in handsome book form by the American Publishing Company of this city, who have once more the right to bring out Mr. Clemens's works. Reading any story in serial form, in a monthly magazine, is a very unsatisfactory way of getting hold of it; and this appearance of Mr. Clemens's latest work in a new volume ought to secure it for many new readers. The marginal vignette pictures, on every page, add nothing to the value or interest of the book, and might as well have been omitted; but the story itself is one of the queerest. One can well believe the author's statement, in Those Extraordinary Twins, the roaring comedy which follows what he considers the tragedy of the longer story, that he lost control, both of the characters and the "plot," in Pudd'nhead Wilson, and made of it a mixed mess very different from his intention at the start. It would be "easy work" to criticise some of the features of the main story, but who ever feels like criticising Mark Twain? Pudd'nhead Wilson is not the most prominent character in the book; that place is usurped by the worthless Tom Driscoll, whose one-thirty-second part of "nigger" blood proves, in spite of his octoroon mother's strong character, his bane and his downfall. The practice of Pudd'nhead, in getting everybody, from babies to old people, to imprint the story told in an impression made by the differing lines produced by the ball of the finger on slightly greased glass, and religiously saving every strip of glass thus marked, proves to be the key to the turning point of the story; but it is an improbable practice, for anybody. However, one can't criticise "Mark"--and moreover his own experience of the possibilities of palmistry lends a peculiar interest to this peculiar application of the alleged principle to the purposes of this queer story. As to Angelo and Luigi, the Italian twins and noblemen--well, their appearance as twins of the Siamese sort, in the comedy, is quite as inherently probable as it is in the other way as such a place as Dawson's Landing. But probability, inherent or extraneous, is as soon to be looked in Mark Twain's stories as in the Arabian Nights. The comedy, an appendix to the story, is here published for the first time; and the author introduces it in a frank and funny revelation of the way in which Pudd'nhead came to be written--or to write itself. He even explains how he came to introduce quotations from Pudd'nhead's "Calendar." As some of them are queer and funny, we quote a sample or two, beginning with the funniest:

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. It is not the best that we should all think alike; it is the difference of opinion that makes horse races. Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved. When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know to have gone to a better world I am moved to lead a different life. Nothing needs so reforming as other people's habits. If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. Thanksgiving Day. Let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji. Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault after all and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil sharpened by any woman. If you have witnesses you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth. April 1. This is the day upon which we are all reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humble animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt. Consider well the proportion of things. It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise. Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they escaped teething.

(Boston) Congregationalist [unsigned]
1895: 21 February

Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins which he is pleased to term a tragedy and a comedy respectively are published together with lavish marginal illustrations. These pictures are the most praiseworthy feature of the volume, although they vary considerably. The author was not at his best when he wrote these stories. They are funny, and now and then very funny. But a coarse streak comes to the surface every little while and is disagreeable. The book is handsomely gotten up by the publishers and does them credit, but we cannot commend the stories which compose it to our readers very heartily.

The American Monthly Review of Reviews [unsigned]
1894: January

Saturday Review [unsigned]
1894: December 29

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.

Southern Magazine [by Martha McCulloch Williams]
1894: February

A better title, perhaps, would be "The Decline and Fall of Mark Twain;" for, looking at it solely as a piece of literature, there is no denying, that his much-advertised serial is tremendously stupid. If it were nothing more, the reading, even the critical, world could afford to receive it in the charity of silence, remembering the merry heart it has had these twenty years past whenever it pleased Mr. Clemens to amuse it.

"Pudd'nhead Wilson" is more than stupid. So far as it has appeared -- to the end of the second installment, that is -- it is at once malicious and misleading. So much so, indeed, that involuntarily one recalls the gentleman who, it was said, "went to his memory for his wit, and his imagination for his facts."

It certainly seems to me that Mr. Clemens must have imagined all the local color of his tale. It has to do with Dawson's Landing, a small Missouri town on the Mississippi, populated largely with F. F. V.'s, all of whom are slave-holders, as are the rest of the inhabitants. Right here I wish to ask why it is that the Southern man who has an honest and decent pride in the fact that he comes of good stock fares so ill at the hands of certain literary gentlemen? Bret Harte gives us Colonel Starbottle as his type. Mr. Cable has won fame and fortune and the heart of the whole North by demonstrating to its entire satisfaction how heartlessly and continually all his well-born gentlemen overstep the color line. Last of all, Mark Twain has set himself the task of showing how impossible it is for a man to have a great-grandfather and, at the same time, any regard for the Decalogue.

Perhaps the gentlemen are bent on gleaning the full harvest of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Perhaps, too, they are wise in so doing. In my seven years North, I have more than once been asked by people who regarded themselves as very well informed "if there were still in the South any pure blacks at all, or any pure-blooded whites?" At first such questioning made me angry. Later, I have come to recognize it as the legitimate outcome of the deliverances of Mr. Cable and his school. Now that Mark Twain has come under their banner, the impression will doubtless become more than ever current. For he has -- and has deserved -- the widest public of any living American writer. And it is a melancholy fact that the sheep instinct of humanity is so strong as to make it follow en masse into any pasture of opinion where he may lead. A still more melancholy fact is the inability of many folk to judge a thing with eyes blinded by the glamour of a great reputation.

Otherwise, I think, some one would have risen ere this to protest against some of Mr. Clemens' gentle idiosyncrasies displayed in the first installment. For instance, the character of Pembroke Howard, introduced solely that the author might tell us that Howard, too, was an F. F. V., also that "he was popular with the people" -- and that the story has no sort of concern with him. A while later he is permitted to die. At least there is a line to that effect. What I want to know, and would like to ask Mr Clemens, is how a man can be "popular with the people," since popular means of, by, or with the people. It does assuredly seem to me pretty queer usage for a man who was so lately toasted and feted by the Lotos Club, as the leading exponent of literary art.

That is by no means a solitary gem of its kind. Careful reading shows the like upon almost every page. It is not too much to say, in fact, that there is slovenly construction in every other paragraph. But the manner is a trifling burden compared with the matter of it. First to last, the writer seemed to feel his burden of humor-with-malice-aforethought. He had chosen his place, his people. If the facts about them are not humorous, so much the worse for facts.

Witness the naming of the hero. He had come out of Western New York to practice law in the Missouri town. One day, hearing a dog bark, be indulges in the Joe-Millerism of wishing he owned half the dog so he might make an end of it. Thereupon the bystanders "fell away from him as something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him, One said; "'Pears to be a fool.'

"'Pears? ' said another. 'Is, I reckon. Said he wished he owned half the dog.'

"'The idiot,' said a third. ' What did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his half? Do you reckon he thought it would live ?'

"' In my opinion he ain't got any mind.'

" No. 3 said: 'Well, he's a lummox,, anyway.'

"'That's what he is,' said No. 4 'He's a labrick; just a Simon pure labrick: if ever there was one.'

"'Yes, sir, he's a damn fool, that's the way I put him up,' said No, 5. 'Any body can think different that wants to. but those are my sentiments '

"'I am with you gentlemen,' said No. 6. 'Perfect jackass -- yes, and it ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead. If he ain't a pudd'nhead, I ain't no judge, that's all.'

"Mr. Wilson stood elected. The incident was told all over town and gravely discussed by everybody. Within a week he had lost his first name. Pudd'nhead took its place."

This is humor, as the great editors understand it. To one a little bit conversant with the folk who are supposed to be humorous, it seems, contrariwise, something cheap and thin. Throughout the Southwest, for at least seventy five years, "I'd like to own that dog -- and kill my half " has been a cant saying so commonly current that it is laughed at only out of compliment to the user of it. The men who should now perpetrate it as original would perhaps be called something worse than a "pudd'nhead," but very certainly nobody -- not the most ignorant -- would find in it a suggestion of uncanniness. For the thing is so common and proverbial that little children make use of it, or rather of its implication. More than one small lad has told me, rejoicing, "Ma has stopped her half of me from going to school." And one shrewd young person within my knowledge bought half of a coveted dolly, then insisted on a property-right to play with it all the time.

So, too, of Mr. Clemens' young man who went away East to college, and came back with "Eastern polish," whatever that may be -- perhaps perfect fitting clothes and a habit of wearing gloves. His old friends overlooked the polish of the clothes, but could not forgive the glove habit, so he was left solitary. This is some more, doubtless, of Mr. Clemens' very peculiar humor. He ought, however, to have stated the fact in a foot note. He might have been at the same pains about the reception to the Brothers Capollo. His account of the honors thrust upon them is doubtless a sly revenge upon the misguided Southern communities, which have stretched out admiring hands to Mr. Clemens when he would rather they did not.

So much for the accidentals of the tale. To deal adequately with the story itself, either in motif or atmosphere, would require more time and space than I, at present, command. It is built around the exchange of two children, born the same day, to one father. One his wife's son; the other, his slave's. The wife dies; the slave mother, who has sixteen parts of white blood to one of black, has sole charge of both babies. After a while, her master (as is the custom of Virginia gentlemen in the hands of high literary persons),for some biding fault, sells all the other house servants, though as a mark of magnanimity he sells them at home instead of sending them down the river. The life-likeness of this part will be apparent to every ex slave owner, especially to such as remember how far beyond rubies was in those days the price of a thoroughly excellent servant. Setting wholly aside the human affection that often subsisted between white and black, few men were so foolish as to inconvenience themselves by entire change of menege, without the most imperative necessity for such a proceeding. All that is, however, beside the mark. This sale goes forward, and as a result, Roxy, the white slave, puts her son in his half brother's place to save him from the possibility of such a fate.

She also puts her creator -- Mark Twain -- in rather a hard dilemma. To his mind the only man worth either saving or damning in all the South country is the black man. The exigencies of fiction, however, make it necessary that the grave baby, who normally would grow up a pen feathered angel, shall, as his own young master, grow up a pretty respectable devil. Similarly, the white child must be, by the change of position, endowed with all the virtue and grace of the subject race. Anybody can see that it is hard lines for the writer, One can fancy him apologizing beforehand to the little negro for the violence he is compelled to do his character. He makes the plunge and the double transformation boldly. It is more than a little amusing, though, to one who knows experimentally the autocracy of a "black mammy," to read how Roxy, after the exchange, was surprised to see how steadily and surely the awe which had kept her tongue reverent, her manner humble towards her young master, was transferring itself to her speech and manner toward the usurper. Roxy must have been a mighty exceptional character if she did not spank her charges with natural and noble impartiality, whether they were white or black.

She had christened her own child "Valet de Chambre -- no surname. Slaves hadn't the privilege." That is some more news to us who owned them, and who keep lively memories of their pride in their surnames; and how tenaciously, after freedom came, they clung to the appellations whereunto they felt themselves born. In founding their families under the new conditions, it was often laughable to see the leaning to aristocracy. In more than one case within my own knowledge, negroes abandoned the names of the living masters, in favor of that of the master's grandfather from whom they were inherited and to whose family they leaned because of is greater distinction. Truly, if they had had no privilege of surnames, there must have been confusion worse confounded in the era '65.

Time and patience fell alike in bringing to book all such matters here set down. Suffice it to say that, first to last, the whole recital is unveracious. If it is meant for caricature, the result is the same as would come from exaggerating the ear, nose, and coat-tails of a Bowery tough, and labelling the picture "Ward McAllister." So far as I know, all that the South, either "Old" or "New," has ever done to Mr. Clemens has been to buy his books, when it had precious little money to buy anything, and to set him upon a pedestal as the very prince of humorists. Wherefore, I quite fail to comprehend why it pleases him to villify us as he is doing in this book.

Let me add that I am no bigot in behalf of mine own people. Some have foibles, faults galore, even sins of deepest dye. There are knaves and fools among them -- uncouth fellows not a few, So much I readily grant. I will go further and admit that there is that in the social constitution which, rightly handled, might give a humorist scope to add largely to the gaiety of nations. But take them by little and large, they are neither sordid nor stolid, nor lacking in the finer parts of humanity. All this Mr. Clemens makes them out to be. And because he is who he is, a large part of our common country will take his circus-posters for accurate photographs of life and people in the South. Solely for that reason, I make, here and now, my protest against this injustice. I can not comfort myself with the belief that he has sinned ignorantly against half his countrymen. His experience has been too wide, his intelligence is too keen, for that. He is, it seems to me, thus unveracious for revenue only. He has found out the sort of book that soils [sells?] best. It is not that which speaks the truth as it is, but as the reader wishes to believe it to be. Beside, it is only against a background so lurid as the one be he manufactured that the action of his story could possibly take place. As an occasional dabbler in fiction, I recognize the strength of that necessity. But I can not hold that it is sufficient to justify the falsification of all historic conditions. A long time ago, I read a speech of Mr. Clemens in which he said, at the outset, that he had chosen something he knew nothing whatever about so as to be quite unhampered by facts. To judge from "Pudd'nhead Wilson," he has contracted a habit of being unhampered by facts -- a habit which seems to grow stronger with age.

Martha McCulloch Williams

Spectator [unsigned]
1895: March 16

--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 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.

The Manchester Guardian
[unsigned]
1872: March 6

. . . These two works [Roughing It and Eggleston's Hoosier Schoolmaster] have been issued by Messrs. Routledge as part of a series of American Humorists. We have coupled them because they both depict, though in a very different style and manner, phases of American frontier life. The main portion of Roughing It is an account of the author's experiences among the silver miners in Nevada, and very rough both the experiences and the miners seem to have been, though of course a certain allowance must be made for exaggeration. The life and the people are much the same as those that form the subject of Bret Harte's tales; but whereas he has shown a poetical and imaginative spirit, has represented inner life and character, and shown how the tender flower of sentiment or emotion may be found to spring among the rude and unlovely surroundings of a diggers' camp, our author has contented himself with dwelling on the outside of things and simply describing manners and customs. The frenzied lust for gain and universal spirit of gambling that seizes on a population on the discovery of the existence of precious metals in their soil has before now been depicted in literature. Most people probably have read Mr. Charles Reade's description of the Australian goldfields in Never too Late to Mend, and, mutatis mutandis, it would hold equally good for California or the diamond miners of the Cape. There is little that is local about the picture, the phenomena exhibited are unfortunately common to all times and places. However, our author gives a lovely account of the vicissitudes and perils of a miner's life, and of the strange and weird scenery of the Nevada territory, and there is always a certain fascination in the record of experiences so remote from our own. Illustrating the credulity which always seems to be engendered by any form of gambling, whether it is rouge et noir, stock jobbing, or silver mining, he tells a story of a certain gold mine of fabulous wealth supposed to exist among the mountains. One man alone believed himself to possess the secret, which had been communicated to him by the original discoverer, and was always vainly endeavoring to find the locality. Just as he hunted for the mine, so the population hunted him, till he was compelled to go about in secret:--

Every now and then it would be reported that Mr. W. had passed stealthily through Esmeralda at dead of night, in disguise, and then we would have a wild excitement--because he must be steering for his secret mine, and now was the time to follow him. In less than three hours after daylight all the horses and mules and donkeys in the vicinity would be bought, hired or stolen, and half the community would be off for the mountains, following in the wake of Whiteman. But W. would drift about through the mountain gorges for days together, in a purposeless sort of way, until the provisions of the miners ran out, and they would have to go back home. A large part of Roughing It is devoted to the account of the journey by the already obsolete overland coach. And here our author treads on much the same ground as Artemus Ward in Among the Mormons, though his experiences were of a somewhat different character. He does not shine in comparison, as his humour, such as it is, is immeasurably inferior, though of the same school, depending on ludicrous exaggeration and quaint unexpectedness of comparison. Artemus amused us by his genuine fun and originality; but if there is one thing more than another that is spoilt by mannerism it is humour, and if the mannerism of an individual is offensive, the mannerism of a school is insufferable. Mark Twain, too, often falls into the slang of transatlantic journalism, and displays also its characteristic inability to distinguish between the picturesque and the grotesque.

The Atlantic, William Dean Howells
1872: June

We can fancy the reader of Mr. Clemens's book finding at the end of it (and its six hundred pages of fun are none too many) that, while he has been merely enjoying himself, as he supposes, he has been surreptitiously acquiring a better idea of the flush times in Nevada, and of the adventurous life generally of the recent West, than he could possibly have gotten elsewhere. The grotesque exaggeration and broad irony with which the life is described are conjecturably the truest colors that could have been used, for all existence there must have looked like an extravagant joke, the humor of which was only deepened by its nether-side of tragedy. The plan of the book is very simple indeed, for it is merely the personal history of Mr. Clemens during a certain number of years, in which he crossed the Plains in the overland stage to Carson City, to be private secretary to the Secretary of Nevada; took the silver-mining fever, and with a friend struck "a blind lead" worth millions; lost it by failing to comply with the mining laws; became local reporter to a Virginia City newspaper; went to San Francisco and suffered extreme poverty in the cause of abstract literature and elegant leisure; was sent to the Sandwich Islands as a newspaper correspondent; returned to California, and began lecturing and that career of humorist, which we should all be sorry to have ended. The "moral" which the author draws from the whole is: "If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are of 'no account,' go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you want to or not." A thousand anecdotes, relevant and irrelevant, embroider the work; excursions and digressions of all kinds are the very woof of it, as it were; everything far-fetched or near at hand is interwoven, and yet the complex is a sort of "harmony of colors" which is not less than triumphant. The stage-drivers and desperadoes of the Plains; the Mormons and their city; the capital of Nevada, and its government and people; the mines and miners; the social, speculative, and financial life of Virginia City; the climate and characteristics of San Fransisco; the amusing and startling traits of Sandwich Island civilization,--appear in kaleidoscopic succession. Probably an encyclopedia could not be constructed from the book; the work of a human being, it is not unbrokenly nor infallibly funny; nor is it to be always praised for all the literary virtues; but it is singularly entertaining, and its humor is always amiable, manly, and generous.

Overland Monthly
[unsigned]
1872: June

This is a goodly volume, of nearly six hundred pages; and if mirth is indeed one of the best of medicines, as we have somewhere read--we think in Hall's Journal of Health, an unimpeachable authority--Roughing It should have a place in every sick-room, and be the invalid's cherished companion. In taking Mr. Clemens' jokes, however, for hygenic purposes, it behooves the patient to exercise great caution in regard to the strength of the dose, if we may judge of the power of the medicine from its effects upon a hungry camel, which once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, made an experiment upon the author's overcoat as an article of diet. The overcoat was left lying upon the ground while the travelers were pitching their tents, and the camel, having contemplated it for a while with a critical eye, seemed to come to the conclusion that it must be a new edible. But we will let the author tell the story, in his own inimitable way:

He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life. Then he smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the other sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentment that it was plain to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thing about an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion caps and cough candy, and some fig-paste from Constantinople. And then my newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in that--manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was treading on dangerous ground, now. He began to come across solid wisdom in those documents that was rather weighty on his stomach; and occasionally he would take a joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth . . . However, it was not our author's jokes, powerful as were their effects, but one of his statements of facts--one of the mildest and gentlest, he declares, that he ever laid before a trusting public--that proved fatal to the sensitive animal, and caused him to "fall over as stiff as a carpenter's work-bench, and die a death of indescibable agony." This species of humor is certainly grotesque, and hardily extravagant. But it is also genuine, and thoroughly enjoyable. In the same vein, and finer still, is the sketch of the coyote, his appearance and characteristics, in which the writer has managed (as he often does) to convey an accurate and graphic picture, while apparently indulging--or rather rioting--in the drollest and most fantastic exaggeration. The episode of Mrs. Beazely and her son, or the Erikson and Greeley correspondence, which has been extensively reproduced in the newspapers, though based upon a well-worn theme, is set in such a quaint, half-pathetic frame-work of narrative as makes it quite fresh and ineffably comic. On almost every page of the volume this vein of broad, robust humor crops out. It is not fine and pensive, like Irving's. It is not artificial, or based upon any literary model, and does not depend for its effect upon elaboration or word-cobbling. Its specific character is its sturdy honesty and rugged sense, antagonistic to sentimentality and shams. The fun with which the volume overflows more copiously than any previous book of the author's, is not mere fun. It constantly does the work of satire, though in a spirit more genial than that of most satirists; and constantly evinces keen insight and shrewd observation. The preface contains a facetious apology for the cirumstance that the book embodies a good deal of information, especially concerning the rise, growth, and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada. The apology is scarcely needed, for though the twenty-odd chapters which deal with that remarkable episode do, in fact, contain a vast amount of information, it is served up in such a style that the reader absorbs it without effect, and becomes unconsciously instructed, while dreaming only of entertainment--as students at German universities said to become learned in metaphysics, not by much "poring over miserable books," but by loquacious discussions, in hours of recreation, over their lager and meerschaums. As Irving stands, without dispute, at the head of American classic humorists, so the precedence in the unclassical school must be conceded to Mark Twain. About him there is nothing classic, bookish, or conventional, any more than there is about a buffalo or a grizzly. His genius is characterized by the breadth, and ruggedness, and audacity of the West; and, wherever he was born, or wherever he may abide, the Great West claims him as her intellectual offspring. Artemus Ward, Doesticks, and Orpheus C. Kerr, who have been the favorite purveyors of mirth for the Eastern people, were timid navigators, who hugged the shore of plausibility, and would have trembled at the thought of launching out into the mid-ocean of wild, preposterous invention and sublime exaggeration, as Mark Twain does, in such episodes as Bemis' buffalo adventure, and "Riding the Avalanche," where, after picturing the unfortunate tourist as "riding into eternity on the back of a raging and tossing avalanche," he concludes with the remark, "This is all very well, but let us not be carried away by excitement, but ask calmly, how does this person feel about it in his cooler moments next day, with six or seven thousand feet of snow on the top of him?" It would be a great misapprehension, however, to conceive of Roughing It as merely a book of grotesque humor and rollicking fun. It abounds in fresh description of natural scenery, some of which, especially in the overland stage-ride, are remarkably graphic and vigorous. The writer's talent for clear, impressive narrative, too, is illustrated in the chapters devoted to the terrible story of the desperado, Slade, which has as intense an interest as any thing in the wildest sensational novel of the day. Of the three hundred wood-cuts that illustrate the volume we can say nothing complimentary, from an artistic point of view. But some of them are spirited, and many of them are suggestive. Crude as they are in design, and coarse in execution, they have afforded us much amusement; and the majority of readers would, we are sure, regret to dispense with them.

Utica Morning Herald and Gazette [unsigned]
1872: 23 February

Mark Twain is undoubtedly, at present, the most popular of American humorists. It does not necessarily follow that he is the greatest; for popularity is not yet a synonym for merit. In that good time coming, when every one shall be perfectly educated and capable of passing correct judgment on every book, and critics shall be superfluous, to form and accurate estimate of a writer's talents, it will be necessary only to compute the sale of his book. Until that literary millenium arrives, the critic must rely on his own judgment, in forming his estimates of authors. With this brief statement of our right, we make bold to express our dissent from the opinion of the great American public, regarding Mark Twain. He is not our favorite author. Nor is the fact that he holds such a place in the estimation of the public at all flattering to its intelligence and culture. It is not our intention, however, to attempt the correction of the public taste in a matter comparatively trivial. The taste that prefers the drolleries of Mark Twain to the essays of LOWELL, is healthy and commendable compared to that which craves nothing higher than the sensational trash of the ordinary novel. We should consider it our duty to speak only praise of this author, if we might thereby turn a single admirer of sensational fiction from his idol to the harmless humor of Mark Twain. Roughing It is published as a companion volume to The Innocents Abroad. It is of very much the same character as its predecessor--as laughable and as entertaining. The author calls it a personal narrative; and, in the main, it probably is. For the benefit of those innocents, however, who have never been abroad, and whose acquaintance with this writer is limited to the fictitious criticisms of his writings, which appeared in "The Galaxy Clubroom," as taken from an English journal, and which they never doubted was genuine, until he informed them it was a hoax--for the benefit of such, we give notice that there are, in this book, anecdotes and narrations of incidents to which they ought not to give full credence. One of these is the story of John James Godfrey, the employee of the "Incorporated Company of Mean Men." Most readers have met with it undoubtedly, for it has been the rounds of the newspapers, and was one of the author's best hits in his lecture on the "Sandwich Islanders." It now does good service, in filling out one of the later chapters of this book, devoted to the account of his travels among these festive people of the southern seas. According to this personal narrative, the beginning of Mark Twain's pilgrimage was occasioned by the apportionment of his brother, as secretary of Nevada Territory. Mark went thither as private secretary of the secretary, with the intention, he is sure, of returning East after a few months. The months lengthened into years. His semi-official position was exchanged meanwhile for every variety of business and calling from that of editor of a miners' weekly newpaper down to that of a ten-days-wild-cat millionaire. And when, at last, he returned to his home and friends, his fame as a humorous writer and lecturer had preceded him. There is no doubt that this book will find thousands of readers, and that is will afford them all amusement. There is also, as the author observes, "information in the volume." He adds, in his funniest strain: "Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped. Information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the ottar of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it can not be. The more I calk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom."

St. Louis Missouri Democrat [unsigned]
1872: 4 March

It is not necessarily to say one word about this work, as it is already widely known. It is equal to Mark's Innocents, profusely illustrated and of course no one would think of being without it.

The Hartford Courant
[Charles Dudley Warner]
1872: 18 March

	Mark Twain's New Book The country reasonably and rightfully expects to be amused when Mr. Samuel Clemens gives it a new volume. His fun is contagious. He carries his personal manner into his writing, and is our most mirth-provoking story teller. His very deliberation, leisure and particularity, has come to be the known prologue to a hearty laugh. His fun is based on good sense. Behind the mask of the story-teller is the satirist, whose head is always clear, who is not imposed on by shams, who hates all pretension, and who uses his humor, which is often extravagant, to make pretension and false dignity ridiculous. It is not mere accident that everybody likes to read this author's stories and sketches; it is not mere accident that they are interesting reading. His style is singularly lucid, unambiguous and strong. Its simplicity is good art. The reader may not be conscious that there is any art about it, but there is art in its very perspicuity. There is no circumlocution, or any attempt at fine writing, but there is a use of vigorous English, and often a quaint use of it that gives the effect of humor in the soberest narration. The author also means to be true to his art in another respect, and that is to report the odd characters he meets and the people of the new countries he describes, exactly as they were, slang and all. There is much slang in the book, but it is the argot that was current in the mining regions, and the description of the life there would be entirely imperfect if it had been left out. Roughing It is a volume of nearly 600 pages, of queer stories, funny dialogues, strange, comical and dangerous adventures, and it is a book of humor first of all; but we are inclined to think that, on the whole, it contains the best picture of frontier mining life that has even been written. The episode of the silver mining in Nevada has certainly never been so graphically described. It is an experience that can, we trust, never be repeated on this continent. In these pages we are made to see distinctly a society that never had any parallel. It would be unpleasant to read about it, if the author did not constantly relieve the dreadful picture with stokes of humor. The book contains the varied experience of the author for seven years. He left St. Louis, a boy, in company with his brother who had been appointed secretary of Nevada; he desbribes the overland stage trip at length, a short sojourn in the Mormon city, a life of several years in Carson and Virginia city, and in other mining regions. As a miner and newpaper reporter he experienced all the vicissitudes of extreme poverty and temporary wealth. The story of his being worth a million at one time, and losing his wealth by the neglect of his partner to do the amount of work required by law to hold the claim, is literally true. The book introduces us to San Fransisco life at that period, and the author's adventures there as editor and lecturer, and gives us his six months luxurious idling in the Sandwich Islands. The seven years are crowded full of adventures and vicissitudes of good luck, poverty, suffering and enjoyment such as rarely come into one life. It is difficult to decide what to quote from the book, which is full of so much that is quotable, and our space will not permit us to give at length any of the stories of the strange adventures. The ride in the overland mail coach is very graphically described, and enlivened by such observations as this:--
	Fifty-two miles futher on, near the head of Echo Canyon, we met sixty United States soldiers from Camp Floyd. The day before, they had fired upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed gathered together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued, four Indians were captured, and the main body chased four miles, but nobody killed. This looked like business. We had a notion to get out and join sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were four hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join the Indians. A very neat bit of description is that of the wolf called THE COYOTE
	The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely!--so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful. When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush, glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again--another fifty and stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no demonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier interest in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts such a deal of real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the time you have raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and by the time you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by the time you have "drawn a bead" on him you see well enough that nothing but an unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him where he is now. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy it ever so much--especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself, and has been brought up to think he knows something about speed. The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition, and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck further to the front, and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail out straighter behind, and move his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, and leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain! And all this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the cayote, and to save the soul of him he cannot understand why it is that he cannot get perceptibly closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him madder and madder to see how gently the cayote glides along and never pants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and more incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot is; and next he notices that he is getting fagged, and that the cayote actually has to slacken speed a little to keep from running away from him--and then that town-dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain and weep and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the cayote with concentrated and desperate energy. This "spurt" finds him six feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. And then, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the cayote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it which seems to say: "Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, bub--business is business, and it will not do for me to be fooling along this way all day"--and forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold that dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude! It makes his head swim. He stops, and looks all around; climbs the nearest sand-mound, and gazes into the distance; shakes his head reflectively, and then, without a word, he turns and jogs along back to his train, and takes up a humble position under the hindmost wagon, and feels unspeakably mean, and looks ashamed, and hangs his tail at half-mast for a week. Not much better are the GOSHOOT INDIANS
	Such of the Goshoots as we saw, along the road and hanging about the stations, were small, lean, "scrawny" creatures; in complexion a dull black like the ordinary American negro; their faces and hands bearing dirt which they had been hoarding and accumulating for months, years, and even generations, according to the age of the proprietor; a silent, sneaking, treacherous looking race; taking note of everything, covertly, like all the other "Noble Red Men" that we (do not) read about, and betraying no sign in their countenances; indolent, everlastingly patient and tireless, like all other Indians; prideless beggars--for if the beggar instinct were left out of an Indian he would not "go," any more than a clock without a pendulum; hungry, always hungry, and yet never refusing anything that a hog would eat, though often eating what a hog would decline; hunters, but having no higher ambition than to kill and eat jack-ass rabbits, crickets and grasshoppers, and embezzle carrion from the buzzards and cayotes; savages who, when asked if they have the common Indian belief in a Great Spirit show a something which almost amounts to emotion, thinking whiskey is referred to; a thin, scattering race of almost naked black children, these Goshoots are, who produce nothing at all, and have no villages, and no gatherings together into strictly defined trival communities--a people whose only shelter is a rag cast on a bush to keep off a portion of the snow, and yet who inhabit one of the most rocky, wintry, repulsive wastes that our country or any other can exhibit. The Bushmen and our Goshoots are manifestly descended from the self-same gorilla, or kangaroo, or Norway rat, which-ever animal-Adam the Darwinians trace them to. One would as soon expect the rabbits to fight as the Goshoots, and yet they used to live off the offal and refuse of the stations a few months and then come some dark night when no mischief was expected, and burn down the buildings and kill the men from ambush as they rushed out. And once, in the night, they attacked the stage-coach when a District Judge, of Nevada Territory, was the only passenger, and with their first volley of arrows (and a bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains, wounded a horse or two and mortally wounded the driver. The latter was full of pluck, and so was his passenger. At the driver's call Judge Mott swung himself out, clambered to the box and seized the reins of the team, and away they plunged, through the racing mob of skeletons and under a hurtling storm of missiles. The stricken driver had sunk down on the boot as soon as he was wounded, but had held on to the reins and said he would manage to keep hold of them until relieved. And after they were taken from his relaxing grasp, he lay with his head between Judge Mott's feet, and tranquilly gave directions about the road; he said he believed he could live till the miscreants were outrun and left behind, and that if he managed that, the main difficulty would be at an end, and then if the Judge drove so and so (giving directions about bad places in the road, and general course) he would reach the next station without trouble. The Judge distanced the enemy and at last rattled up to the station and knew that the night's perils were done; but there was no comrade-in-arms for him to rejoice with, for the soldierly driver was dead. Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things about the Overland drivers, now. The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple of Cooper and a worshipper of the Red Man--even of the scholarly savages in the "Last of the Mohicans" who are fittingly associated with backwoodsmen who divide each sentence into two equal parts: one part critically grammatical, refined and choice of language, and the other part just such an attempt to talk like a hunter or a mountaineer, as a Broadway clerk might make after eating an edition of Emerson Bennett's works and studying frontier life at the Bowery Theatre a couple of weeks--I say that the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian worshipper, set me to examining authorities, to see if perchance I had been over-estimating the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow moonshine of romance. The revelations that came were disenchanting. It was curious to see how quickly the paint and tinsel fell away from him and left him treacherous, filthy and repulsive--and how quickly the evidences accumulated that wherever one finds an Indian tribe he has only found Goshoots more or less modified by circumstances and surroundings--but Goshoots, after all. They deserve pity, poor creatures; and they can have mine--at this distance. Nearer by, they never get anybody's. A sketch every way admirably done is that of the PONY RIDER
	In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks and watching for the "pony-rider"--the fleet messenger who sped across the continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters nineteen hundred miles in eight days! Think of that for perishable horse and human flesh and blood to do! The pony-rider was usually a little bit of a man, brimful of spirit and endurance. No matter what time of the day or night his watch came on, and no matter whether it was winter or summer, raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting, or whether his "beat" was a level straight road or a crazy trail over mountain crags and precipices, or whether it led through peaceful regions or regions that swarmed with hostile Indians, he must be always ready to leap into the saddle and be off like the wind! There was no idling-time for a pony-rider on duty. He rode fifty miles without stopping, by daylight, moonlight, starlight, or through the blackness of darkness--just as it happened. He rode a splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like a gentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he came crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a fresh, impatient steed, the transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in the twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of sight before the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look. Both rider and horse went "flying light." The rider's dress was thin, and fitted close; he wore a "round-about," and a skull-cap, and tucked his pantaloons into his boot-tops like a race-rider. He carried no arms--he carried nothing that was not absolutely necessary, for even the postage on his literary freight was worth five dollars a letter. He got but little frivolous correspondence to carry--his bag had business letters in it, mostly. His horse was stripped of all unnecessary weight, too. He wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle, and no visible blanket. He wore light shoes, or none at all. The little flat mail-pockets strapped under the rider's thighs would each hold about the bulk of a child's primer. They held many and many an important business chapter and newspaper letter, but these were written on paper as airy and thin as gold-leaf, nearly, and thus bulk and weight were economized. The stage-coach traveled about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five miles a day (twenty-four hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty. There were about eighty pony-riders in the saddle all the time, night and day, stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri to California, forty flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and among them making four hundred gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood and see a deal of scenery every single day in the year. We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider, but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed to streak by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out of the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and would see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims: "HERE HE COMES!" Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so! In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling--sweeping toward us nearer and nearer--growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined--nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear--another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm! So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack after the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe. This is what the author saw the first hour when he reached Carson City:
	We were introduced to several citizens, at the stage office and on the way up to the governor's from the hotel--among others, to a Mr. Harris, who was on horseback: he began to say something, but interrupted himself with the remark:-- "I'll have to get you to excuse me a minute; yonder is the witness that swore I helped to rob the California coach--a piece of impertinent intermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted with the man." Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter, and the stranger began to explain with another. When the pistols were emptied, the stranger resumed his work (mending a whip-lash), and Mr. Harris rode by with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a bullet through one of his lungs, and several in his hips; and from them issued little rivulets of blood thatcoursed down the horse's sides and made the animal look quite picturesque. I never saw Harris shoot a man after that but it recalled to mind that first day in Carson. We must give a few paragraphs from the visit to LAKE TAHOE
	Johnny K-- and I devoted our time to amusement. He was the young son of an Ohio nabob and was out there for recreation. He got it. We had heard a world of talk about the marvellous beauty of Lake Tahoe, and finally curiosity drove us thither to see it. Three or four members of the Brigade had been there and located some timber lands on its shores and stored up a quantity of provisions in their camp. We strapped a couple of blankets on our shoulders and took an axe apiece and started--for we intended to take up a wood ranch or so ourselves and become wealthy. We were on foot. The reader will find it advantageous to go horseback. We were told that the distance was eleven miles. We tramped a long time on level ground, and then toiled laboriously up a mountain about a thousand miles high and looked over. No lake there. We descended on the other side, crossed the valley and toiled up another mountain three or four thousand miles high, apparently, and looked over again. No lake yet. We sat down tired and perspiring, and hired a couple of Chinamen to curse those people who had beguiled us. Thus refreshed, we presently resumed the march with renewed vigor and determination. We plodded on, two or three hours longer, and at last the Lake burst upon us--a noble sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft full three thousand feet higher still! It was a vast oval, and one would have to use up eighty or a hundred good miles in traveling around it. As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords. We found the small skiff belonging to the Brigade boys, and without loss of time set out across a deep bend of the lake toward the landmarks that signified the locality of the camp. I got Johnny to row--not because I mind exertion myself, but because it makes me sick to ride backwards when I am at work. But I steered. A three-mile pull brought us to the camp just as the night fell, and we stepped ashore very tired and wolfishly hungry. In a "cache" among the rocks we found the provisions and the cooking utensils, and then, all fatigued as I was, I sat down on a boulder and superintended while Johnny gathered wood and cooked supper. Many a man who had gone through what I had, would have wanted to rest. The volume is neatly printed and is illustrated with 300 wood-cuts, from original drawings of skillful artists, made from a study of the text. . . .

Cincinnati Gazette [unsigned]
1872: 25 March

Mark Twain's Roughing It suggests the query, If it be no easy matter to invent one good joke, how hard must it be to be funny to the extent of nearly six hundred octavo pages? Mr. Clemens has essayed the difficult task, and if his humor sometimes seems far-fetched or weak, must be admitted to have succeeded on the whole better than ninety-nine men out of one hundred would have done. We would not have it understood that the volume is a mere jest book, for it is a recital of its author's experience in the remote West. The facetious element, however, bears about the same relation to the veracious narrative as the pattern on a calico dress to the ground color. Mark's adventures in Nevada, among the Mormons in Utah, in California, and in the Sandwich Islands are related with a liveliness, and, we must add, with more than occasional imaginativeness peculiar to himself. One may not always approve the taste of what is said, yet he can rarely record his dissent without a smile. The many illustrations are not the least amusing feature of the book.

London Examiner [unsigned]
1872: 6 April

Life in the Western States In Roughing It and its sequel, The Innocents at Home, Mr. Clemens describes his adventures and experiences in the Far West of America, as private secretary to a Government official, as a silver miner, and as a "city" editor and reporter, during the period embracing "the rise, growth, and culmination of the silver-mining fever is Nevada--a curious episode in some aspects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has occured in the land, and the only one, indeed, that is likely to occur in it." These volumes are narratives of fact, written in a stlye bordering on the burlesque. The information they contain is valuable and rare, relating, as it does, to "an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person." But "Mark Twain" does not serve up his information in its raw, natural form. We need hardly say he is not a grave biographer. He passed through a most exciting career in Nevada and California, encountering prosperity and misfortune in a spirit somewhat similar to that displayed by Mark Tapley, and he tells his story with the same eccentric geniality. His humour is not of a very delicate or profound order, but he enjoys it so keenly himself that it is impossible to resist the contagion. This humour is, moreover, evidently the natural outgrowth of the unsettled, adventurous, wild life he has led. All the characters introduced in these books are more or less humorous, and their humour has a family likeness about it that is unmistakable. It is the humour of men that have been accustomed to violent reversals of fortune, whose existence is one long, desperate game, in which great prizes may be at any moment won, and who are ready to undergo any amount of hardship, while there remains a chance or a hope of securing one of them. It is the humour of strong, daring, adventurous spirits, animated by wild, irregular passions, which may unfit them for settled life, but are among the very qualities required for semi-civilized regions, such as those that form the scene of Mr. Clemens's two books and of Mr. Eggleston's Hoosier Schoolmaster. Roughing It is, in some respects, superior to The Innocents at Home. It is more consecutive and less fragmentary, but both are almost equally racy and entertaining. The account of the journey from St. Louis to Carson City--including a graphic sketch of the life and character of a desperado, named Slade, who long held Rocky Ridge in terror, and some interesting researches in the Mormon Bible--occupy about one-half of Roughing It. Like the rest of the volume and its sequel, this part abounds in striking incidents, but we must pass these over, and come to the idyllic chapter where the author describes the attempt he and a companion made to settle on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Here is a passage recounting how the two solitary pioneers spent their day, after they had built a "brush" house, which was not intended for sleeping in. "That never occured to us for one thing; and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. We did not wish to strain it."

We slept in the sand close to the water's edge, between two protecting boulders, which took care of the stormy night-winds for us. We never took any paregoric to make us sleep. At the first break of dawn we were always up and running foot-races to tone down excess of physical vigor and exuberance of spirits. That is, Johnny was--but I held his hat. While smoking the pipe of peace after breakfast we watched the sentinel peaks put on the glory of the sun, and followed the conquering light as it swept down among the shadows, and set the captive crags and forests free. We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the water till every little detail of forest, precipice and pinnacle was wrought in and finished, and the miracle of the enchanter complete. Then to "business." That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north shore. There, the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white. This gives the marvelous transparency of the water a fuller advantage than it has elsewhere on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred yards or so from shore, and then lay down on the thwarts, in the sun, and let the boat drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked. It interrupted the Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams the luxurious rest and indolence brought. The shore all along was indented with deep, curved bays and coves, bordered by narrow sand-beaches; and where the sand ended, the steep mountain-sides rose right up aloft into space--rose up like a vast wall a little out of the perpendicular, and thickly wooded with tall pines. So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boat seemed floating in the air! Yes, where it was even eighty feet deep. Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every hand's-breadth of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite boulder, as large as a village church, would start out of the bottom apparently, and seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, till presently it threatened to touch our faces, and we could not resist the impulse to seize an oar and avert the danger. But the boat would float on, and the boulder descend again, and then we could see that when we had been exactly above it, it must still have been twenty or thirty feet below the surface. Down through the transparency of these great depths, the water was not merely transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so. All objects seen through it had a bright, strong vividness, not only of outline, but of every minute detail, which they would not have had when seen simply through the same depth of atmosphere. So empty and airy did all spaces seem below us, and so strong was the sense of floating high aloft in mid-nothingness, that we called these boat-excursions "balloon-voyages." We fished a good deal, but we did not average one fish a week. We could see trout by the thousand winging about in the emptiness under us, or sleeping in shoals on the bottom, but they would not bite--they could see the line too plainly, perhaps. This Paradisaic life was but of short duration. The timber ranch took fire, and kindled a conflagration that embraced the forest and drove the campers to their boat. Hunger at last forced them from their happy spot, and our author entered upon a very different sort of experience. The difficulties attending the organisation of a new State are cleverly recounted in Mr. Clemens's account of his brother's troubles as first Secretary of the Nevada Territory--"an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting-Governor in the Governor's absence." It was shortly after the discovery of silver lodes in Carson County, in 1858, that this important official arrived in Carson City to establish a legitimately constituted government in the Territory, which already contained from twelve to fifteen thousand of a population and was rapidly growing every day, the mines being vigorously developed, and business of all kinds active and prosperous.

New York Independent [unsigned]
1872: 11 April

Mark Twain's new volume, Roughing It, is also in part tropical in its subject. Among its most entertaining chapters are those which describe the author's visit to the Hawaiian Islands--chapters which, first published as letters to a California newspaper, are here gathered up, with some excisions, in a permanent form. In this work Mr. Clemens has produced one of his more readable volumes. The fact that he had written much of it before reaching its present fame as a humorist is in its favor. Thackeray said of his earlier efforts: "It makes me laugh when I think of the old days, and how much better I wrote for them then, and got a shilling where I now get ten." We only wish that Mr. Clemens had made fewer alterations than he has made in those rollicking, often ludicrous descriptions, the Sacramento Union letters here reprinted. As it is, we can imagine the despair with which the less intuitive reader will struggle to separate the nonsense from the sense, the fact from the fiction, the portraiture from the exaggerations of these pages. Mark Twain's humor is in this respect peculiarly and purposely tantalizing, though not, therefore, less enjoyable. The sketches of Western life are equally amusing. We may remark, too, that his fun is not dependent upon bad spelling or bad grammar. He writes good English, and we can commend the book to all who enjoy the wild Western drollery of which Mark Twain is the ablest living master. As a remarkably full repository of Western slang this work has a literary interest which will give it a permanent value to the student of Americanisms.

San Francisco Call [B. B. Toby]
1872: 28 April

Mark Twain Roughing It is the title of Mark Twain's last book. The volume is full of humor and atrocious woodcuts, even more grotesque than the text. The book is made up of anecdote and descriptions of the author's experiences "on the Plains," in Virginia City, and in the Sandwich Islands. No writer ever made so much out of so little, and that much of such excellent quality. Notwithstanding his palpable exaggeration in certain parts when describing incidents, there is much more of truth to be found, and a better idea of situations (in the theatrical sense) conveyed, than can be obtained from the most sober-sided narrative of the events of which he tells. One peculiarity in Twain is, that the reader is never deceived; there is not the least effort required to discover when he is in earnest and when he is joking. Even in those sudden transitions from solemn narrative to grotesque metaphor or absurd assertion, he does not offend, for the very grotesqueness and absurdity save the reader's vanity from affront; he feels that Twain is not laughing at, but with him that is, so the reader believes. In truth, Mark tells some of the most magnificent "whoppers" with an ease and seeming candor not to be controverted except by those who know the facts--witness his narrative of his first effort as a lecturer.

Boston Evening Transcript
"Tom Folio" [Joseph E. Babson]
1872: 1 May

Roughing It is not mere "flam and romance," but as true and veracious an account of the author's seven years' adventure in the "far West" as it was possible for him to make it without ceasing to be a "matter-of-lie-man," and therefore ceasing to be himself. And though abounding in facts, and brimful of new and interesting information, the work belongs, not to the literature of knowledge, but to the literature of nonsense, and will be read not so much for its wisdom as for its wit. It will be safer, as well as more agreeable, to quote its jokes rather than its statistics. There is, however, a serious side to Mark Twain's genius, and in Roughing It it has something like justice done to it. Some of the desciptions of mountains, lakes, rivers, and other marvels and wonders of nature are graphic, eloquent and almost poetical. The ride across the continent in a stage-coach--the pony-express, the "fleeting messenger who sped across the continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters nineteen hundred miles in eight days"--the happy life on the shores of Lake Tahoe--the picnic excursion in the Sandwich Islands--the silver mining fever in Nevada, and numerous other scenes, incidents and adventures are described with delightful freshness and vigor. The worthies of the "flush times" of Nevada are so admirably depicted that one is almost induced to call Mark Twain a comic Plutarch. Dick Baker's story of his cat, and Jim Blaine's story of his grandfather's old ram, will satisfy and delight the lovers of Mark Twain's peculiar humor. But Scotty Briggs' Visit to the Minister is perhaps the best thing in the book, if not the best thing of its kind that Mark has yet done. The whole chapter on Scotty is rich in humor--the sweetest and tenderest humor in all Twain's writings. Scotty must have been a noble Christian, and it must indeed have been a "large privilege" to hear him tell the beautiful story of Joseph and his brethren to his Sunday-school class. . . .

Sacramento Union [unsigned]
1872: 18 May

Mark Twain is one of those geniuses that occasionally appear to make books that will sell, and, per consequence, make money, while others who write to benefit the world obtain but a poor reward for their labors. There is a good deal of stuff in this book, and a great deal too that it amusing. Had it been half its size, and the contents shifted, the book would have answered every purpose except, perhaps, to sell. In these days, when linen and cotton rags are so dear and the demands of the American press are so pressing that we have to import paper material from Europe, it is a waste and a shame to throw so much trash in the shape of swollen volumes upon the market. Sam Clemens tells good stories, but he is under high pressure as a book-making celebrity, and necessarily shoves off some yarns that under other circumstances might not find a place in his pages, and with less reputation as a humorist would not be excused by the reading public. There is always enough of fun in Clemens to make his books salable, and some stories are good enough to palliate the appearance of half a dozen others not as good.

San Francisco Evening Bulletin [unsigned]
1872: 13 July

Mark Twain's personal narrative under the above title is a spicy, interesting and instructive book abounding in brave though brilliant exaggerations, yet containing no inconsiderable amount of useful information. He mirrors the scenes in Nevada and California during the famous Washoe silver excitement, gives an amusing account of a journey overland by coach, describes the salient features of the Sandwich Islands, and tells us about his early experience in lecturing. Those who are familiar with the scenes he locates in Nevada and our own State, will of course form their own opinions of all the statements, knowing how to take them, and people abroad must accept the toughest cum grano salis. His conscience never prevents him from bringing a story to a triumphant conclusion. At least he always does it. In his prefatory remarks he says the volume is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics or goad him with science. Thus he puts the reader on the right scent at the outset; and if, through plausibility and a fertile imagination, the author manages to give extravagant yarns the color of truth, it is to be hoped that the preface will act as a balance in the reader's mind and influence him to believe only what comes within the natural range of possibility. His essays on mining, for some of the chapters are sufficiently erudite and elaborate to be worthy of that distinction, contain descriptions and suggestions which are correct, both in theory and practice, and will be readily endorsed by experienced miners; and his pictures of Wahoe society, as it existed during the silver-mining fever, however much he may embellish in individual instances, are at times remarkably faithful. In a literary point of view the work is hardly up to the standard of The Innocents Abroad. We miss that eloquence of description adorning a few of his sketches of France. It is full of genial humor, however, has a great deal of that pungent flavor of Western life, and is sure to be appreciated by Mark Twain's legion of admirers. The book is published in good shape, and contains hundreds of strking illustrations. It is "inscribed to Calvin H. Higbie, of California, by the author, in memory of the curious time when we two were millionaires for ten days." Higbie figures as the second person in the annexed extract:

He said once or twice that he meant to have a look into the Wide West shaft if he got shot for it. I was wretched, and did not care whether he got a look into it or not. He failed that day, and tried again at night; failed again; got up at dawn and tried, and failed again. Then he lay in ambush in the sage brush hour after hour, waiting for the two or three hands to adjourn to the shade of a boulder for dinner; made a start once, but was premature--one of the men came back for something; tried it again, but when almost at the mouth of the shaft, another of the men rose up from behind the boulder as if to reconnoitre, and he dropped on the ground and lay quiet; presently he crawled on his hands and knees to the mouth of the shaft, gave a quick glance around, then seized the rope and slid down the shaft. He disappeared in the gloom of a "side drift" just as a head appeared in the mouth of the shaft and somebody shouted "Hello!"--which he did not answer. He was not disturbed any more. An hour later he entered the cabin, hot, red, and ready to burst with smothered excitement, and exclaimed in a stage whisper: "I knew it! We are rich! IT'S A BLIND LEAD!" I thought the very earth reeled under me. Doubt--conviction--doubt again--exultation--hope, amazement, belief, unbelief--every emotion imaginable swept in wild procession through my heart and brain, and I could not speak a word. After a moment or two of this mental fury, I shook myself to rights, and said: "Say it again!" "It's blind lead!" "Cal., let's--let's burn the house--or kill somebody! Let's get out where there's room to hurrah! But what is the use? It is a hundred times too good to be true." "It's a blind lead, for a million!--hanging wall--foot wall--clay casings--everything complete!" He swung his hat and gave three cheers, and I cast doubt to the winds and chimed in with a will. For I was worth a million dollars, and did not care "whether school kept or not!" But perhaps I ought to explain. A "blind lead" is a lead or ledge that does not "crop out" above the surface. A miner does not know where to look for such leads, but they are often stumbled upon by accident in the course of driving a tunnel or sinking a shaft. Higbie knew the Wide West rock perfectly well, and the more he had examined the new developments the more he was satisfied that the ore could not have come from the Wide West vein. And so had it occurred to him alone, of all the camp, that there was a blind lead down in the shaft, and that even the Wide West people themselves did not suspect it. He was right. When he went down the shaft, he found that the blind lead held its independent way through the Wide West vein, cutting it diagonally, and that it was enclosed in its own well-defined casing-rocks and clay. Hence it was public property. Both leads being perfectly well defined, it was easy for any miner to see which one belonged to the Wide West and which did not. We thought it well to have a strong friend, and therefore we brought the foreman of the Wide West to our cabin that night and revealed the great surprise to him. Higbie said: "We are going to take possession of this blind lead, record it and establish ownership, and then forbid the Wide West company to take out any more of the rock. You cannot help your company in this matter--nobody can help them. I will go into the shaft with you and prove to your entire satisfaction that it is a blind lead. Now we propose to take you in with us, and claim the blind lead in our three names. What do you say?" What could a man say who had an opportunity to simply stretch forth his hand and take possession of a fortune without risk of any kind and without wronging any one or attaching the least taint of dishonor to his name? He could only say, "Agreed."

New York Tribune
[George Ripley]
1873: 31 January

	Our inveterate American humorist here relates a tissue of vagabond adventures in a mingled yarn of fancy and fact, during a residence at various points on the Pacific coast in the early days of the chase for gold and silver. His book, he assures us, contains "quite a good deal of information," which he very much regrets, but it could not be helped, as "information appears to stew out of him naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter." He not only deals in his off-hand way with all kinds of information, whether true or otherwise, but favors his readers with frequent expressions of his personal opinions, which are usually novel, if nothing else. His excuse, for polygamy, for instance, is decidedly original, and leaves little more to be said on the subject.
	Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter. I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here--until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically "homely" creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, "No--the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure--and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence." His facetious sketches of Nevada life are shaded by an occasional touch of grim humor.
	The ways of silver mining Boards are exceedingly dark and sinuous. We took up various claims, and commenced shafts and tunnels on them, but never finished any of them. We had to do a certain amount of work on each to "hold" it, else other parties could seize our property after the expiration of ten days. We were always hunting up new claims and doing a little work on them and then waiting for a buyer--who never came. We never found any ore that would yield more than fifty dollars a ton; and as the mills charged fifty dollars a ton for working ore and extracting the silver, our pocket-money melted steadily away and none returned to take its place. We lived in a little cabin and cooked for ourselves; and altogether it was a hard life, though a hopeful one--for we never ceased to expect fortune and a customer to burst upon us some day. At last, when flour reached a dollar a pound, and money could not be borrowed on the best security at less than eight per cent a month (I being without the security, too), I abandoned mining and went to milling. That is to say, I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz mill, at ten dollars a week and board. The wild barbaric life of the primitive California miner is embalmed in the author's undiluted descriptions:
	But they were rough in those times! They fairly reveled in gold, whisky, fights, and fandangoes, and were unspeakably happy. The honest miner raked from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, and what with the gambling dens and the other entertainments, he hadn't a cent the next morning, if he had any sort of luck. They cooked their own bacon and beans, sewed on their own buttons, washed their own shirts--blue woollen ones; and if a man wanted a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in public in a white shirt or a stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated. For those people hated aristocrats. They had a particular and malignant animosity toward what they called a "biled shirt." One particular feature of that grotesque society was the absence of women and children.
	In those days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse of that rare and blessed spectacle, a woman! Old inhabitants tell how, in a certain camp, the news went abroad early in the morning that a woman was come! They had seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at the camping-ground--sign of emigrants from over the great plains. Everybody went down there, and a shout went up when an actual, bona fide dress was discovered fluttering in the wind! The male emigrant was visible. The miners said: "Fetch her out!" He said: "It is my wife, gentlemen--she is sick--we have been robbed of money, provisions, everything, by the Indians--we want to rest." "Fetch her out! We've got to see her!" "But, gentlemen, the poor thing, she--" "FETCH HER OUT!" He "fetched her out," and they swung their hats and sent up three rousing cheers and a tiger; and they crowded around and gazed at her, and touched her dress, and listened to her voice with the look of men who listened to a memory rather than a present reality--and then they collected twenty-five hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the man, and swung their hats again and gave three more cheers, and went home satisfied. Once I dined in San Francisco with the family of a pioneer, and talked with his daughter, a young lady whose first experience in San Francisco was an adventure, though she herself did not remember it, as she was only two or three years old at the time. Her father said that, after landing from the ship, they were walking up the street, a servant leading the party with the little girl in her arms. And presently a huge miner, bearded, belted, spurred, and bristling with deadly weapons--just down from a long campaign in the mountains, evidently-barred the way, stopped the servant, and stood gazing, with a face all alive with gratification and astonishment. Then he said, reverently: "Well, if it ain't a child!" And then he snatched a little leather sack out of his pocket and said to the servant: "There's a hundred and fifty dollars in dust, there, and I'll give it to you to let me kiss the child!" That anecdote is true. But see how things change. Sitting at that dinner-table, listening to that anecdote, if I had offered double the money for the privilege of kissing the same child, I would have been refused. Seventeen added years have far more than doubled the price. The present volume may be regarded as one of the most racy specimens of Mark Twain's savory pleasantries, and their effect is aggravated by the pictoral illustrations which swarm on every page, many of which are no less comical than the letter-press.

Mark Twain discoursed about the Sandwich Islands for an hour last night at the Music Hall, and although at the early part of the lecture there was evidently some disappointment, he soon was in favor with his hearers, and the last two-thirds of the production were richly enjoyed. Mr. Clemens is truly an original lecturer, his manner being as unique as his matter. He spoke without notes, walked about the stage most of the time, and was dry and droll, serious and even pathetic. His matter was a series of surprises, it being difficult for the listener to know what was earnest and what was fun. His most ludicrous jokes were related with a serious air, that imparted a fresh flavor to them. The entertainment, for such indeed it was, was a very enjoyable one, so enjoyable and peculiar that all attempts to describe it would fail. The hearty applause given indicated that the audience were pleased.

Mark Twain is a very good looking man. He is of medium height and moderately slender build, has light brown hair, a reddish brown moustache, regular features and a fresh complexion; and he has a queer way of wrinkling up his nose and half closing his eyes when he speaks. The expression of his face is as calm and imperturbable as that of the sphinx. Looking at him you feel it to be an impossibility that he should ever hurry or ever be out of temper, and you might suppose him to be incapable of a joke, if it were not for the peculiar twinkle in his merry eyes. His voice is remarkably light and remarkably dry--like some German wines--and it seems to be modulated to only two keys. His style of speaking is unique to the last degree. It is all of a piece with the quality of his humor, and fits him like a glove. He delivers his sentences without haste, and in a tone of utter indifference, marking the highest waves of his thought only by a strong flavor of nasality, and knowing for the most part only the rising inflection at the beginning, middle and end of his sentences. The rising inflection is not native here, nor is it born in the manner of any of our own speakers. Mr. Dickens first taught us how it might be used to advantage; and Mark Twain, doubtless without borrowing a leaf from Mr. Dickens's note-book, has found out for himself how effective an adjunct it is to humorous speech. In short, the platform manner of Mr. Clemens is the exact reflection in speech of his peculiar style of composition. The fun of both is genuine enough; but the perception of the fun is unmeasurably heightened by the apparently serious intention of the general discourse, and at times by an air of half seriousness in the joke itself. The audience gets into a queer state after a while. It knows not what to trust; for while much is meant to be seriously taken, the fun is felt to be the real life of the thing; and yet they never know where the fun will come in. Even when Mr. Clemens has made a really fine period, or introduced a brilliant descriptive passage, he takes pains to turn the affair into a joke at the end. As, for instance, after a very graphic and well written description of the great volcanic eruption in the Sandwich Islands, delivered with perfect indifference and almost as if with an effort--he paused for just an instant, and then said in the same passionless tone--"There! I'm glad I've got that volcano off my mind." The manner is a direct resultant of the matter; and the manner of his speech does a great deal for the substance of his discourse. The story of "Our Fellow-Savages in the Sandwich Islands" would not be nearly so funny to read as it is to hear from Mark Twain's lips;--though we do not mean to deny that there is a great deal of genuine and irresistible humor in the texture of the discourse. Indeed, we mean to say, distinctly, that the contrary was the fact, and that Mr. Clemens showed himself last night in the character of a very quaint, peculiar, and eminently original humorist. America has produced, at least, a quintette of genuine humorists, whose productions have many of the indicia of genius, if they are not wholly inspired by it.

We are obliged to say again, as we said in the cases of Nasby and Josh Billings, that there is little use in trying to write a sketch of the discourse. But we must attempt to give our readers a little taste of the speaker's quality. Mr. Clemens devoted the first ten minutes of his lecture to a painfully accurate description of a person afflicted with the most loathsome form of Oriental leprosy; and then he gave five minutes to the narration of a boyish adventure which ended in his seeing the horrible face of a dead man in the moonlight. And all this mass of horror for what? Simply that he might say that his memory was full of unpleasant things so linked together that when he thought of one he inevitably thought of another, and so on through the entire series; and starting with leprosy and dead faces in the moonlight his mind necessarily ran through other unpleasant things until it brought him to the Sandwich Islands and his lecture. The position of the islands he gave geographically; but why they were placed so far away from everything and in such an inconvenient space, he declined to consider. The man who would have discovered the islands but did not, he said, was diverted from his course by a manuscript found in a bottle; and this, said Mark Twain, is not the only case in which a man has been turned from the true path by suggestions drawn from a bottle. The European nations brought into the islands their own diseases, together with civilization, education and other calamities. The effect of this had been to diminish the native population;--education in particular causing a frightful mortality as the facilities for learning were multiplied. But fifty thousand natives are now left upon the islands, and it is proposed to start a few more seminaries to finish them. The country people of the islands, the women, he said, wear a single garment made of one piece; "and the men don't." But when the weather is inclement the men wear cotton in their ears. The hospitality of the people he declared to be of a very high and generous order. A stranger might enter any house and straightway his host would set before him raw fresh fish with the scales on, baked dogs, fricasseed cats, and all the luxuries of the season. But in trade they were exceedingly sharp and deceitful,--lying invariably from one end of the transaction to the other; not descending to common lies either, but indulging in lies that are "gorgeously imposing and that awe you by their grandeur." The fondness of the islanders for dogs he declared to be intense. Dogs had the best of everything and were the close companions of the men. "They fondle and caress the dog until he is a full grown dog, and then they eat him." "I couldn't do that," said Mr. Clemens, in one of his dryest and funniest passages; "I'd rather go hungry two days than eat an old personal friend in that way."

At one point in his lecture, namely, in the midst of a discussion of cannibalism, Mark Twain paused and said with an indescribable look: "At this point I usually illustrate cannibalism before the audience: but I am a stranger here, and feel diffident about asking favors." However, he said, if there is any one present who is willing to contribute a baby for the purposes of the lecture, I should be glad to know it now. I am aware, though, that children have become scarce and high of late, having been thinned out by neglect and ill treatment since the woman movement began.

But we must leave the rest to the imagination of our readers, only saying that Mr. Clemens told two of the funniest of exaggerated stories in the most irresistible fashion, and concluded his lecture with a few graceful words of thanks to the audience for their attention. Perhaps he is not a great humorist, but he is a genuine humorist. The man who can say that the Islanders' dish of plain dog "is only our cherished American sausage with the mystery removed" is one whose reputation fame will not suffer to die; and if Mr. Clemens can please everywhere as he pleased in Boston last night, he will be sure to make his fortune if he does not become a standard author.

[MT's Boston lecture was also reviewed in a report to the Springfield Daily Republican.]

I was going to head this paragraph "The Humorist Lecturers," but the only professed humorist among the three men I have named is Mark Twain. De Cordova is not a humorist at all; and Nasby's humor is subordinate to his radicalism and reformatory power. De Cordova is a nice looking person and is well dressed. "He is put upon the stage unexceptionably," as the theatrical critics say of a new piece at Selwyn's. The screen, the foot-lights, the music stand on which he places his manuscript, are all very nice, and you are somewhat reminded of Dickens when you look at the whole arrangement. And De Cordova is not unlike Dickens in his gesticulation, being very active and sprightly and dramatic on his platform. But his lecture is very thin stuff. I heard him describe the sham family. Ezra Penniman and Anastasia Johnson,--if I have their names right,--were portrayed justly enough, and all the others of the intermarried Penniman-Johnson family; and the bits were all fair, and in the direction of justice and good sense. But the satire was of the mildest sort. Mr De Cordova is, among the lecturers, what one of the illustrated weeklies of the poorer sort would be among newspapers, provided it were better printed and on better paper. There is no wit in him, and no humor. His audience, however, seemed pleased, and not bored by his vivacious nothingness. Nasby applied his remarkable powers of irony and fun to the woman question. I have a little doubt whether his lecture was enjoyed by all his hearers. In the first place the woman cause is not so far advanced that a lecturer who supports the common sense view can be sure of the entire sympathy of an average Boston audience. The Fraternity ticket holders may be supposed to be more radically inclined than any others, but there must be, even among these, many ignorant persons, such as follow Fulton, who are not converted, and are probably incapable of conversion. Then the finest irony, such as Nasby's requires, except in the quickest witted, rather too great a strain of attention for its full appreciation, and for this reason I think Nasby would do well to make his lecture (at least until the people become familiar with the woman question,) mainly argumentative, and let the irony and fun come in frequently and in spurts. I noticed that when, near the close of his speech, he left his assumed character of the conservative, and spoke earnestly in his true radical shape, he got the largest amount of applause. By and by, when the apologists for the subjection of woman are as few and as bad-charactered as the apologists for slavery, Nasby's lecture will be as greatly relished as his wonderful letters. His manner on the stage is not specially happy. He reads, and hurries through his lecture. Lowell says of Alcott, comparing him to a lamb, that "he goes to sure death when he goes to his pen," and I might almost say, so great is the difference between Nasby as a lecturer and as a writer, that he goes to his death when he goes from his pen. But this would not be true. His lecture was a success. It was in argument admirable. Nobody in this country has so keen a scent for a humbug as Nasby. How much he did for us by his inimitable satires upon Johnson and the negro-hating democracy. And now, as I am rejoiced to see, he makes his quarry that glorified and ermined imposture, Chief Justice Chase, and I wish him equal success in hunting him down. May he live long to lecture as well as to write. Mark Twain is a man of a different sort. He (and Nasby also as I am informed), was very nervous at the idea of meeting a Boston audience, though what there is in a Boston audience to frighten anybody I cannot imagine. Boston people are moved by the same appeals, they laugh at the same jokes, yawn at the same dullness, wonder at the same platitudes, as other people. There was no occasion for anxiety in either case. Twain cut his lecture short, finishing it at about 20 minutes before nine, evidently afraid that he was boring his hearers. The best tribute I can give to his performance is to say that I was very sorry to lose the other half hour, to which, as a paying dead-head critic, I thought myself entitled. The lecture was delivered without notes, and so, prima facie, had an advantage over Nasby's. Voice, manner, gesticulation, were all good; and the drawl, whether natural or a trick of art, was an effective aid to the story and the joke. There was no inconsiderable amount of information about the Sandwich Islands and the Kanakas, and some admirable bits of description, so admirable, indeed, that I felt myself a little misused when, getting ready to applaud a genuine piece of eloquence, I was interrupted by the remark, in a low tone, "There, I'm glad I've got that volcano off my mind." Or, "There, I call that rather neat." The Advertiser has so cleverly picked out the plums of this discourse, that I will not quote much. The remark about the islanders' dish of plain dog, that "it is only our cherished American sausage with the mystery removed," is likely to live as long as the best of the anti-sausage jokes. The story of the man who was thrown into the air by the premature explosion of a blast, while he was tamping the charge, and who went up and up till he was but a speck in the sky, and then came down and down and struck his crowbar into the same hole and went on tamping again, was irresistibly funny, and its nub, viz: that the man, though gone only fifteen minutes, had that amount of time deducted from his pay, was better even than the story itself. The proposition to illlustrate cannibalism by an experiment if anyone among the audience would contribute a baby for the purpose, was perhaps the funniest thing in the lecture, and it is hard to describe the dry style of his following remark, quoted in the Advertiser, "I am aware, though, that children have become scarce and high of late, having been thinned out by neglect and ill-treatment since the woman movement began." On the whole, Mark Twain is not only a genuine humorist,--that we all know,--but an enjoyable and successful lecturer.

From the Philadelphia Press,
December 8, 1869

Last evening the Academy was filled to overflowing, to partake of the literary Sandwich prepared and offered by that mirth-provoking humorist, Mark Twain. His lecture was appositely introduced by a series of witty generalities closely connected with cannibalism and craters. . . . The Sandwich Islands have a very limited area--scarcely enough, indeed, to contain a voluminous thought. . . . Mr. Twain, Esq., lecturer, etc., was a success. . . . Twain is not riotous with his fancy; he is tenderly poetical and discreet. His descriptions of the volcanoes of the islands were very fine. They were exquisite set-offs to the humorous or rather buttery parts of his ragout. We are at a loss to know whether he is a wit or a humorist. At one time we had some distinct idea of the difference between these two qualities, but Twain has literally jumbled us all up. If it were not for Twain we should set him down as a wit, but the inevitable presence causes us to classify him with the humorists. . . . He is a rare combination of wit and humor. He abounds in seasonable hits. He has no elocution, but simply a style that knows no restraints but simply those necessary to provoke mirth. His "Sandwich" is admirable for dyspepsia; even a roast dog and fricasseed cat become agreeable after a little familiarity. . . . The man who can administer to the mind healthful relaxatives, and thereby restore the stomach, is certainly entitled to rank with those who do the same with the stomach and thereby restore the mind.

[Source: Frear, Mark Twain and Hawaii, Appendix D.]

Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin
December 8, 1869

Every one who went to Music Hall last evening--and there was a good house despite the mist and mud--expected to go home splitting their sides with laughter. People everywhere are familiar with "Mark Twain," but comparatively few have yet had an opportunity of seeing Mr. Samuel H. Clemens. An hour with Mark is like gentle dew upon a withering flower; when he lifts the curtain and comes as Mr. Clemens, the lecturer, it is like the tickling of a sleepy boy with a feather--perfectly ravishing until the eyes are opened, but which he doesn't care to experience a second time. Mr. Clemens is a true wit, with his pen, and his works will live after he has gone, but his course as a lecturer will end when the curiosity of his thousands of readers shall have been satisfied by a good square look at him. His lecture on "Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands," is a tissue of nonsense from beginning to end, and his delivery is as disgusting as the lecture is foolish. Still, people clamor for a look, and we are inclined to think one dose will be enough for the most admiring. The audience last evening enjoyed, not the hearty laugh they anticipated, but a protracted, vexatious titter, and felt relieved when the end came.

Mark Twain lectured at Institute Hall last evening. At an early hour the intelligent, virtuous, high-minded, patriotic and well-dressed people of this enterprising and lovely village might have been seen wending their way to the Hall, &c., &c. The Hall was well filled, all the seats that were occupied being crowded. As Mr. Byron (whom some of our readers may remember sometimes made up verses out of his head), once said, "the lamps shone bright o'er fair women and brave men and all went merry as a marriage bell." (Lest any one should take offense however, we explain that the Hall was not lighted with "lamps" but with gas, manufactured by our intelligent, efficient and high-minded Gas Co. Bryon is to blame for the word "lamps" in this quotation, not we. We hope this explanation will prevent the Gas Co. shutting off our gas again, or any one else being offended and stopping his paper.) The elite of this place was assembled, &c., &c. It is rarely seldom that so select an audience fills Institute Hall. The lecturer no doubt felt highly honored and flattered at his reception, &c., &c.

Of the lecture we need say nothing, &c. Mr. Twain spoke for himself, &c. We only need say that it was fully up to expectations, and exceeded the anticipations of the most sanguine and skillful anticipatist in this section. While we do not wish to wound by harsh criticism, we have no hesitation in saying and we say it boldly that this lecture gave entire satisfaction to that numerous class of our readers who like that kind of a lecture. Still, we may be mistaken in this opinion and if so we are willing to be corrected; we trust that like Mr. Heap we are "umble" and would not venture to make so broad a declaration as the above without offering to take it back if it did not prove satisfactory to the intelligent readers of our widely-circulated and influential JOURNAL.

We cannot better and less offensively sum up the merits of this delightful, beautiful, eloquent, grand, extraordinary, lovely, forcible, convincing, pious, exciting, splendid lecture than in the one word with which the fascinating and fashionably-haired young lady so fitly described Niagara Falls--pretty. It should have been heard to be appreciated, &c., &c. Time and space will not allow us to say anything about the lecture here and at this time. We leave that disreputable task to the heartless wretch who so audaciously refused to admire the transcendant merits of Gough's temperance lecture and walk around. Those of our citizens who did not attend missed a rare treat. (Lest our temperance friends should be offended we explain that "treat" here does not refer to anything ardent.) Mr. Twain entered fully into the spirit of his performance. (Our readers who tie to spiritual manifestations will take no offense at the word "spirit;" it is not used in a supernatural sense.) To say this lecture was well received is only the naked truth (no offense meant to our lady readers by the term here applied to truth.) Mr. Twain's lecture should be in every library, and on every centre table, and on every faro table, and every bar, and in every livery stable, and in all other places which deserve mention here; we hope we shall not be deemed invidious in not naming them all.

We should be guilty of the blackest hearted ingratitude, sacrilege, and inattention to a blessed institution did we neglect to introduce in this connection a silver-plated puff on the Y. M. C. A., and the managers of the lecture course. By bringing Mr. Twain here they have conferred a great benefit on our people, have given the prosperity of the place a substantial boost, have placed us under renewed obligations to them, &c., &c. The citizens will hold them in grateful memory and future generations will inscribe their names

[N. B.--The above is not entirely original--it is only impromptu and poetry.]

For the Journal.

Mr. Editor.--As your paper professes to allow free criticism, I wish you would give me a chance to pitch into Mark Twain's lecture. I was one of the victims. I confess I did not comprehend his lecture, as I did not the subject announced on the bills. "Our fellow cannibals!" Now what does that mean? Cannibals are men who eat folks, ain't they? And if they are our fellows it means we eat folks too, if I understand it correctly, don't it? Is this true? If not it is a slander on the people of this great and enlightened nation.

Starting out with a theme that either is a falsehood, or else means nothing, the whole lecture was the same. He commenced by introducing himself--an unusual procedure and I believe an undeserved slight on the lecture committee who were present and ready to introduce him.

And then he proceeded to his lecture--and what did it amount to? What new or valuable thing did he tell us of the Sandwich Islands? What that we could not read at home? He says he has been there, but he must have used his senses to little purpose if he could not pick up more interesting facts than he narrated in his lecture. His intimation that civilization was responsible for the decrease of population there is another insult to America. And what sense is there in describing a man as being dressed in an umbrella? Like a fool, he omitted to tell what the personal costume of the Islander is, only saying that it wouldn't take more than a minute to tell it; if it was so easy to tell why omit it? Where is the sense in referring to a thing and then telling nothing about it? Then, could there be anything more disgusting than his talk about the baked dogs? Well enough, perhaps, to explain that the Islanders eat dogs, but why dwell on it with such gusto when he said himself that he had no appetite for the dish? Did he suppose we had, that he talked so about it?

In equally bad taste was his reference to cannibalism. That incident about the poor old sea-captain who was so barbarously devoured was of course affecting, but why need he introduce it without giving the moral to it--especially as he said he told it only for the moral that was in it? Is it not an evidence of Twain's excessive stupidity that he could tell that story, as he confessed, forty or fifty times without once giving the moral to it.

And I think every intelligent person in the audience must have felt insulted, actually insulted, at his telling about a man being blown up out of sight and gone fifteen minutes and coming down in the very same identical spot and going to work again and the company docking him for 15 minutes lost time, expecting us to believe it. I consider the story preposterously unlikely. I don't doubt a company being mean enough to dock him, but could any man go up and come down again and go right to work without stopping to rest? Even if the story is true, I don't see what it has to do with the Sandwich Islands. You complain that our glorious Gough introduced matter foreign to his subject and yet say nothing about this unwarranted, absurd digression of Twain's. It makes a difference whose ox is gored, I notice!

And what sense was there in the lecturer's offering to illustrate cannibalism if any one would send up a baby to the platform. He knew perfectly well that in such an advanced community as this, infants are not allowed in the lecture room. And even if they were, did he suppose any mother would send up her child for such a purpose. It is a significant comment on this proposition that, inhuman as it was, it was the only part of his lecture that was strictly relevant to the subject; have your readers thought of that? It reveals the only glimmer of sense there is in the expression "our fellow-cannibals." Mr. Twain may be correct in using that expression for himself, but not in including others in the barbarous imputation, as he does when he uses the pronoun "our." He should announce as his theme, "My fellow-cannibals."

Another disgusting thing was the conceited manner and egotism of the speaker. He seemed to think himself smart, &c., and did not hesitate to boldly hint that he thought so. If he has any friends they should tell him what a silly appearance he makes.

And so I might go on, showing the irrelevancy and senselessness of nearly all his lecture. It was entirely worthless. I never was so disappointed in a performance in my life. I went there expecting to hear something thrilling and original about those interesting islands and this trash was all he had to offer. Some silly young people laughed, though what they could see to laugh at I don't know. I felt more like hiding my head in shame, disgust, annoyance, chagrin and mortification. I could not help thinking of our noble missionaries in those far-away Islands, and how pained they would feel when they came to know that the field of their labors had been so abominably and jestingly represented here.

Instead of joining you in the opinion that our Lecture Committee has won fame by getting Mark Twain here to lecture, I declare that they have offended the good taste and religious scruples of the sober portion of this community by introducing his ill-timed levity and in this opinion I am sustained by nine-tenths of that portion of the community. I therefore enter a solemn protest against Mark Twain, and in behalf of the serious portion of this community, sign myself,

MANY CITIZENS.

The Cohoes Cataract

[MT lectured in Cohoes, N.Y, Friday evening, 7 January 1870. The local paper was a weekly that came on Saturdays, and gave only this brief notice of the lecture the next day, January 8th:

MARK TWAIN'S LECTURE.--Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) lectured in Egberts Hall, last evening, to a slim audience. Those present were much pleased with his remarks, which were a mixture of history and information with quaint humor. We regret that the Sons of Temperance had so poor a return for their enterprise.

In its next issue the paper offered a full review.]

He said that there was a sort of tradition or belief in the Sandwich Islands, that every great and noted liar always brings up there, in some time of his life. Of course, they stayed there for good and did not come back delivering lectures. One of the greatest of these was a man by the name of Morgan. After he died the natives venerated his memory and recollected him with affection. Once when he was asked if he had ever heard of the Natural Bridge of Virginia, he answered. "Of course, didn't my father help to build it?" Another time, when he was telling about a fast horse he once owned, he said that, "In a thunder storm one day, he rode eighteen miles without getting a drop of water on him, while his dog was swimming along behind!"

One day, while the company were telling stories of mean men, this Morgan capped the climax by telling about a corporation of mean men. "This corporation were having some blasting done, and one day, while one of the men was drilling away, he by chance struck a spark, and the result was a premature blast which blew the man up straight in the air. For a little while he appeared as large as a man, then went up till he looked as large as a boy, then higher till he looked like a doll, then till he looked as large as a bee, and then out of sight. He soon came back again looking as large as a bee, then down till he looked as large as a doll, nearer, till he looked like a boy, then a man again, and came down with his crowbar in precisely the same spot as before, and began drilling away. Now this man was not gone more than fifteen minutes, and this corporation of mean men docked him for lost time!"

We regret that so few were present at this and other lectures given under the auspices of the Sons of Temperance and the "Grand Army of the Republic." The gentlemen composing these associations have, at great sacrifice of time and money, furnished our citizens with quite as good a course of lectures as have been given in our neighboring cities, yet we regret to say, they have as a whole, been poorly patronized, and in many cases found fault with. Some say, "why don't you get Beecher?" Others, "why don't you get Gough or George W. Curtis?" We will answer for them. Mr. Beecher would not come at any price, and the sum asked by Mr. Gough was entirely beyond the possibility of raising even if the hall were filled at fifty cents for each ticket, which, judging by past experience, could not be done; for only a few seasons since, that celebrated lecturer was advertised to speak in the M. E. Church, in behalf of the temperance cause, at twenty-five cents admission, and the house was not half filled,--a fact not at all creditable to our citizens. George W. Curtis might be obtained if the people would come out; but as in the case of Mr. Gough, the last time he appeared before a Cohoes audience, the receipts failed to pay expenses, and the association were compelled to make up the deficiency. This ought not to be, for there is a sufficient number of intelligent people in our large population to sustain one or even two courses of lectures creditably, if not profitably to those who take the trouble to secure them.

In closing, we will state that the Sons of temperance have engaged George Francis Train, and the G. A. R. have made an engagement with Dr. Hays, the celebrated Arctic explorer, and also with Mr. J. Mines the editor of the Troy Times, to lecture before our citizens in a short time, and we sincerely hope that they may have an audience, not only commensurate with their reputation and talents as lecturers, but that the associations under whose auspices they are to appear, may, to some extent, at least, be reimbursed for the losses they have sustained on former occasions.

TWAIN'S LECTURE.--Mark Twain was greeted Saturday evening by an audience that any man might be proud of. With a condition of streets that under ordinary circumstances would keep people by their firesides, Doolittle Hall was more completely filled than we remember ever to have seen it before on the occasion of a lecture. In fact, there was not sitting room enough, and the aisles were pretty well filled with chairs and benches. Twain appeared pretty punctually, attended by the chairman and a member of the lecture committee, both of whom he unceremoniously dismissed from the stage and took the programme into his own hands. After announcing the next lecture of the course by Prof. Winchell, on the "Stone Folk," under which head, as Twain remarked, the Cardiff Giant is included, Twain introduced himself in the following highly unique manner:

Ladies and Gentlemen.--The next lecture of the course will be delivered this evening by Samuel L. Clemens, otherwise Mark Twain, a gentleman whose high character and unimpeachable integrity are only equalled by his comeliness of person and grace of manner. And I am the man. You will excuse me for introducing myself, for I have just excused the chairman from introducing me. I know it's not the ordinary way, but the fact is I never yet have found a chairman of a lecture committee who was equal to the task of introducing me as I ought to be introduced."

This decidedly original introduction was greeted with shouts of laughter and is a fair specimen of the vein in which the lecture on "Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands" was delivered. It was a good sample of his style of humor, and threw the audience into frequent convulsions of laughter. Twain is a fair looking model of humanity, and his manner is sufficient to provoke a smile. He talks with great deliberation and brings out his words with a nasal accent long drawn out which smacks of Yankeeism. Twain has roamed over the world considerable, and wherever the ridiculous side of human nature sticks out he has not failed to see and remember it. He is a humorist in the radical sense of the word, and his wit crystallizes around an atom of fun and makes it sparkle like a diamond.

The lecture committee have given us two heavy lectures--Duryea's and Tilton's--and Twain's was thrown in at just the right nick of time to make the course rest a little easier on our stomachs, so to speak--like the wine after dinner.

[This paper also published, the day before MT spoke, a promotional squib and excerpts from three reviews of earlier engagements in Boston and Hartford, under the heading "Notices of the Press".]

Samuel L. Clemens, better known perhaps as Mark Twain, the humorist, lectured in Union Place Hall, West Troy, last night upon the above interesting topic. Mr. C. came hither under the auspices of Roy steamer company, and was greeted with a full house. The lecture gave a world of satisfaction. Those who went to laugh were abundantly satisfied; those who went from any other cause must have been likewise well pleased, for notwithstanding some things that are repulsive about them no one can fail to like "our fellow savages." Mr. Twain is a man about thirty-five or forty years of age, somewhat tall and spare-built, and has the regular Western knack of telling a story. Next Winter Mark must make his bow to a Troy audience. We present a brief report of the lecture below:

Ladies and Gentlemen: The--next--lecture--in--this--course--will--be--delivered this evening, by Samuel L. Clemens,--a gentleman--whose--high--character and unimpeachable integrity--are only equalled by his--comeliness--of--person--and--grace--of--manner. And--I--am--the--man! You will excuse me for introducing myself, for I have just excused the chairman from introducing me. The fact is no chairman can introduce me as I ought to be introduced. (Laughter.)

I come now to the Sandwich Islands, and shall tell the truth about them as nearly as I can. If I do embellish with some nonsense it is of no consequence. This nonsense is the ornamental barnacle that clings to the oyster. As I was reared a good way from tide-water, I don't really know whether the barnacle clings to the oyster or not--but I do.

When Capt. Cook discovered these islands, though another man came very near discovering them two weeks before, they contained four hundred thousand souls. White men came and brought complicated diseases, civilization, education and other calamities, and shortly the natives began to die off with commendable zeal. Forty years ago they were reduced to two hundred thousand, and by the last census they had dwindled down to fifty-five thousand. It is proposed to start a few more seminaries of learning and finish them off. It is not education or civilization that is doing this--it is the importation of disease. Owing to consumption and other reliable diseases, the natives are retiring from business very fast. In color the natives are a rich, dark brown--a sort of black and tan. A very pleasing tint. The easy-going ways they have inherited from their ancestors have made them idle, but not vicious. They are a very excellent people. The native women wear a single, long, loose garment. But the men don't. When there is a public ceremony the men wear cotton umbrellas, or some little fancy article like that; but further than this, they don't seem to have any inclination to gorgeousness of attire. After speaking of the absolute sway of the old-time kings, and the degradation of their subjects, the lecturer spoke of the women.

Down at the bottom of all this degradation and misery came the women. They were abject slaves--degraded to the ranks of brutes and beasts. No better. They had no privileges. It was death for a woman to eat at the table with her own husband. Death for her to eat of the choice fruits. Even those poor debased savages had a notion of what had come by woman's eating the forbidden fruit. By and by the American missionaries broke the power of the chiefs, and lifted the wives to an equality with the men. The missionaries set up schools and taught them to read and write with facility, and there is not a single ignorant person there now. They are the best educated people in the world. I can testify to the zeal of the missionaries, and to their faith and devotion. Still, all this work, extending over so many years and costing so much, was carried on by Sunday school children. We all took part in it. True, the system gave opportunities to bad boys. Many a bad boy acquired the habit of confiscating pennies of the missionary cause. But it is the proudest reflection of my life that I never did that--at least not more than once or twice.

The natives are very hospitable. They will give you a seat in their cabin, and fresh fish, raw salt pork, baked dog, stewed cats, and all the luxuries of the season. But when it comes to business matters it is a different thing entirely--they will tell you one falsehood after another--lies that will awe you with their grandeur--that are stunning in sublimity. It doesn't discommode the native in the least to do this. And he slides out of it with an ease that is charming. Every one of them has half a dozen mothers. I don't mean to say natural mothers, but adopted ones. They have a custom of calling any woman "mother" that they have taken a fancy to. You see at once that a native may have one hundred and fifty mothers. This custom breeds some curious incidents. A California gentleman who owned a sugar plantation hired one of these natives to work for him in the busy season. He soon came to ask leave to bury his mother. Shortly after he came again with the same request. "I thought you buried her last week," said the gentleman. "This is another one," said the native. "All right," said the gentleman, "go and plant her." After a few more such requests the planter said that he thought that his stock of mothers held out pretty well, and told him to clear out and not come back again till he had buried every mother he had in the world.

The natives of these islands are very fond of dogs. Not the magnificent Newfoundlands nor the graceful greyhound--but insignificant curs that a white man would despise. There is not a handsome feature about them unless it is their tail. And there is nothing extraordinary about that. A friend of mine said that if he owned one he would cut his tail off and throw the balance of the dog away. But the natives love these pups--they feed them from their own hands, sleep with them, pet them, till they have grown to mature doghood, and then eat them. Now I couldn't do that. I would rather go hungry two days than devour an old personal friend. A native of these islands will eat anything that he can bite. They will take a fresh fish right out of the water and eat him. Of course it is inconvenient to the fish, but the native enjoys it. It used to be a popular belief that these islanders were cannibals. But cannibalism never existed there, except in one instance. And this cannibal was a foreigner who opened an office there and ate a good many of the natives. He did a large business in this line. In other cities, at this point in my discourse, it is my custom to illustrate cannibalism. But being a stranger here I don't feel at liberty to ask favors. Still, if any one in the audience would lend me an infant. [Laughter.] However, it doesn't matter. I know that little children have grown scarce and high, on account of neglect and inattention since the woman movement set in.

Well, as I say, the cannibal opened his establishment there, but they say that by and by he got tired of his diet. Well, anybody would. So he thought he would like to try and see how a white man would go--and so he lay in wait, and captured a venerable whaling-ship captain, sixty-five years in the service. The cannibal did the best he could, but it was the worst thing he ever did. Of course, he could no more digest that old whaler than a keg of nails. He suffered. There is no telling how much he suffered, with this sin on his conscience and the whaler on his stomach. He lingered for a few days, and then died. Let this be a warning to you. I don't know myself why it should be a warning to you, but I notice that when other lecturers mention a historical fact they do not believe in themselves, they always back it up with a moral.

With all their kindly ways these people practice some cruelties. They will put a live chicken into hot ashes simply to see it hop about. They would burn the flesh before the missionaries came, and would put out an eye, or a tooth, when a chief died. And if their grief was deep, and they could get relief in no other way, they would go out and scalp a neighbor. In the season of mourning for a great person they permit any crime that will best express great sorrow.

They do everything differently from other people. They mount a horse from the off side. They turn to the left instead of the right. They say the same words for "good bye" and "how do you do." They always, in beckoning for you to come, motion in the opposite direction. Even the birds partake of this peculiarity. The native duck lives four thousand feet above the level of the sea, and never sees water except when it rains. They (the islanders) grown in a heart-broken way when they are particularly happy. They have some customs we might import to advantage. I don't call any to mind just now.

In Honolulu, they are the most easy-going people in the world. Some of our people are not acquainted with their customs. They started a gas company once, and put the gas at $13 a thousand feet. They only took in $16 the first month. They all went to bed at dark. They are an excellent people. I speak earnestly. They do not even know the name of some of the vices in this country. A lady called on a doctor. She wanted something for general debility. He ordered her to drink porter. She called him again. The porter had done her no good. He asked her how much porter she had taken. She said a tablespoonful in a tumbler of water. I wish we could import such a blessed ignorance into this country. There are low white people in Hawaii who would drink liquors if they could get them. They drink kerosene, aqua fortis, hair oil, turpentine. They do say that the whole population got terrifically drunk on the Fourth of July on a barrel of Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup.

The islands are delightful, because they are in the tropics. The thermometer doesn't change more than 12 degrees in twelve months. It stands at about 70 the year round. You can have any climate you want. Mountains that rise to a prodigious height, with eternal snows on the tops. And as you come down you go through the climates of all the zones, and have the vegetation of all the climes.

I must mention one feature of the place before I close. It would not be proper to close without speaking of it. The white people there have a tradition that all the supremely gifted liars in the world are confined to the Sandwich Islands. They say that a man named Morgan there will never permit anybody to beat him in telling a story. When asked if he had heard of the Natural Bridge, Virginia, he said of course he had, his father helped to build it. He had the fastest horse in the world, and in a thunder shower once he ran him eighteen miles and not a single drop of water touched him, while he dog was swimming all the way behind the wagon. He told of a company he belonged to in California who hired one fellow to blast some rock. Owing to carelessness there was an explosion, and this fellow was blown up in the air till he didn't look any larger than a little boy--then he looked no larger than a dog--then no larger than a bird--finally than a bee. And then he began to descend, and increased in size from a bee to a bird--and a dog--and a boy--and finally to a full-sized man--coming down in exactly the same spot where he went up, and began to blast rock immediately on landing. Morgan said that fellow was gone only fifteen minutes, and yet they docked him for lost time.

The lecturer here closed his address by thanking his audience for their attention and wishing them a very pleasant good night.

Mark Twain is, to our taste, and in our judgment, the best humorist now before the public. His humor is in the idea, and not in the mere use or misuse of words and phrases, which unfortunately seem to constitute the sole resort of most of the so-called humorists of the day. In genuine fun, both in the idea and in the setting, Mark Twain is immeasurably in advance of "Nasby," "Josh Billings" and the whole miscellaneous tribe of bad spellers and verbal contortionists who assume to play a funny part among the ephemera of literature. The very "Petroleum" of Nasby is affected, and his peculiarities give zest rather to partisan politics than to the multitude. "Josh Billings" has a deal of humor but both he and Nasby shroud themselves in a mystery of infamous orthography, which becomes tiresome and even painful in a short time, and makes us turn with unmindful satisfaction to the natural and occasionally most singular humor of Twain. . . . "Artemus Ward" in his well known lecture on "Babes in the Woods," made a point of constantly avoiding his subject. "Mark Twain" does nothing of the kind. His lecture with the fun out, would make a telling and accurate sketch of the Sandwich Islands and the natives thereof; but with the fun in, it is a lecture that both amuses and instructs.

[Source: Walter Frear's Mark Twain and Hawaii, Appendix D3.]

The second lecture of the Franklin Lyceum course was delivered last evening, at Harrington's Opera House, by Samuel L. Clemens, of the Buffalo Express, familiarly known as "Mark Twain." We give the following extracts:

Unfortunately, the first object I ever saw in the Sandwich Islands was a repulsive one. It was a case of Oriental leprosy, of so dreadful a nature that I have never been able to get it out of my mind since. I don't intend that it shall give a disagreeable complexion to this lecture at all, but inasmuch as it was the first thing I saw in those islands, it naturally suggested itself first when I proposed to talk about the islands. It is a very hard matter to get a disagreeable object out of one's memory. I discovered that a good while ago. A year or two ago, in one of the great cathedrals in Milan, they showed me a great many curiosities, very interesting, but they all faded out of my memory except just the one thing, and that was an unpleasant one. It was a curious ancient piece of statuary. They don't know where it came from, or who made it; they only know they have had it some five hundred years; but they imagine it must have come from Phidias, because they suppose no other artist could have copied human nature with such faultless accuracy of touch. It is the figure of a man without a skin -- the figure of a freshly skinned man. Every fibre, tendon and tissue of the human frame was represented in minutest detail. It was the heaviest thing, and yet there was something fascinating about it. It looked so natural; it looked as if it was in pain, and you know a freshly skinned man would naturally look that way. He would unless his attention was occupied with some other matter. It was a dreadful object, and I have been sorry many a time since that I ever saw that man. Sometimes I dream of him, sometimes he is standing by my bedpost, sometimes he is stretched between the sheets, touching me -- the most uncomfortable bedfellow I ever had.

One memory of a repulsive object leads to another, and that to another, and so on until I finally come down to my lecture on the Sandwich Islands. Now if an impression has gotten abroad in the land that the Sandwich Islands are in South America, that is the error I wish to attack; that is the error which I wish to combat. I wish to remove it from your minds. These islands are situated some twenty-one hundred miles southwest from San Francisco, but why they were put so far away in such an inconvenient locality is probably none of our business, and we won't discuss that question at all. The islands are a dozen in number, and their entire area is not greater I suppose than that of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. They are of volcanic origin, of volcanic construction I should say. They are composed of lava, harder than any statement I have made in fifteen years. There is not a spoonful of legitimate dirt in the whole group, unless it has been imported. These islands were discovered some eighty or ninety years ago by Captain Cook, though another man came very near discovering them before, and he was diverted out of his course by suggestions he got out of a bottle. He wasn't the first man who has been degraded by suggestions got out of a bottle.

The natives of the Sandwich Islands of color are a rich dark brown, a kind of black and tan. The tropical sun and the easy-going ways inherited from their ancestors, have made them rather idle, but they are not vicious at all, they are good people. The native women in the rural districts wear a single long loose garment. Men don't. When the weather is inclement, men wear cotton in their ears -- some little fancy article like that -- further than this they have no inclination towards gorgeousness of costume. In ancient times the King was ruler of all the land, and supreme head of the church and State; his voice was superior to all law; he was absolute; his power was sacred. After the King in authority came the high priests of the ancient superstition, and after them the great chiefs, little better than slaves to the King. Next came the common plebians, and they were slaves to the whole party, were abused and killed at the slightest pretext. And below them, away down at the bottom of this pile of tyranny and superstition, came the women, and they were the abject slaves of all; they were degraded to the level of the beasts, and thought to be no better. They were cruelly maltreated. By the law of the land it was death for a woman to eat at table with her husband, or to eat out of the same dish with him. Even those darkened people seemed to have a glimmering idea of the danger of women eating forbidden fruit, and they didn't want to take the risk.

Now the Sandwich Islanders are the best educated of any people on the earth. And all this wonderful work was accomplishedby our American missionaries. And what is curious further, this great work was paid for in great part by the American Sunday School children with their pennies. Though it is beyond all doubt that many a bad little boy has reaped a lucrative income, by confiscating the pennies given him for missionary contributions. It is the proudest reflection of my life that I hever did that -- never did it more than once or twice, anyhow.

These natives are an exceedingly hospitable people, if I haven't lost my place. If you want to stay two or three days and nights in a native cabin you will be welcome. They will feast you on raw fish, with the scales on, cocoanuts, plantains, baked dogs and fricasseed cats, all the luxuries of the season. But if you want to trade with one of them, that's business. He will tell one falsehood after another, right straight along, and not ordinary lies either, but monstrous incredible ones; and when a native is caught in a lie it doesn't discommode him at all. All these natives have a dozen mothers at least, not natural mothers, but adopted ones. They are very fond of dogs, these people; not the great Newfoundland or the stately mastiff, but a species of little mean, contemptible cur, that a white man would condemn to death on general principles. There is nothing attractive about those dogs, there is not a handsome feature about them, unless it is their bushy tails. A friend of mine said if he had one of those dogs he would cut off its tail and throw the rest of the dog away. They feed this dog, pet him, take ever so much care of him, and then cook and eat him. I couldn't do that. I would rather go hungry for two days than devour an old personal friend in that way.

The ladies of the Sandwich Islands have a great many pleasant customs which I don't know but we might practice with profit here. You never see two of those ladies rush together and kiss each other and then go away and talk about each other behind their backs. I don't suppose our ladies do it, but they might. But I believe I am getting on dangerous ground. I won't pursue that any further.

The climate of these Islands is delightful, it is beautiful. In Honolulu the thermometer stands at about 80 or 82 degrees pretty much all the year round -- don't change more than 12 degrees in twelve months. In the sugar districts the thermometer stands at 70 and does not change at all. Any kind of thermometer will do -- one without any quicksilver is just as good. The climate is very healthy. A man told me it was so hot in New York a little while ago that gold went up to 160 in the shade.

There are about three thousand white people in the islands; they are mostly Americans. In fact they are the kings of the Sandwich Islands, the monarchy is not much more than a mere name. These people stand as high in the scale of character as any people in the world, and some of them who were born and educated in those islands don't even know what vice is.

George Vandenhoff, Esq., is to read before the Lyceum, on Wednesday evening of next week.

LYCEUM. -- Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) will lecture before the Lyceum, on Friday evening of this week. This is "Mark's" first appearance in our city. We would advise all who can appreciate sparkling wit and genial humor, to provide themselves with a ticket and wend their way to Collingwood's Opera House, on Friday evening, nothing fearing that they will receive an adequate return from their investment.

MARK TWAIN. -- There was a fine audience at Collingwood Opera House last evening, the occasion being a lecture on the Sandwich Islands by Mark Twain. -- There was much original humor in the lecturer, and too at times he gave splendid illustrations of natural scenery on that far off land. It was a very enjoyable entertainment, and every one in the audience seemed pleased.

Every traveller on the Continent has met the American tourist, and formed some opinion of his merits. We do not speak of that variety of American who comes over to spend five or six years in Europe and finds himself rather more at home on the Parisian boulevards than on the New York Broadway. Nor do we refer to the Americans who have been too highly cultivated to obtrude their national peculiarities upon us in any disagreeable form. There is no pleasanter acquaintance than the gentleman, or still more the lady, of this class who has just enough American flavour to be amusingly original. But, besides these types, the United States are kind enough to provide us with a vast number of travellers corresponding in refinement and intelligence to Mr. Cook's tourists. They are the people who do Europe in six weeks, and throw in the Holy Land and Egypt to fill up their spare time. They are gloriously ignorant of any language but their own, supremely contemptuous of every country that had no interest in thc Declaration of Independence, and occasionally, it must be admitted, as offensive as the worst kind of Cockney tourist, whilst even less inclined to hide their light under a bushel. Comparing them with the most nearly analogous class of British travellers, it is rather hard to determine which should have the preference. The American is generally the noisier and more actively disagreeable, but, on the other hand, he often partly redeems his absurdity by a certain naivete and half-conscious humour. He is often laughing in his sleeve at his own preposterous brags, and does not take himself quite so seriously as his British rival. He is vulgar, and even ostentatiously and atrociously vulgar; but the vulgarity is mixed with a real shrewdness which rescues it from simple insipidity. We laugh at him, and we would rather not have too much of his company; but we do not feel altogether safe in despising him. We may save ourselves the trouble of any further attempts at description by quoting a few illustrative passages from the book before us. Mr. Mark Twain, as the author chooses to call himself, is a Californian humourist after the fashion of Artemus Ward. He came to Europe on a grand excursion trip, and describes his impressions of France and Italy in the true tourist style. He parades his utter ignorance of Continental languages and manners, and expresses his very original judgments on various wonders of art and nature with a praiseworthy frankness. We are sometimes left in doubt whether he is speaking in all sincerity, or whether he is having a sly laugh at himself and his readers. To do him justice, however, we must observe that he has a strong tinge of the peculiar national humour; and, though not equal to the best performers on the same instrument, manages to be an amusing representative of his class. The dry joke, which apes seriousness, is a favourite device of his countrymen; and Mr. Mark Twain is of course not as simple as he affects to be. We merely say this to guard ourselves against the imputation of taking a professional jester seriously; but, whether he speaks in downright earnest or with a half-concealed twinkle of the eye, his remarks will serve equally well as an illustration of the genuine unmistakable convictions of many of his countrymen.

Without further preface we will quote some of Mr. Twain's remarks upon foreign countries. And, first of all, he exhibits that charming ignorance of all languages but English which is so common amongst his fellows. French newspapers, he tells us, "have a strange fashion of telling a perfectly straight story till you get to the nub' of it, and then a word drops in that no man can translate, and that story is ruined." He is seriously aggrieved by the names of places, and says that the nearest approach which anybody can make to the true pronunciation of Dijon is "demijohn." The spelling is not much assistance under such circumstances. Speaking of a certain distinguished artist, he observes, "they spell it Vinci, and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce." Gentlemen who labour under this difficulty of communicating with the natives naturally fall into the hands of guides, and Mr. Twain and his friends appear to have suffered terribly from the persons whom they hired to take them to the sights of foreign towns. Their system on arriving at any large place was to engage a valet de place, whom they always called "Ferguson," to save the trouble of pronouncing a new name, and were carried about as helpless victims to such places as he preferred, besides having to swallow his stories. They took a characteristic revenge, which appears to have afforded them immense satisfaction. The way to bully your guide is to affect a profound ignorance -- if you have not got it naturally -- and a stony indifference to his information. They therefore told off a gentleman called the Doctor, to ask questions of the said guide, because he could "look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more imbecility into the tone of his voice, than any man that lives. It comes natural to him." Thus, for example, it was assumed that as Americans they would take a special interest in an autograph letter of Columbus. The Doctor, after asking some irrelevant questions, pronounced it the worst specimen of handwriting he ever saw, and added, "If you have got any specimens of penmanship of real merit, trot them out; and, if you haven't, drive on." The guide, we are told, was "considerably shaken up." On the same principle, when shown an Egyptian monument, the Doctor asked indignantly, "What is the use of imposing your vile secondhand carcases on us? If you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out! or, by George, we'll brain you." The most irritating question you can put to such a guide is to ask concerning any distinguished character to whom he refers -- such, for example, as Columbus or Michael Angelo -- "Is he dead?" And this seems to have met with such success that Mr. Twain scarcely restrained his companions from putting the inquiry to a monk in a Capuchin convent, who showed them some of the personal remains of his predecessors.

We may imagine the temper in which some of the remarkable sights of the Old World would be contemplated under such circumstances. Mr. Twain, indeed, was much impressed by the cathedral at Milan. The bill for mere workmanship, he says, "foots up six hundred and eighty-four millions of francs, thus far (considerably over a hundred millions of dollars), and it is estimated that it will take a hundred and twenty years yet to finish the cathedral." When he gets to St. Peter's, however, he declares that it did not look nearly so large as the capitol at Washington, and certainly not a twentieth part as beautiful from the outside. Even natural wonders are generally surpassed by their rivals in the United States. The Lake of Como, for example, is pronounced to be very inferior to Lake Tahoe. In clearness it is not to be compared to it. "I speak," he says, "of the north shore of Lake Tahoe, where we can count the scales on a trout at a depth of 180 feet." Mr. Twain, however, feels constrained to add, "I have tried to get this statement off at par here, but with no success; so I have been obliged to negotiate it at fifty per cent. discount." Tahoe, we may explain in passing, for the benefit of philological readers, is Indian for grasshopper soup -- so, at least, Mr. Twain believes. The objects, however, against which Mr. Twain feels a special indignation, to which he tells us he is bound to give vent in spite of the remonstrances of his friends, are pictures by the old masters. The old masters irritate him incessantly; and the apparent reason of his objection is characteristic. "Wherever you find a Raphael, a Rubens, a Michael Angelo, &c.," he says, "you find artists copying them, and the copies are always the handsomest. Maybe the originals were handsome when they were new, but they are not now." He "harbours no animosity" against the deluded persons who think otherwise; but he regards them as about as wise as men who should stand opposite a desert of charred stumps and say, What a noble forest! Michael Angelo appears to have been a special annoyance to him. "I never felt so fervently thankful," he exclaims, "so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday, when I leamt that Michael Angelo was dead." One would rather like to know how many of Mr. Cook's tourists share this feeling in their hearts, if they only dared to avow their ignorance with an equally touching frankness. Mr. Twain took his revenge by asking the wretched "Ferguson" of the moment, whenever he came to a "statoo brunzo" (Italian for a bronze statue), or an Egyptian obelisk, or the Forum or any other work of art, ancient or modern, whether it too was by Michael Angelo; thus at any rate making somebody else share in his tortures. In presence of the ancients he generally indulges in facetiousness of a rather low order. He goes, for example, to some amphitheatre and tries to realize the scene which it once presented. His most vivid picture is that of a Roman youth, who took "some other fellow's young lady" to a gladiatorial show and amused her and himself during the acts by "approaching the cage and stirring up the martyrs with his whalebone cane." But, to say the truth, Mr. Twain here verges upon buffoonery. Once or twice he is driven to what is happily described in the heading of the page as "general execration." Here, for example, is a burst of patriotic eloquence. "O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavour utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your Church?" And he is very great on occasion in explaining the many advantages of a free and independent Republic as compared with a land groaning under priestly dominion and grovelling superstition. That notion of robbing the Church occurs to him very forcibly at intervals, and he seems to think that, so far as the plan has been carried out, it is the best chance for Italy.

Perhaps we have persuaded our readers by this time that Mr. Twain is a very offensive specimen of the vulgarest kind of Yankee. And yet, to say the truth, we have a kind of liking for him. There is a frankness and originality about his remarks which is pleasanter than the mere repetition of stale raptures; and his fun, if not very refined, is often tolerable in its way. In short, his pages may be turned over with amusement, as exhibiting more or less consciously a very lively portrait of the uncultivated American tourist, who may be more obtrusive and misjudging, but is not quite so stupidly unobservant as our native product. We should not choose either of them for our companions on a visit to a church or a picture-gallery, but we should expect most amusement from the Yankee as long as we could stand him.

San Francisco Evening Bulletin[unsigned]
1885: March 14

	Mark Twain long since learned the art of writing for the market. His recent books have the character of commercial ventures. He probably estimates in advance his profits. His books are not sold to any great extent over the counters of booksellers, but are circulated by subscription agents. Lately Mark Twain, it is reported, has become the silent partner in a publishing house, the imprint of which is on the present volume. Those who read "Tom Sawyer" and like it will probably read "Huckleberry Finn," and like it in a less degree. No book has been put on the market with more advertising. When Mark Twain represented "Tom Sawyer" as getting a job of free white-washing done by his cronies, because there was fun in it, and only just enough to go around, he disclosed his own tactics in the matter of free advertising. When it was given out that some one had tampered with the engravings in the printing office, in a mysterious way, that accounted for the delay in bringing out the book, it secured at the same time many thousand dollars' worth of free advertising. Then the Century gave the enterprise a lift by publishing a chapter of the book in advance, which, while an advertisement, was still a readable article. "Huckleberry Finn" has been introduced to the world as it were with the blare of trumpets. It comes also with this warning: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." So then there is neither motive, moral, nor plot. But there still remain one hundred and seventy-four wood cuts, which, according to the view of the author, ought to be liberally peppered through the volume. Many of the designs are drawn with spirit, and are all executed well enough for the plan of the book. The tone of the volume is indicated in the opening paragraphs:
	You don't know me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of 'Tom Sawyer,' " but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth mainly. There were things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was "Aunt Polly" or the widow, or maybe "Mary." "Aunt Polly"--Tom's "Aunt Polly," she is--and "Mary," and the "widow Douglas," is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book; with stretchers, as I said before.
	The author starts out by telling his juvenile readers that there are some lies in his book--that most people lie, and that it is not very bad after all. Of course the warning is timely that persons attempting to seek a moral in the story should be banished.
	Now the way the book winds up is this: "Tom" and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got $6,000 a piece--all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, "Judge Thatcher," he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round--more than a body could tell what to do with. The "widow Douglas," she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal, regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so, when I could stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But "Tom Sawyer," he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
	It is an amusing story if such scrap-work can be called a story. The author rarely fails when he sets out to tickle the ribs of young or old. There is so little genuine wit in the world, that the little must be made to go a great way. Mark Twain has the genuine vein; it nearly pinches out here and there, and in many places it is hardly an inch wide by miners' measurement. The funny book will always be read in this world of dryness and dearth. Many fastidious people hide their scruples, because they want to be amused. Comedy pays better than tragedy. The author contrives to puncture a great many shams. His satire in this respect, even when he declares that it is aimless, is directed with a purpose. Whether young people who read this volume will be the better for it will be an open question. Here is another paragraph where the warning not to seek for a moral might be applicable:
	Every night, now I used to slip ashore, towards 10 o'clock, at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal, or bacon, or other stuff to eat, and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.
	The author turns his knowledge of Western dialects to account. Mississippi river scenes and associations are always available. The art of book-making from Twain's point of view is well illustrated here. He is alive always to the fact that young people will not read a dull book. He never makes a dull one. There is very little of literary art in the story. It is a string of incidents ingeniously fastened together. The spice of juvenile wickedness and dare-deviltry give a zest to the book. "Huckleberry Finn" is, in a restricted sense, a typical character. Yet the type is not altogether desirable, nor is it one that most parents who want a future of promise for their young folks would select without some hesitation. The trouble with "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" is not that they are too good for this world; even as the world goes, they are not good enough. Beyond the recognition that there is a great deal of "fun," as boys would put the case, it must also be admitted that not a little of the "assisted wit" is of the more dreary sort, as if the author was subjected to a pretty hard strain at times to work his facetious vein. The book is attractive enough to command commercial success, and that, it may be supposed, was the inspiring motive in its production. Charles L. Webster & Co., publishers, New York. For sale by the Occidental Publishing Company, sole agents.

The San Francisco Chronicle [unsigned]
1885: March 15

	"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" must be pronounced the most amusing book Mark Twain has written for years. It is a more minute and faithful picture of Southwestern manners and customs fifty years ago than was "Life on the Mississippi," while in regard to the dialect it surpasses any of the author's previous stories in the command of the half-dozen species of patois which passed for the English language in old Missouri. Mark Twain may be called the Edison of our literature. There is no limit to his inventive genius, and the best proof of its range and originality is found in this book, in which the reader's interest is so strongly enlisted in the fortunes of two boys and a runaway negro that he follows their adventures with keen curiosity, although his common sense tells him that the incidents are as absurd and fantastic in many was as the "Arabian Nights." Here is where the genius and the human nature of the author come in. Nothing else can explain such a tour de force as this, in which the most unlikely materials are transmuted into a work of literary art. The plot is extremely simple. Huckleberry Finn, who appeared incidentally in the veracious adventuers of Tom Sawyer, concludes to go down the Mississippi to get rid of his drunken father. He falls in with a runaway negro, and the book is given up to the adventures of this couple on a raft on the river, re-enforced by two sharpers known as the Duke and the King, and afterward by Tom Sawyer. In many parts of the book, but especially at the outset, some of the conversations are unnecessarily spun out, on the style of the elder Dumas when he was writing at so much the word, but when the story gets under good headway it is remarkably well proportioned, and the interest is never allowed to flag for a moment. The very best episodes are those which detail the swindling schemes of the two river sharpers, who impose upon Huckleberry and the negro by declaring that they are scions of royalty. These chapters were printed in the Century under the title of "Royalty on the Mississippi," but they left the fate of the two heroes in doubt, so that most readers of the performances of the "Royal Nonesuch," and the personation of the two brothers from England will want to know what was the final result of their schemes. The incidental descriptions of character are always good. Take, for instance, this small picture of Huck's father--a typical Pike county drunkard:
	He was most 50, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through it like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers. There warn't no colorin his face, where his face showed--it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a whote to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes--just rags, that was all.
	On the raft, while floating down the Mississippi, Huck has an excellent opportunity to exercise his gift for lying. This is simply phenomenal. The boy enjoys mendacity; he lies for the mere lust of lying, and the ingenuity with which he piles one fiction on top of another will excite the reader's wonder and admiration. Just before the runaways get fairly started, Huck visits a neighboring town to get information and encounters a farmer's wife. He is dressed up in an old calico gown and pretends to be a girl searching for her relations. The woman suspects his sex and tries various devices to ascertain if her suspicions are true. Among these is threading a needle and throwing a bar of lead at the rats which swarm around the house. Finally she makes Huck own up that he is a boy, and then gives him this sound advice in regard to personating a girl:
	"Don't you go about women in that old calico. You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle, don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it. Hold the needle still and poke the thread at it--that's the way a woman most always does, but a man always does 'tother way. And when you throw at a rat or anything hitch yourself up a-tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on--like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. And mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don't clap them together the way you did when you catched the lump of lead. Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle, and I contrived the other things just to make certain."
	Some of the most succulent humor is connected with the swindling exploits of the Duke and the King, who "work" the towns along the bank and make considerable money. Their crowning work was in playing the role of the English heirs of old Peter Wilks, a moneyed resident of one of the river towns, who had just died. In the construction of this plot Mark Twain surpasses himself and the amount of really plausible lies which he manages to dovetail together is something extraordinary. A half-dozen times the adventurers are on the eve of exposure, but their fertility and luck save them. Space is lacking to do more than give one extract from this episode, which is a story in itself, descriptive of the Arkansas undertaker at the funeral of old Peter:
	When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods, and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham. They had borrowed a melodeum -- a sick one; and when everything was ready a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait -- you couldn't hear yourself think. It was right down awkward, and nobody didn't seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, "Don't you worry -- just depend on me." Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads. So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "He had a rat!" Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There warn't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was.
	There are dozens of descriptive bits as good as this and others in which there is no attempt at caricature, such, for instance, as the picture of the old one-horse cotton plantation of Phelps, which any one who has seen the South will recognize as a type. What Mark Twain can do in short sketches of persons is shown by the portrait of old Mrs. Hotchkiss, which is one of the best things in the book. Any one who has ever lived in the Southwest, or who has visited that section, will recognize the truth of all these sketches and the art with which they are brought into this story. To all readers we can commend the story as eminently readable. The person who can withstand the abounding humor of this book must be proof against all jokes except of the Joe Miller order. The volume is very well gotten up, the illustrations adding materially to the fun of the story.

San Francisco Daily Examiner[unsigned]
1885: March 9

The San Francisco agents of this book give notice that, though some unavoidable delays have occurred, this volume is now ready for delivery to subscribers. As to the work itself, it is well described by the author, as being without a motive, a moral, or a plot. The only reason to be, as the French say, is probably that the author thought he could make some money by publishing a book of some kind, and here it is--such as it is. It is apparently, as the art critics say, a pot-boiler in its baldest form. As a picture of life in the Southwest, however, there is little to be said in the book's favor, though there are several passages which are drawn with much ability, with occasionally a touch of a sort of grotesque pathos which greatly interests the reader. As to the rest, it is very much of the same character as many of the author's Pacific Coast sketches, in the utter absence of truth and being unlike anything that ever existed in the earth, above the earth, or in the waters under the earth. Some twenty-two years since, when Mr. Clemens was working as a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise, published in Virginia City, Nevada, he signalized his career by getting up a series of startling stories, the most prominent feature of which was the lack of a grain of fact. One of Clemens' most notorious lucutrations in this line was the report of the massacre of a whole family at Van Sickles or Empire City, which caused much horror and also great annoyance. Mark Twain contended that this was a good joke, and the parties who were inconvenienced should not have got angry. When, however, it was his ox that was gored, there were no such feelings of equanimity exhibited on his side of the house. For instance, afterward, when he paid a visit to his old haunts on the Comstock, a party of his former intimates played a practical joke on him, he was one of the maddest mortals who could be seen in a day's march. Something, however, should be said in praise of the style in which the book has been published. It is plentifully illustrated with engravings of no mean skill, and is well printed in fine, clear type.

From St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat,
26 March 1867

MARK TWAIN'S LECTURE.--The lecture to be delivered to-night in Library Hall by "Mark Twain," for the benefit of South St. Louis Mission Sunday School, has attracted much attention. The lecture will be on the Sandwich Islands, where the lecturer has spent several months time.
��� Tickets of admission can be procured at McIntyre's book store, No. 9 South Fifth Street, and at the door.

A gentleman stepped on the stage and announced that wisdom would commence to flow precisely at eight o'clock. To while away the time till then, he said he "would treat them with a whistling, which some called foolish," and a song, "The moon shines bright," both of which won loud and prolonged applause. Precisely at eight o'clock, at previously announced, the veritable Mark Twain himself appeared, to the great delight of the audience. As he informed the audience, he had been residing in the Sandwich Islands. Being one of the wandering Bohemians, he had devoted his time to obtaining information to let the public know of the result of his travels. After his residence there, he was well-qualified to deliver an interesting, instructive and amusing lecture. He certainly succeeded in making it all three. His remarks were witty and humorous. He kept his audience in a roar of laughter and a perpetual chuckle. His wit was not of the evanescent kind. One was not obliged to be always on the qui vive to catch the brilliant flashes of wit that he dealt with so much ease. Neither was it of that kind which Douglas Jerrold defines dogmatism, "puppyism come to maturity."

He was decidedly humorous also. He did not cut the audience short. His humor was tangible, and the laugh raised at the first hearing of his remarks died not away with the conclusion of the sentence. One seemed to be chuckling incessantly, and with faces wreathed in smiles, the audience listened for the next remarks, which increased the chuckles to a hearty laugh.

He commenced his lecture on the Sandwich Islands by stating: "That when at Julesberg, which is about four hundred miles west of St. Louis, he heard a little anecdote of Horace Greeley, going to lecture at Carson, from a man who said he was afraid that he would be too late to hear him. Further westward still, he heard the same anecdote, or a pleasing incident about the mail service, in connection with Horace Greeley, and again he heard it in Nevada, or was about to hear it, when he stopped the story teller, and inquired of him, if the anecdote was about Horace Greeley, the mail service, the lecture and Carson City. On being told it was, he declined hearing it. On coming east, he had seen that anecdote in almost every newspaper, but he had not heard it in St. Louis, and therefore he thought he would tell it, as a pleasing incident about the mail service, in connection with Horace Greeley going to lecture at Carson City.

Ladies and gentlemen, I suppose you are all interested in the Sandwich Islands; of course you must be, because it is the center of missionary labor. And you all know that hymn which so aptly refers to it; (he repeats)

Sandwich Islands are situated about 2100 miles west of San Francisco. I wonder why they were placed in the middle of the ocean; as it is none of our business we won't talk any more about it. It is a splendid sugar country, better than the best of Louisiana land, can get from 5,000 to 13,000 pounds of sugar raised to the acre, but I own no acre there.

The islands are twelve in number, and have volcanoes, the largest dead volcanoes in the world. Eighty years ago, there was a population of 400,000 people. The white men came, brought civilization and several other diseases, and now the race is fast dying out, and will be extinct in about fifty years hence. They got consumptive when civilization got there, and they will shortly retire from business. When they pack up and leave, we will take possession as lawful heirs. There are 3000 whites there, mostly Americans, and they are still increasing. They own all the money, control all the commerce, and own all the ships. They have a constitutional monarchy, but they have no constitution, and the monarchy is only an empty name. A Kanaka or native is nobody unless he has a princely income of $75 annually, or a splendid estate worth $100. The country is full of office-holders and office-seekers; there are plenty of such noble patriots. Of almost any party of three men, two would be office-holders and one an office-seeker. In a little island, half the size of one of the wards of St. Louis, there are lots of noblemen, princes, and men of high degree, with grand titles, holding big offices, receiving immense salaries--such as ministers of war, secretaries of the navy, secretaries of state and ministers of justice. They make a fine display of uniforms, and are very imposing at a funeral. That's the country for a petty hero to go to, he would soon have the conceit taken out of him. There are so many of them, that a noble from any other country would be nobody. They only lionize their own people, and therefore they lionize everybody. In education, refinement, and culture, the sons and daughters of our missionaries there need not be ashamed to compare themselves with their brothers and sisters in the United States. And there has never been a stain upon any of their names. The first thing a stranger does, on arriving at the Islands, is to collect shinbones of dead Kanakas, fossils and coral, but he never succeeds in carrying any of them away, because he soon gets tired of it--the novelty wears off. A stranger going there now need not be looking for curiosities, for in the back-yard of every house he will see piles of shinbones of dead Kanakas, heaps of fossils and stacks of coral. He will also, as a first experiment, pick up about a dozen Kanaka words; he won't talk English; he won't say good morning, like a Christian; he will say all-ay-ho. One man had been there three weeks, and he came to breakfast with me. I asked him how he would have his beefsteak--rare or well-done. He replied, "Muckee--muckee--guckee," &c. Well, said I, you can muckee, muckee, guckee yourself out of this. I won't have anything to do with you. We can have any climate we want on the Sandwich Islands. On the summits, which are 16,000 feet above the level of the valley, whose tops are whitened by perpetual snow, we can have everlasting winter, and near the sea shore everlasting summer. A single glance of the eye takes in all the climates on the earth. It was so cold on the tops of the mountains that I could not speak the truth, but on level ground, I can speak the truth as well--as any other man.

The climate is wonderfully healthy, for white people in particular, so healthy that white people venture on the most reckless imprudence. They get up too early; you can see them as early as half past seven in the morning, and they attend to all their business, and keep it up till sundown. It don't hurt 'em, it don't kill 'em, and yet it ought to do so. I have seen it so hot in California that greenbacks went up 142 in the shade.

The volcano of Kee-law-ay-oh is 17,000 feet in diameter, and from 700 to 800 feet deep. Vesuvius is nowhere. It is the largest dead volcano in the world. You witness a scene of unrivaled sublimity, and witness the most astonishing sights. When the volcano of Kee-law-ay-oh broke through a few years ago, lava flowed out of it for twenty days and twenty nights, and made a stream forty miles in length, till it reached the sea, tearing up forests in its awful fiery path, swallowing up huts, destroying all vegetation, rioting through shady dells and sinuous canyons. Amidst this carnival of destruction, majestic columns of smoke ascended, and formed a cloudy murky pall overhead. Sheets of green, blue, lambent flame were shot upwards and pierced this vast gloom, making all sublimely grand. [After this burst of eloquence, he clapped his hands and the audience joined, making the vaulted roof of the Library hall reverberate with the sounds of enthusiastic applause.]

I once knew a great, tall gawky country editor, near Sacramento,to whom I sent an ode of the sea, starting with "The long, green swell of the Pacific." The country editor sent back a letter and stated that I couldn't fool him, and he didn't want any base insinuations from me. He knew who I meant when I wrote "the long, green swell of the Pacific."

There is one thing characteristic of the tropics that a stranger must have, whether he likes it or not, and that is the boo-hoo fever. Its symptoms are nausea of the stomach, severe headache, backache and bellyache, and a general utter indifference whether the school keeps or not. You can't be a full citizen of the Sandwich Island unless you have had the boo-hoo fever. You will never forget it. I remember a little boy who had it once there. A New Yorker asked him if he was afraid to die. He said, no; I am not afraid to die of anything, except the boo-hoo fever. The moral force used by the missionaries, in the Sandwich Islands, is not much. But they are the right kind of men there--they have just the grit, to hold on like grim death. Bishop Staley of the English Missionary church is not very popular. The societies in London have ceased to support him, and his mission has a dull, unhealthy look. The King belongs to the church, but he never goes there, and he still adheres to the pagan form of worship. The king is a gentleman, but the American missionaries made him so. The bishop's church is making some progress, and there is plenty of room for it; but they will never succeed in ousting the American missionaries. [After another burst of eloquence about some perennial flower, he applauds himself; would repeat it again if requested to by the audience; the audience requests him to proceed, but the lecturer declines with such a comical gesture, that it sends the audience into convulsions.]

In Honolulu, merchants go to their business at nine A.M., and cease business at four P.M. They will have nothing to do with business till next morning. Why cannot we do so? But I did not come here to preach a sermon to you, although I would as soon do it as not. A street fight keeps the people excited for about two weeks; an elopement gives them something to converse about for one year, but a murder they will never get over talking about it. The whites of Honolulu have no jokes to indulge in. They are not imbued with the spirit of joking. I told some jokes to a quiet, sober-looking, grave, and demure missionary, and I believe he is exercised over some of the subtler ones to this day. The missionaries do not know one third the names of sins which figure in the sin calendar. Pity we are not more like them. The people do not get often drunk in that country; the duties are too high. But I saw some of the wild ranchmen of Hawaii drink kerosene and aquafortis, and I saw some of them get drunk on a whole barrel of Mustang Liniment. When the natives eat, they all eat socially, from the same calabash, one after the other, with their fingers. They are not very particular or careful whether these hands are washed or not. It is not absolutely necessary that they should wash their hands. They have a fish called poy which they eat. Eating poy will cure a drunkard. In order to like the poy you must get used to it. It smells a good deal worse than it tastes, and it tastes a good deal worse than it looks. I am sending all my friends there.

The natives are of a rich, dark brown color, lazy, perhaps, but not vicious, nor very virtuous. The women wear a long, loose calico garment, but the men don't. [Loud and continued applause.] Guess I won't continue that subject any longer. In former times the King's person was sacred, he was the supreme head of the Church and State, he was the captain over all, the arbiter of fate, the Lord of life. There was a law that if a man came to the king with a wet head, he should die; if any man's shadow fell on the king he had to die. If the king put his taboo on anyone, there was no hope for him (by the bye, from there we got our word tabooed). In former times the women were abject slaves of the whole party. By the ancient taboo, (law of the land,) death was the punishment of a woman who dared to sit at the same table as a man. If she ate choice fruit, she was to suffer the death penalty. The poor degraded savages of these islands found out somehow that a woman ate some fruit in the Garden of Eden, and the whole human race were suffering from that thing ever since, and therefore they were not willing to take the chance of some other evil overtaking them, by letting women eat any fruit. But the American missionaries came, broke off the shackles from the whole race, broke the power of the King, the State and the clergy, and elevated the women to be the equal of the men. To-day, it is the best educated nation in the world, of its size. Our missionaries did it all. Every Kanaka has a dozen mothers. If they like a woman, they call her mother. A Los Angelos man got there once, and being boss over a party of Kanakas, one day one of them came to him, and asked leave of absence to go and bury his mother. Of course the leave was granted. In about a month he came to ask for another leave of absence, for the same purpose, he got that also. For several times he obtained leave of absence to go and bury a mother. On the fifth demand, the Los Angelos man asked him how many mothers he had. He answered--twelve--well, go and bury them all, but don't let me see you again.

Those natives are strange folk. They are not afraid of death, no, no more than a jilted Frenchman. If they take a notion to die, nothing will stop them, you can't argue it out of them. They are also fond of dogs. Such dogs that a white man would condemn at first right on general principles. They are not large dogs, neither; neither are they useful ones, but ugly curs. They love the pups, better than any of their own family. They will take care of a pup--pet him--feed him--caress him--fondle him, and when he has become fat, they kill him--cook him--and then eat him. The natives are very fond of raw fish, they will bite into a living fish, and then eat him up. There used to be some cannnibals, but they are almost played out. One cannibal once, after eating several specimens of his own race, caught a missionary--killed him--and served him up, but he could not digest the old missionary, no more than he could a keg of nails; he died--miserably died. They are also very fond of horses. These are probably worth about seven dollars and a half--the scrubbiest lot of horses in the world. They have eleven distinct styles of gallop. When one of them gallops he mixes them all up at once, making it rather uncomfortable. The women all ride like men. I wish to introduce that reform in this country. Our ladies ought, by all means to ride like men, these side saddles are so dangerous. When women meet each other on the road, they run and kiss and hug each other, and they don't blackguard each other behind each other's backs. I would like to introduce that reform, also. I am not married, myself, but yet I have no right to advertise myself this way publicly. Still I am not married. In former times, when a great noble died, they bit pieces of their own bodies off--knocked two or three teeth out. They would also kill now and then an infant--bury him alive sometimes. But the missionaries have annihilated infanticide. The American missionaries are opposed to infanticide--for my part, I can't see why. It is an old adage, be virtuous and you will be happy. The nation are not virtuous and yet they are happy. When a woman cries, a dozen others will congregate around and they will whine, blubber, bawl and sniffle for an hour together. Rare sympathizing crowd. I will end this chapter and the lecture by stating that they do everything wrong end foremost, dismount from a horse the wrong side, and mounting a horse on the wrong side. The same word stands for good-bye and how do you do. In the noble American game of high-low-jack or seven-up, they deal the cards to the left instead of the right. They bathe in the middle of the day, and are liable to kill themselves. When inviting a person to approach, they make a sign, that with us is considered a repulsive motion. The duck, a water bird, lives 5000 feet above the level of the water. They dance at funerals, and spit on a spoon when they want to clean it. They wash their shirts with a club, and iron them with a brick-bat.

The talented young lecturer closed his flow of wisdom, by stating that by an inadvertence, he had forgotten to inform his appreciative audience "that the Reverend Robert Colyer was lecturing at the Philharmonic hall, and it seemed by that omission he had swindled the reverend gentleman out of a crowd." Everyone retired highly delighted with the irrepressible Californian.

MARK TWAIN'S LECTURE ON THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. -- In accordance with his humorous advertisement, Mark Twain delivered his wonderful lecture, on the Sandwich Islands, at the Mercantile Library Hall last night. The audience was large and appreciative, and financially and every other way the entertainment proved a complete success. In fact, Mark Twain achieved a very decided success. He succeeded in doing what we have seen Emerson and other literary magnates fail in attempting. He interested and amused a large and promiscuous audience.

Mark has the gift of a bright and happy fancy, and expresses his thoughts with no ordinary force and gracefulness of language. His descriptive powers are good, and his descriptive powers very fair for a young lecturer.

We shall attempt no synopsis of his entertainment. Ostensibly it was on the Sandwich Islands, but while it contained not a little valuable information and many passages of felicitious description, it also embraced many other topics geographically and otherwise foreign to the matter in hand, and had many a piquant piece of humor interwoven, which, with the bright flash of genuine wit, startled with laughter and kept alive the attention of the audience. As to the wonderful [feats?] promised in the advertisement they were forgotten in the intellectual amusement afforded; and in the minor matter of swallowing a child Mark failed to come to time, possibly because no lady volunteered an infant for the occasion. We did not learn who was lucky enough to win Lafayette Park.

Our readers are aware this lecture was delivered for the benefit of the South St. Louis Mission Sunday School -- a most worthy object and certainly calling for the patronage of the Christian community.

This evening the lecture will be repeated at the same place and for the same object. Let all go who wish to be instructed and amused, and at the same time assist a deserving cause. "The wisdom will begin to flow at eight o'clock, and not a drop should be lost."

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher appears in the next entertainment of the course, next Thursday evening.

The 800 persons who braved last night's storm to listen to the "Mark Twain"-Cable readings, so-called, were more than repaid for their fortitude. The entertainment was a novel one in that the selections rendered by Messrs. Clemens and Cable were confined entirely to their own writings. The public familiarity with the literary productions of both authors made the readings very enjoyable, however. There is a wide diversity in the manners, methods, and styles of the two men, but a contrast only brings out in stronger relief the merits of both. Mark Twain is funny in every movement, word, and, it may be truly said, thought. The very awkwardness of his gait and the homeliness of the words he uses create a laugh, while the drolleries that persist in rolling from his lips set his auditors off into uncontrollable roars. The muscles of his face and mouth are rigid while he relates an anecdote, but his little, twinkling eyes have a power of expression that is wonderful, making his fun irresistible. He draws his wo

The most unique and thoroughly enjoyable entertainment ever given in Indianapolis was the Mark Twain- George W. Cable readings at Plymouth Church, last night, and they were given before one of the finest audiences that could be gathered, the auditorium of the church being completely filled in parquette and galleries. From first to last the immense assembly was in hearty sympathy with the readers, and, for a time, it looked as if the intention was to hold them all night. Mr. Cable's readings were entirely from Dr. Sevier, and they introduced Mary Richling Narcisse, Kate Riley and Ristofalo, and, incidentally, Mr. Richling. They were, in substance, the same selections he read here last winter; but he has them now in much better control, and is enabled to give more attention to nicety of expression than then, for he was then too closely confined to the printed page before him. For the third number, "Narcisse Putting on Mourning for Lord Byron," Mr. Cable substituted some Creole songs, which were received with great favor and heartily encored, to which he responded with the one he sang here at his former appearance. The best contribution he made to the evening's entertainment was Mary Richling's night ride, probably because of its serious contrast to the prevalent humorous tone of the programme. It was a fine rendering of a fine bit of descriptive writing, a real picture painted by an artist. Mark Twain is simply indescribable. The drollery of his appearance and manner invests the commonplace and wearisome with a freshness and comicality that is irresistible. The story of King Sollermun, printed in the last Century, is by no means easy reading. In cold type it seems to be trivial to the last degree; but as Mr. Clemens gave it last night, it set the audience in a perfect storm of boisterous merriment. His introductory dissertation on the peculiar grammatical construction of the German language, and the "whistling story" he told in answer to one of the furious encores given him, were his best numbers, although there was a verisimilitude about his conversation with the lady at the Lucerne Sweitzer-Rof, wherein they talked about old times of which he knew and remembered nothing, that appealed to everybody's experience in a like "trying situation." The last number of Twain, and of the programme, was the ghost story of the golden arm, which ended with a thump, starting everyone out of their seats at a quarter past 10 o'clock, after two hours of thoroughly enjoyable fun and sentiment. The large, intelligent and appreciative audience was an indication of the standing of these two writers in American literature as recognized in Indianapolis.

Despite the rain there was a large audience at Leiderkranz Hall last night to hear Cable and Mark Twain read. Mr. Cable last year prepared for himself a welcome to Louisville, and the people were ready with a hearty greeting for Mr. Clemens.

Mr. Cable's selections were familiar to the audience, as was the manner of his interpretation, but they lost none of their charm on this account. "Narcisse" and "Kate Riley" and "Richling" and "Restofalo" delighted every one last night with their strange and fascinating humor, of which one never wearies, but the most striking and effective of the pieces recited by Mr. Cable was "Mary Richling's Night Ride." There is no more pathetic, no more moving story in all Mr. Cable has written than that which recounts the weary wandering of "Mary Richling." Caught in the North when the war broke over the land with her child, whom her husband has never seen, she started for New Orleans, confident she could somewhere pierce the line. One disappointment followed another, but the brave-hearted woman never lost courage. Finally it seemed all obstacles were conquered, and, under the guidance and protection of a spy, she rode through the lines, avoiding the pickets and escaping the scouts. It is this last ride Mr. Cable reads with such dramatic force, and it is wise to repeat it to-night.

Mark Twain's humor is indescribable, as it is inimitable. His "Tragic Tale of a Fishwife," in its wild absurdities and extravagant incongruities, was greeted with continuous laughter, the appreciation of the situation, no doubt, being heightened by the recollection that last winter there was in Louisville a professor who promised to teach the German language in six weeks, and in the audience there were several score who once thought they had learned it in that time. Mark Twain promises to-night, in addition to regular programme, to tell the story of the "Jumping Frog." There should be to-night even a larger audience than on last night, and it is to be hoped those who secure seats in advance will obtain them, and the annoyance experienced last night be avoided.

The following is the programme for this evening:

1. From Dr. Sevier--Narcisse's Views on Chirography. Raoul Innerarity announces his
marriage....Geo. W. Cable
2. Certain Personal Episodes....Mark Twain
3. From the Grandissimes--Selection....Geo. W. Cable
4. Why I lost the Editorship....Mark Twain
5. From Dr. Sevier--Mary's Night Ride...Geo. W. Cable
6. Selection...Mark Twain.

A numerous and enthusiastic audience assembled in Chickering Hall last evening to listen to readings from the writings of Mr. Samuel L. Clemens--who prefers to be known as "Mark Twain"--and Mr. George W. Cable. The gentlemen who read were the gentlemen who had written. The management, in its newspaper advertisements, spoke of the entertainment as a "combination of genius and versatility," but neglected to say which of the gentlemen had the genius and which the versatility. Some of those who were present last evening may have felt justified in coming to the conclusion that Mr. Cable represented both these elements, while Mr. Clemens was simply man, after the fashion of that famous hunting animal one-half of which was pure Irish setter and the other half "just plain dog." Mr. Cable was humorous, pathetic, weird, grotesque, tender, and melodramatic by turns, while Mr. Clemens confined his efforts to the ridicule of such ridiculous matters as aged colored gentlemen, the German language, and himself.

It became evident early in the evening that the gentlemen who conceived the plan of bringing these two readers together had a marvelous faculty for grasping the sublimest possibilities of contrast. The audience appeared, however, to enjoy the sensation of dropping abruptly downward from such delightful people as Narcisse, Ristofalo, and Kate Riley to such earthy creatures as Huckleberry Finn.

The first section was from "Dr. Sevier," the interesting scene in which Narcisse thinks she can "baw that fifty dollar" himself. Then Mr. Clemens recited a selection from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," which will be continued in Mr. Clemens's next book. Mr. Cable followed with the scene from "Dr. Sevier," in which Kate Riley yields her hand so eagerly to Ristofalo. The audience appeared to enjoy hugely the Italian's complacent "Da's all right." Mr. Clemens then read his "Tragic Tale of a Fishwife," which contained some remarkable linguistic contortions produced by adapting the German genders to the English language. Mr. Clemens was recalled after this effort and ladled out another section of the "Huckleberry Finn" advance sheets.

Then Mr. Cable read "A Sound of Drums," from "Dr. Sevier." This masterly bit of word-painting was recited with fine elocutionary art, and held the audience spellbound to the close, when a burst of enthusiastic applause recalled Mr. Cable to the stage and compelled him to sing one of the old Confederate war songs that he learned by the camp fire. Mr. Clemens recited "A Trying Situation," one of those peculiar productions which attributes to its author much idiocy, and suggests the thought that it was written in the hope that it would make men deem the writer a very different kind of man. Mr. Cable's last selection from "Dr. Sevier" was "Mary's Night Ride," in which weirdness, tenderness, and melodramatic force were joined with a rare skill that evoked hearty and continued applause.

Mr. Clemens concluded the entertainment with "A Ghost Story," which had no merit beyond the reader's suggestion that it was a queer story to tell children at bedtime. This afternoon the same programme will be given, and this evening this combination of contrasts will present a fresh batch of readings.

Chickering Hall was well filled yesterday afternoon, in spite of the rain, for the readings of Mark Twain and George W. Cable. The audience consisted principally of ladies and, if not enthusiastic, showed a full appreciation of the performance. Mr. Cable presented four selections from "Dr. Sevier." His comic selections roused little more than languid laughter. "Mary's Night Ride," however, the last piece which he gave, was of a serious character, and met with considerable applause. Mr. Clemens gave only humorous pieces. "A Trying Situation" seemed to be specially acceptable to the audience.

Despite the rainy weather, a great many people heard the readings in the evening. Mr. Clemens' stories were punctuated with laughter at every few words. Mr. Cable generally received his applause all in a lump at the end.

Mark Twain and George W. Cable entertained about 700 of their admirers in Mercantile Library Hall last night. They gave recitals of selections from their respective work, Mark Twain having four pieces on the programme and Mr. Cable the same number. Cable chose passages from his novel Dr. Sevier, in which he aimed to illustrate the characters of Narcisse, the Creole, Kate Riley and Mary Richley. All his recitals were successful in pleasing the audience, and before the evening was at an end the author of Creole Days was a strong favorite with all present. Mark Twain did not fail, however, to hold his own. He kept the assemblage in excellent humor with his literary surprises, and in the "King Sollemun" passage from Huckleberry Finn, the "Tragic Tale of a Fishwife," he which he illustrated the reckless distribution of genders among the nouns of the German language, and in the other selections he tickled the risibles of the audience to an extent that satisfactorily established the pop

LAUGHING AT PURE FUN.
MARK TWAIN AND CABLE TAKE TURNS AT ENTERTAINING AN AUDIENCE.
Dramatic and Humorous Recitations from "Dr. Sevier"--
Merriment at the Expense of the German Language and
A Thrilling Ghost Story.

"Mark Twain" and George W. Cable alternately appeared on the platform of Congregational Church last night. As soon as one bowed his exit the other ran up the steps, not because they were in a hurry, as the former explained, but because the programme was long.

Mr. Cable was the first to appear, and was greeted with applause. He is of medium height, slender, with a jet black silky beard, and his dark eyes sparkle with intelligence. His rich and melodious voice rises to a high falsetto in its portrayal of female character. In his opening selection he impersonated Narcisse, John and Mary Richling. One forgot the speaker and saw John, grave and quiet, and Mary, "pushing her small feet back and forth on the floor," listening to the delightful accent and original philosophy of Narcisse, as he sat twitching uneasily in his chair, with his mind fixed on "that fifty dolla" which he "could baw from Mistoo Itchling." Afterwards it was Kate Reilly, with her smirking and her brogue, who called Ristofalo "a desaving crature," while the stumpy, honest Italian answered, "Dat's alright," and putting his arm around her called her "Kate" to her outward astonishment but inward delight; or, later, the audience followed Mary and little Alice and the spy in their lonely midnight ri

It is "too late a week" to criticize work so artistic and so well known. Suffice it to say that Mr. Cable gave "Narcisse and John and Mary Richling," from "Dr. Sevier," the courting scene in the same book in which Kate Riley so amusingly chaffs Ristofalo, "Narcisse in Mourning for Lady Byron," and the great humorist recited, while tears ran down his listeners' cheeks, some scenes from the advance sheets of the "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and the "Tragic Tale of the Fishwife," described "A Trying Situation," one of his funniest efforts, in which a gentleman who does not recognize a lady, who does recognize him, is utterly mystified and overwhelmingly embarrassed by her questioning him about a fictitious past, in what she calls "a delightful talk about old times," and wound up with a ghost story which convulsed his audience. The next entertainments will take place at Association Hall on the afternoon and evening of Wednesday, November 26, when, as Mr. Clemens expresses it, he will "continue to make his last, final farewell appearance."

One of his yarns contemplated the reform of the human race by preventing the habit of profanity among men. The reform was to be accomplished by substituting mechanical swearing through the means of the phonograph. The effect of this contrivance on shipboard, colored by all the possibilities of swearing in foreign languages, and swearing backwards and multiplying the force of it by placing as many as one hundred and fifty phonographs in different parts of the ship was too much for the most serious audience in the world, and there was a continuous burst of laughter.

Mr. Cable, who has become known to the public as the writer of "Old Creole Days," "The Grandissimes" and "Dr. Sevier," was the first to appear. When he mounted the pulpit, he looked like an elf, save his big head, long pointed brown beard and Vandyke moustache. He was dressed in conventional black, with clawhammer coat. The forehead is fairly broad, and medium high; it has an blunt appearance. His sloping, narrow shoulders and diminutive height, set off by his big head and full face, give him a pompous air, which is increased by an assumed dignity of speech and put-on deepness of voice that tends to make the irreverent laugh.

Mark Twain and Mr. Cable recited alternately. As Mr. Cable began the show, it is well to finish with him before speaking of the author of "Tom Sawyer." Mr. Cable's next effort was a visit from "Ristofalo" to the "Widow Riley." "Ristofalo" is a placid, unexcitable, unemotional being, whom Mr. Cable fairly represented in his courtship of the widow. His recital of the widow's lines were ludicrous -- not the lines, but Mr. Cable's recital. His want of elocutionary powers was wofully displayed here, and the thought could not be kept back that so far as Mr. Cable was concerned this scheme of his and Mr. Clemens's was an unwarranted hippodrome.

At Mr. Cable's next call he, instead of following out the programme, substituted two Creole songs which he said retained African barbarity, and he asserted that the latter part was all he retained of the songs. Mr. Cable spoke better than he knew in that. It was barbarous. Even though he rendered them true to life, there was no excuse for producing them, for they were neither instructive nor amusing. While he was chanting them the audience was craning their necks and looking in the direction of the "stage entrance," as if they expected every moment to see Mr. Clemens come out clad in a blanket with face painted and hair bedecked with feathers, waving a tomahawk, and dance a savage war dance. Mr. Clemens missed his opportunity.

The final appearance of Mr. Cable was when he recited "Mary's Night Ride," from "Dr. Sevier." This describes the race for life of a woman on horseback carrying her babe in her arms, as she tries to escape the "lines" of the Confederate soldiers. There is all possible opportunity for realistic declamation. Mr. Cable made many of his audience laugh by his shouting and ranting. He declaimed in a reckless manner, that showed he had no idea of either elocution or declamation. Whilst he points to Mary flying at a mile a minute out of danger, instead of following his pointed finger with his eye, he looks at the audience, who in turn glance from his eyes to his finger, and mentally ask "where is Mary?"

His preliminary remarks were devoted to his change of programme. He then related or recited his adventures with a young lady in Switzerland, who made believe she knew him, and asked him all sorts of questions about imaginary beings, to all of which he had answered as though he knew the people. It was funny; and, although Mr. Clemens's drawling manner of speech, which of itself is quaint and laughter-provoking, has grown more marked and his words are not always heard, he succeeded in delighting his listeners. He recited most of the evening with his eyes closed, and in a manner of fact sort of way that was comical. Still he did not make his own writings half so laughable as they are made every day by elocutionists all over the land.

The next selection was from "Huckleberry Finn," a kind of sequel to "Tom Sawyer," and which is not yet published. It related the troubles of two prankish boys who freed a slave imprisoned in an old cabin. There were a hundred ludicrous incidents in it, which could but stir the risibilities of a very appreciative audience. In his second call he continued the story of the boys' comical tricks and perplexities, which in spite of his inanimate recital, kept the hearers in a smile all the while he spoke.

The last was a commonplace humorosity, built up, carpenter-like, out of the grammatical idiosyncrasies of the German language, a source of fun for alleged funnymen as general and as common as robbing the chicken coop and stealing watermelons. It was a painful production that must have cost its author much labor but gave little mental satisfaction. There is nothing very funny about it. It lacks that spontaneousness that is the real sign of pure mirth and humor. Besides, it was heavy and execrably read. In this recitation he seems to have taken lessons from Mr. Cable.

The whole performance was a hippodrome. Either's works shine better in books than when read by them. The unbecomingness and the charlatanism of an author's going around the country reading from the proofs of a book he is about to publish are degrading to literature. How Mr. Clemens could allow himself to do it is past comprehension. Still, viewed in the light of the miserable performance of Mr. Cable, he may feel that he is a benefactor, for his recitals are so much superior to those from "Dr. Sevier." At best it is very sad to see men who have done clever literary work, "barn-storming" the country with their own works. If the works are good, it is a lowering of the dignity of the authors that is anything but commendable, and if they are not good, to read them in public is almost a crime. It is true Dickens read his works on the platform, but it never added to his fame, and it did lower him in that he became general, common.

Mark Twain is almost the opposite of Mr. Cable. Tall and plain, he is at once a favorite with the audience. His face begins to show age, but his mind is the same fruitful and fertile one that it always was. Every word he utters has a meaning, but while he keeps his audience in paroxysms of laughter, scarcely a smile overcomes his countenance. He was repeatedly applauded, and after each part was recalled. He began by reciting some of the "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and concluded with a bit of experience as an editor at Virginia City. Should Mr. Cable or Mark Twain ever come to Quincy again they will be assured a good house.

Mr. Cable is a small, weak, affected, effeminate-looking man with a womanish voice. He is affected in dress and affected in voice. He seems to be trying to imitate Mark Twain, in the matter of a limping, halting, hesitating speech. The fact is that Mark Twain has enough of this unvaluable eccentricity to answer all the purposes of this combination.

Mr. Cable's first recitation was tiresome. It was nothing, very long drawn out. It was all about a creole Frenchman borrowing a dollar of an acquaintance.

His second recitation was a little better. He represented the Irish woman in a fairly "amateurish" way. But there was not much to it.

In his third appearance he sang some African Creole refrains fairly well, as we think. This was the best number in the programme.

He recited Mary Richling's ride at his fourth appearance. This was a serious recitation, and was given about the average school-boy fashion. Mr. Cable is no doubt an elegant and capable writer, but as a reader he is sadly lacking in cultivation. There is nothing fine, or finished, or artistic about his readings. Of course he knows this, probably, better than anyone else. We mean such fineness and such finish as was found in Forrest and Adams, and as we find in Booth, and McCullough, and Barrett, and Mayo, and Keane.

If Mr. Cable should attempt to make a tour of this country alone, -- the third night would just about end him. Mark Twain can hold him up for a long time, for Mark Twain is quite another sort of man. Mark Twain is a sizeable, substantial, sensible, manly-looking and manly-spoken fellow; a man cut after the pattern of a man, and with the speech and action of a man; a capable, brainy-looking fellow.

There is no discount in Twain's wit. It is there; and it is genuine wit; and reader, let me tell you something! It is much better in his books than it is on the stage -- much better. It is condensed in his books. On the stage it is too long, too long drawn out. Twain is too long in coming to a point, and he dwells on it too long, after he does get to it. Wit and humor are a something that surprises the mind. If the "point" of a joke can be anticipated, the life is taken from the joke. It is the pleasant surprise on a point that should be quickly touched and quickly passed. He takes the charm and the sparkle from his funny point by hanging it too long.

Twain's first recitation was his best -- by all means. In that he didn't dwell. He drove straight ahead to the end of it. It was a pleasant recitation. Twain's stories are funny, and he tells them in a droll way.

To our notion the biggest part of the show was Mark Twain himself. And when a man says "I saw Mark Twain last night," he has said the largest thing that can be said about the whole affair. Mark Twain is a famous character -- and there is something in human nature that makes us wish to see famous characters. We cannot conscientiously set a very high estimate upon the Twain-Cable entertainment. To see Mark Twain is an event in itself; but no one would particularly care to hear the Twain-Cable entertainment repeated. Little, plain, simple, unpretending Bob Burdette gave an entertainment at our opera house one night all by himself that discounted the Twain-Cable entertainment one thousand per cent. Bob's lecture was rich in wit and humor, and rich in pathos. It was a feast of rich things.

We congratulate Dr. Marks upon the large attendance last night. An audience like that adds to his wealth and cheers his spirits.

Back to Tour Schedule � � � � � �

Mr. Cable again regaled the audience with a chapter of "Dr. Sevier," and effectually dissipated the impression, if such prevails, that his work was intended as a mere makeweight to that of Mr. Clemens. In response to an encore he sang a Creole song that had been first heard on the banks of the Congo 150 years ago. It was partially translated into a combination of barbaric French and New Orleans African. When he had made his bow he backed against a little pedestal on which a statue of Shakespeare rested. The Bard of Avon trembled for a moment, and would have fallen to the ground if Mr. Cable had not been equally ready with his hands as he had been eloquent with his tongue. He introduced the statue as the late Mr. Shakespeare. The laughter that greeted this joke was redoubled as Mark Twain stepped forward and told the audience that he meant to make an alteration in the programme. The next piece according to that instrument was Buck Fanshaw's Funeral, but Mr. Clemens said that he never did like funerals anyway. This funeral procession was exploded in Brooklyn ten years ago he said, "and I will read instead a scene from my new play, in which Colonel Mulberry Sellers having failed in everything else tackles science as a last resort, and proposes to utilize the wasted energies of the present race of human beings in rehabilitating those who had gone over to the majority. His friend Lafayette Hawkins, of Missouri, thinks that there is no money in it, but the colonel takes policemen and shows that model and best of all immortal patrolmen can be furnished at nine cents apiece, and an exceptionally good article at $120 a gross. A permanent set of dead Congressmen was suggested, and it was said that Europe could be furnished with kings who could actually eat dynamite. Charlemagne and Solomon could be sold at auction, and the dead heroes of Greece and Rome would be worth millions. "We will make a good sale," the colonel continued, "but I must insist on no higgling about a million or two either way."

Mr. Clemens was recalled after this effort, and told his famous, if somewhat antique, whistling story. Mr. Cable, with true pathos and intense feeling, recited "The Fall of Orleans," from his novel, "Dr. Sevier," and Mr. Clemens came forward to tell how he had lost the editorship in a Nevada paper in the old time. This is one of his best efforts, but all who have read his books are sufficiently acquainted with it. The Southern problem was again wrestled with by Mr. Cable, and Mr. Clemens entertained the audience with a ghost story, that sent his auditors home to dream of golden arms, humbug wounds and mysterious visitors. The matinee performance was equally successful, if a little more restricted as to the topics touched upon.

Mr. T.B. Sidebotham, Jr., the manager of this affair, has been promised by Messrs. Twain and Cable that they will revisit Brooklyn in the Spring, after their trip to California, and give one performance.

Two or three minutes later Mark Twain came on. The audience greeted him with a round of hearty hand-clapping. Twain wore his habitually tired, unemotional look, and received the applause as though it was something he had been accustomed to from infancy, but was obliged to endure politely. He stepped quietly up to the desk in the middle of the stage, placed his right hand upon it (the desk), shoved his left hand down into his breeches' pocket, on the left side, and looked as intensely weary as if he had just walked in from Milwaukee and had not had time to get anything to eat before coming on the stage. Any one ignorant of the humorist's identity would have taken him for one of the chief mourners at a well-regulated funeral, or a life-long victim of dyspepsia and melancholia, in the acutest forms. He began business at once. His voice was the same old, characteristic nasal drawl, in which the public refused to see anything eloquent, or even pleasing, when he essayed (unsuccessfully) to be a lecturer some ten years ago, but which is now accepted as almost as convulsive as the humorist's utterances themselves. Twain began last night by saying that the first number on the program with which his name was mixed up was a chapter from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," a new infliction by himself. He went on to relate "King Sollermun," with which the public is already familiar from having seen the anecdote in print in the Century magazine and various newspapers. The audience laughed and laughed and applauded heartily again at the close of the reading.

The other selections were: "Kate Riley, Richling, and Ristofalo," from "Dr. Sevier," by Mr. Cable; "Tragic Tale of the Fishwife," Mark Twain; Creole folk-songs, Mr. Cable, and the story of the "Woman With the Golden Arm," Mark Twain. The last named is a ghost-story, which Twain brings abruptly to a close by jumping toward the audience and crying "B-oo-o!" when the audience jumps, too, and then goes home in the very best of humor.

Mr. Clemens ran his hand through his hair, and with a few humorous remarks about the programme, calling for something he hadn't at hand, proceeded to ignore it. He read the story of a reporter's attempt to interview him, in which he solemnly stated that either he or his twin brother was drowned in the bathtub in infancy, which was never known, and also the account of his experience as temporary editor of an agricultural weekly. An old sea captain's story was well told, and in conclusion Mr. Clemens narrated a ghost story about the woman with the golden arm, a story similar to one of Uncle Remus's. It was like crooning a nursery tale to adults; but it was well told, and was so well received as to suggest that the Remus stories read by their author would find appreciative listeners.

The hall was nearly filled by a select and cultured audience at the evening entertainment. Mr. Cable appeared first, and rendered several peculiar airs, illustrative of the "Songs of the Place Congo." Mr. Clemens again took the liberty to change the selections which had been announced for him, for the double reason, as he stated in his characteristic manner, that he could not endure it to be always bound down to a fixed course of action, and he also knew that the audience would not endure to hear him read all that the programme had set out for him. It would take until after breakfast time next morning, and he was very particular about his breakfast. And so the humorist repeated "The Tragic Tale of the Fishwife," a suite upon the confounding of gender in German nouns. Mr. Clemens was very cordially applauded, both on his first appearance and at the end of each of his readings.

Mr. Cable gave selections from the familiar story of "Powson Jone'." As usual he did not appear at his best at the outset of his recitation, but gradually lost himself in the impersonations, and then displayed that brilliant versatility in the dramatic representation of entirely different characters, which is the remarkable feature of his readings and which makes so realistic the pictures he presents. The interview between that innocently artful sophist, Jules St. Ange, and the repenting parson so overcome by reflection on "My sins, Jools, my sins," in the calaboose, whither the young Frenchman goes to liberate the West Floridian, was given with consummate skill, and called forth hearty applause.

Mr. Clemens delighted the audience with some of the enthusiastic and visionary projects of the famous "Col. Mulberry Sellers," for the materialization of the waste human forces floating about in the atmosphere, and only awaiting such a scientific genius as that of Sellers to make them of incalculable benefit to the world at large, while accumulating untold millions for the inventor. The humorist introduced one variation for the occasion, which was greatly appreciated and warmly applauded, being the proposition of Col. Sellers to materialize voters and enter upon political life, because the dead voters capable of materialization would so outnumber the live ones that there would be no uncertainty as to the result, and no waiting four or five days before we could find out who was elected.

Mr. Clemens gave as his third selection "The Trying Situation," which was on the afternoon programme but was not read then, and closed with the repetition of the story of the Golden Arm, of which the startling denouement made a good share of the audience jump perceptibly from their seats.

It is to be said that the "Twain"-Cable combination affords a very agreeable and instructive entertainment. The distinguished Louisiana novelist has fully sustained the favorable impression which he made upon his Providence audiences, on the occasion of his first visit here, last Spring, and the opportunity of hearing Mr. Clemens, as the interpreter of his own humor, was highly appreciated by the hosts of readers of his "health-promoting" sketches. It was a matter of regret to the auditors that the enunciation of Mr. Clemens was not at all times as distinct as it might have been, but his manner and intonation in portraying the situations of his various characters added to the pictures an appreciation which printed pages along cannot afford.

Last night's programme will be repeated this afternoon. To-night will be given the closing entertainment, at which the programme will be --

From Dr. Sevier -- Narcisse's views on Chirography; Raoul Innerarity announces his marriage -- George W. Cable.
Certain Personal Episodes -- Mark Twain.
From the Grandissimes -- Selection -- George W. Cable
Why I Lost the Editorship -- Mark Twain
From Dr. Sevier -- Mary's Night Ride -- Geo. W. Cable
Selection -- Mark Twain

Mr. Cable's second number on the programme indicated that he would give a selection from the "Grandissime," but he substituted another scene from Dr. Sevier, which the audience seemed to enjoy. He became highly dramatic in this scene. In his closing selection he, with the consent of the audience, rendered two of his weird Creole songs instead of another -- "Mary's Night Ride" -- from Dr. Sevier. The lecturers' engagement in this city has been a success financially, and the entertainments have been highly satisfactory to all who attended.

A large audience again met George W. Cable and Mark Twain at Central Music Hall last night, leaving only a few seats vacant on the outskirts of the hall. Mr. Cable's recitations again received intelligent and smiling consideration, while Mr. Clemens convulsed the house with uncontrollable mirth. His account of the runaway slave's escape from the log cabin under the auspices of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn was irresistible. There will be another reading tonight.

The "Tragic Tale of the Fishwife" by Mark Twain probably occasioned the most laughter, and as its vein of fun is of a character that has been pronounced to be beyond parallel, it deserved all the applause it gained. The house was filled with the best of Columbus people, and the gentlemen who entertained them should recognize the decided compliment thus conveyed.

The "Mark Twain"-Cable readings drew a large audience to Whitney's last night, a good proportion being composed of those who enjoyed the readings of the two authors here in December last. Of the two Mr. Cable is not near as good a raconteur as Mr. Clemens, although he assumes much more of the manner of the professional elocutionist. Mr. Cable's selection most pleasing and most applauded was "Mary's Last Ride," which was narrated in a graphic manner. He sang, too, the negro boat and love songs admirably. "Mark Twain"--he should petition the legislature to legally entitle him to wear his nom de plume for every day use--has that peculiar sense of humor so dear to the American heart, which finds expression in the wildest flights of mendacity, or in a gentle burlesquing of the truth. His manner heightens the effect of everything he says, because it seems to be utterly unfitted for public readings, and yet it is thoroughly artistic, and entirely appropriate to whatever character he represents as speaking.

Mr. Cable's next reading was from Dr. Sevier also and dealt with Kate Riley, Richling and Ristofalo, the latter part of it being devoted to the wooing of the widow by the Italian and was given in a decidedly clever manner. Mark Twain then convulsed the audience with a side-splitting history of his tussle with the German language and his lamentable failure to properly declare their adjectives or master the intricacies of the gender of their nouns. Being recalled he told his very funny stuttering story and another being demanded he spun a sailor yarn to the entire satisfaction of the audience.

For the regular number on the program Mr. Cable at this point substituted several pleasing Creole songs which were well received. Twain then gave "a Trying Situation" which was followed by Mr. Cable in a descriptive reading. He had kept his best for the last and his dramatic rendition of "Mary's Night Ride" won for him most heart applause. The performance was closed with a personal reminiscence by Mark Twain detailing his experience with the duello in his days of roughing it in the rowdy west.

The Cleveland Herald
18 November 1868

[The first of the three Cleveland reviews was written by Mrs. Mary Fairbanks, the wife of the publisher of the Herald, and the woman MT addressed as "Mother." He met her on the Quaker City trip, and almost immediately put himself up for adoption as her "Prodigal Son." He premiered the "American Vandal" lecture in Cleveland so that his lecture tour could begin under her auspices. The review she wrote was apparently very influential in convincing other midwestern towns to engage MT as a lecturer.]

The course of lectures before the Library Association was inaugurated last evening by the brilliant entertainment of the humorist "Mark Twain." Notwithstanding the unpropitious weather, and strong competition of counter attractions in the way of amusements, Case Hall was early filled with an assembly who were prepared to criticize closely this new candidate for their favor. A few moments sufficed to put him and his audience on the best of terms, and to warm him up with the pleasant consciousness of their approval. For nearly two hours he held them by the magnetism of his varied talent.

We shall attempt no transcript of his lecture, lest with unskillful hands we mar its beauty, for beauty and poetry it certainly possessed, though the production of a profound humorist.

We know not which to commend, the quaint utterances, the funny incidents, the good-natured recital of the characteristics of the harmless "Vandal," or the gems of beautiful descriptions which sparkled all through his lecture. We expected to be amused, but we were taken by surprise when he carried us on the wings of his redundant fancy, away to the ruins, the cathedrals, and the monuments of the Old World. There are some passages of gorgeous word painting which haunt us like a remembered picture.

We congratulate Mr. Twain upon having taken the tide of public favor "at the flood" in the lecture field, and having conclusively proved that a man may be a humorist without being a clown. He has elevated his profession by his graceful delivery and by recognizing in his audience something higher than merely a desire to laugh. We can assure the cities who await his coming that a rich feast is in store for them and Cleveland is proud to offer him the first laurel leaf, in his role as lecturer this side of the "Rocky-slope."

The most popular American humorist since the demise of poor Artemus, made his first bow to a Cleveland public, as a lecturer, last evening, at Case Hall. Mark Twain has reason to feel a gratified pride at the pleasant and satisfactory impression he made upon his immense audience. The "American Vandal Abroad" was the title of a slightly incoherent address of between one and two hour's duration -- mingling the most irresistible humor with little flights of eloquence, and making up an entertainment of which it were impossible to tire. The "Vandal" was the type of careless, dry, Yankee tourist, who never lost his equanimity, or coolness, no matter what his situation might be. He looked at a manuscript of Christopher Columbus, with the most infernal sang froid -- remarking that it didn't amount to much as a specimen of penmanship; there were school boys in his country, who could beat it. The vandal, in order that he may the better appreciate Columbus, is told by the guide that he discovered America. "Guess not," says he, "I have just come from America, and I heard nothing about it!" He examines a mummy. To the guide -- "What did I understand you to say was the name of the gentleman?" The guide perspires, and explains that the diseased died some 3,000 years ago. "Ah," sighs the vandal, "are his parents living?" The Vandal is an untiring relic hunter. He got along very well till he arrive in the Crimea; there relics were scarce. He finally found the hip bone of a horse, on the field of the Alma, however, which was gobbled up and labeled -- "Jawbone of a Russian general." The apostrophe to the Sphinx was really beautiful; and when the speaker would up with a sketch of the imperturbable Vandal who so coolly whistled in its shade, the house "came down["]. We have given two or three "specimen bricks." Mr. Clemmen's manner very much enhanced the effect of his remarks -- there is a dry, comical drawl in his voice, that is irresistible in a funny story. He should speak louder, however; those in the rear of the hall lost many of his good things.

MARK TWAIN. -- A very large audience assembled in Case Hall last evening to hear Mark Twain lecture. It is a dangerous thing for a man who has made a reputation as a writer to enter the field of lecturing, but as Mr. Clemens' manner corresponds completely with his dry, off-hand style of wit he has perhaps suffered nothing in reputation by appearing before the lecture-going poet [sic] as a candidate for its plaudits. His subject was the "American Vandal Abroad," and he portrayed the nonchalance, dignity and independence of that large class of Americans traveling in Europe, and known at home as "shoddy," with truth and in a humorous way. The discourse, however, was not altogether facetious. At times there were passages which were grand indeed and in the delivery of which the lecturer became eloquent. The lecture course of the literary association has thus had a most auspicious beginning and we hope to see every entertainment as liberally patronized. Next week Mr. J. E. Murdoch, the celebrated elocutionist, will give some miscellaneous readings.

Mark Twain, the well-known humorist, lectured last evening at Library Hall, under the auspices of the Young Men's Library Association, on the "American Vandal Abroad." He first pitched into the guides who beset and betray American travellers in Europe, then went on to give a ludicrous history of Columbus and an Egyptian mummy, to which he was introduced at Genoa and Rome, respectively. He smoked the narghali in Turkey, inspected the wall where St. Paul was let down in the basket which was sold for firewood, went to the pyramids, where he took dinner or something else, with the resident mummy, and whistled "Auld Lang Syne" on the Rock of Gibraltar. He did not think much of the mummies, but preferred a "fresh corpse." The "Grand Quaker City Holy Land funeral excursion" and the Vandal, a doctor, or "body snatcher," on board, were introduced and warmly received with laughter by the audience. A sailor, who was afflicted with an attack of "horizontal parallax," got from the doctor a recipe of four shovelsful of laudanum four times a day, and a mustard plaster about the size of a saddle, across the small of his back, the laudanum to put him asleep and the blister to waken him up. The vandal was also in Paris looking at the can-can and the accompaniments. The pretense of understanding the French language made by Americans was ably satirized. There were several relic-hunters in the ship. At the Crimea one of them found the jaw bone of a horse, took it aboard the ship, put it among his collection, and labelled it "the jaw bone of a Russian General." At Milan they captured the cathedral and were captivated by a "freshly skinned" man, with whom they exchanged cards. The Vandal also caught trout in Lake Como and then went off the Venice with the fish, where he got a good price for them on the Rialto, and with the proceeds paid for a ride in a gondoller of the neuter gender on the grand canal, from which they got a grand view of the palaces, &c. The young ladies in Venice have their back hair done up in "cruppers," somewhat like the Chicago beauties. The Venetian belles get their shopping sent home in "scows." The hackmen drive their teams in the water. At Padua he broke off the big toe of Romeo and Juliet for a relic, and then went to Bologna to investigate the manufacture of sausages. He put up at Naples, next lit his cigar at the flame of Vesuvius, and breathed the successor to the air of Demosthenes on the Acropolis at Athens or somewhere else. The atmosphere of Greece is as clear as the nose of a man with a cold in his head. The Vandal visited his friend, the Emperor of Russia, took breakfast with his brother; was taken with the premises he occupied, and finally, after inviting the Russian Czar to call upon him at No. 404 Seventh Avenue, San Francisco, took himself off, as he could not bear to prolong the affecting interview. After hoping the houses of the audience would not take fire, he bid them good night, and concluding by saying that, "considering the manner in which juries in Chicago are constituted, I hope there is nothing libelous in anything I have said." [Applause and laughter.] Mr. Twain then retired.

Mark Twain (Samuel G. Clemens), is a gentleman of some notoriety, and his effusions are constantly making the rounds of the press. The following sketch will be interesting to those who have not the pleasure of his acquaintance: Blessed with long legs, he is tall, reaching five feet ten inches in his boots; weight, 167 pounds; body lithe and muscular; head round and well set on considerable neck, and feet of no size within the ken of a shoemaker, so he gets his boots and stockings always made to order. Next to Grant he wears the belt for smoking. He smokes tobacco. Drink never crosses the threshold of his humorous mouth. Fun lurks in the corners of it. The eyes are deep set and twinkle like stars in a dark night. The brow overhangs the eyes, and the head is protected from the weather by dark and curling locks. The face is eminently a good one, a laughing face, beaming with humor and genuine good nature. He looks as if he would make a good husband and a jolly father. As a humorous lecturer, he is a success. There is nothing in his lectures, for he very properly sacrifices everything to make his audience roar, and they do it. His manner is peculiar; he hangs round loose, leaning on the desk, or flirting round the corners of it; then marching and counter-marching in the rear of it, marking off ground by the yard with his tremendous boots. He would laugh at his own jokes, but that his doing so would detract from the fun of his hearers, so he contents himself by refusing to explode, and swallowing his risibility until the lecture is over, when he feels easier, and blows off steam. His voice is a long monotonous drawl, well adapted to his style of speaking. The fun invariably comes in at the end of a sentence, after a pause. When the audience least expects it, some dry remark drops and tickles the ribs, and endangers the waist buttons of the "laughists." During the evening, as if to prove that there was something besides humor in him, he branched out into quite eloquent passages, which were applauded. The lecture was good and the attendance large.

Last evening Young Men's Hall was densely crowded with one of the largest audiences of the season, to listen to Mark Twain in his new role of comic lecturer. Of course all were intensely amused at his droll sayings, but it is perhaps safe to say that his capabilities as a writer are far in advance of his powers as a lecturer. The lecture itself was decidedly good, but its delivery was not what might have been expected, an assumed drawl, though very taking and appropriate at times, spoiling the effect of many of the finest sentences. Some of the more serious passages were of the most brilliant order, but their effect was sadly marred by the failing already alluded to. The allusion to the Sphynx is a striking illustration of this:

"The great face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never any thing human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient! If ever image of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of the landscape, but looking at nothing--nothing but distance and vacancy. It was looking over and beyond every thing of the present, and far into the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of time--over lines of century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and nearer together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward the horizon of a remote antiquity.

It was thinking of the wars of departed ages--of the empires it had seen created and destroyed--of the nations whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose annihilation it had noted--of the joy and sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow revolving years.

"It was the type of an attribute of man--of a faculty of his heart and brain. It was MEMORY--RETROSPECTIVE--wrought into visible, tangible form. All who know what pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished and faces that have vanished--albeit only a trifling score of years gone by--will have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in these grave eyes that look so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before history was born--before tradition had being--things that were, and forms that moved, in a vague era which even poetry and romance scarce know of--and passed one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a strange new age, and uncomprehended scenes!

"The Sphynx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its magnitude; it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its story. And there is that in the overshadowing majesty of this eternal figure of stone, with its accusing memory of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one something of what he shall feel when he stands at last in the awful presence of God!"

MARK TWAIN delivered the second lecture of the Clayonian course last evening, in the Opera House, to a very large and attentive audience. His subject was "Brother Jonathan Abroad." He explained, by way of introduction, that while the educated Americans who travel abroad are accustomed upon their return home to write descriptions of their journeys for the benefit of their friends and to moralize in books and lectures upon what they have seen, the "Vandal" (and he desired to be respectful in the use of the term, which he interpreted to mean those travellers whose pockets were heavier than their store of learning or historical research), had no such opportunity for a multiplicity of reasons, the chief of which was a want of early education. He therefore volunteered to be their historian, having been a close observer of their habits.

The lecturer then described in a most humorous manner, the ramblings of the "American vandal," what he saw and how he was impressed by the exhibitions of ancient grandeur or influenced by old historical surroundings and associations. In the course of his remarks he painted in glowing language and with choice words scenes of cities and places and of statues and paintings, that will be slow to fade from the memories of the audience. Chief among them were descriptions of Venice, of Athens by moonlight from the Acropolis, of Damascus, the most ancient metropolis, of the Sphinx, which has looked upon thousands of years of history with its stony eyes yet reveals nothing, and of the picture galleries of Rome and Milan. These were clothed in the beautiful rhetoric of poetry in prose. In the humorous parts the speaker resembled Artemus Ward in his slow and quaint way of saying very amusing things. The audience was constantly convulsed with laughter, and was continued in its happy humor by quiet touches of wit and sentiment. Altogether it was a most enjoyable evening's entertainment.

MARK TWAIN AS A LECTURER.--To say that the audience that listened to Mark Twain's lecture, at the Metropolitan last night, was well pleased would be saying what every man and woman present will attest; but every one would also say that those two words are so far from properly representing the pleasure afforded, that in their very tameness they seem to underrate its real value. It is so common now-a-days to apply high sounding adjectives to all manner of entertainments, whether of merit or not, that we avoid their use in noticing the lecture of Mark Twain, in order that it may not be ranked by our readers along with the very "flat, stale and unprofitable" productions, that pass under ponderous adjectives for lectures worth hearing. The impression made on the hearer by the first few sentences of the lecturer is anything but favorable. There is in the careless and effortless manner of dropping words as though they rolled from the speaker's mouth half moulded as it were, and the lazy roll of the head, a strong indication that he is to be bored by a commonplace recital of incidents of travel abroad, interspersed with a few jokes that would be much more enjoyable in print, than as mumbled by the speaker. The awakening from this error comes so suddenly, so thoroughly, and so pleasantly too, that from this point to the close of the lecture, the doubter at first, is a willing and delighted captive; drinking in every word, gliding with the lecturer among the thousand gondolas floating on the water ways of moonlit Venice, laughing at his proofs that the girls of Venice are like the girls of Indianapolis, answering with applause that he would not if he could withhold the thrilling and surpassingly beautiful descriptions of Athens by moonlight, of the cathedrals of Milan, and Rome, and St. Petersburg; and then again laughing himself into tears over the peculiarly happy of the bold, unceremonious, care-for-nothing, rollicking conduct of the American vandal, who never fails to make known his nationality, whether in stocking feet inspecting the interior of a Turkish mosque, among thousands of worshipping Moslems, attending the fetes of Emperors or autocrats, rambling among the grand and inspiring ruins of Athens, or whistling a national air as he views the towering Pyramids of Egypt.

Mark Twain's wit is always of the highest order, and the more enjoyable in that it so truthfully hits off some peculiarity of human nature. His descriptions of scenery, in a literary point of view, glitter with the polish of culture, and captivate by the beauty and smoothness of the verbiage. His reading of the descriptive passages is peculiarly adapted to the display of their beauties. He reads as one who is not laboring to convey the impression that he is saying something beautiful, but as one who is laboring rather to convey to the hearer a correct idea of the beauties that impressed him. The reader of his prose would discover in it the music of poetry; but as he reads it, it has all that charm, and the additional interest that a story has, coming from the lips of one who saw whereof he speaks.

TWAIN'S LECTURE. -- Mark Twain, (Clemens,) held forth to a full house in Rouse's Opera House last evening. The house was a full as comfort would allow. His subject, "The American Vandal Abroad," suggested something of reproof, but the wit and humor that tempered the speech made every one forget everything but that. The public owe the lecture committee thanks for providing for them such an entertainment. They have begun well. Let them keep on in the ways of well doing and they will find their account in the full houses and plethoric treasury which will be secured them. We give them credit for one.

The second regular lecture of the Library Course was delivered, last evening, by Samuel Clemens, popularly known as "Mark Twain," the humorist, who became known to the public a few years ago as a correspondent of the Alta Californian of San Francisco, and who is now employed on the editorial staff of the New York Tribune. His subject was "The American Vandal Abroad."

He was introduced by E.W. Coy. The lecturer accompanied the Quaker City expedition to the Bermudas, Paris, the Crimea, Constantinople, Palestine, and various points on the Mediterranean sea.

It did not exactly embarrass him to be introduced in this public manner, but it did remind him of those European guides who brought out every old relic and described it with a trite story and who if interrupted were obliged to begain again at the beginning. After the party learned the distinguishing characteristics of these guides, they all determined to affect as much imbecility as possible and they were equal to the task. The surgeon of the ship was capable of asking the stupidest questions without moving a muscle. One guide showed the handwriting of Columbus. The Dr. inquired who he was, if he was dead, if his parents were dead, and informed the dumbfounded guide that plenty of boys in America could beat that, and if he had any good respectable penmanship, let him bring it on. After conducting them through the Vatican without eliciting any remarks of surprise, the poor guide showed a mummy, one of the most remarkable and best preserved. The Dr, true to his calling, inquired, "What did you remark that his name was? How calm and placid! Is he dead?"

The true American vandal is not remarkably well versed in sciences, arts and antiquities, but is sure to be perfectly at home anywhere, and is bound to be surprised at everything and extract wonders from the most trifling objects. He will half smoke himself to death in trying to smoke a long-stemmed pipe a la Turk, but will swear it good. He will go into ecstasies over the insufferable horrors of a Turkish bath, though he is thinking the while that he shall never live to come out. He will bandy words with the cockney soldier about the impregnability of Gibraltar. He will stand unabashed in the presence of one Pope, two or three Kings and Grandees innumerable, and will stand unawed, unsubdued, and pick his teeth before the venerable, time-honored, time-defying placid face of the Sphinx.

Such an irrepressible vandal was that surgeon of the ship, who pretended to be a doctor and perhaps he was, for he could handle more unpronounceable Greek and Latin technical terms, than any sensible man on earth. The surgeon was called upon by the captain's son to prescribe for a horizontal parralax.

The true home of the vandal is Paris. He drinks champagne in large quantities, attends all the plays, weeps when the crowd weeps, and spats and stamps when other people do the same, though he cannot tell the dialogue from the scenery. He learns to talk French so well in six weeks that he is constantly abusing the Parisians for not knowing their own language. He knew one, who, on his return, failed to answer the salutations of his friends, he had become so familiar with his adopted name that he found it difficult to recognize his original one.

After doing Paris he generally goes to Genoa to see the birth-place of Columbus and get a stone from the very house where he was born. It has been estimated that all the stones taken from that house, if collected, would build one 14,000 feet long and 16,000 feet high.

He generally takes mementoes from each place. One of the party succeeded well till getting to the Crimea. Nothing could be found but the hip bone of a horse. The traveler captured it and labelled it "the jaw of a Russian General." Travelers' labels are not always reliable. They found a work of art which represented a man being skinned alive. It was wonderfully life like; it had such an expression! A man skinned alive would be apt to give his attention to that particular work -- unless his attention happened to be called some other way. It wasn't pleasant to view works of that nature; one is apt to dream about it afterwards. Still it reminded him of a scene in early life. He was required to sleep in his father's office, and one evening, as the moon was rising, he thought he was almost sure there was something on the floor of the room. He felt a little curious to know -- didn't feel anxious -- kept watching and discovered the white features of a dead man! He had been brought there to have sentence passed upon him -- that is an inquest -- and he was found guilty! He never felt so sick in all his life, never felt so much like taking a walk. He didn't feel in a hurry, not in the least agitated, but he went out of the window, took the sash with him, not that he wanted anything of the sash, but it seemed very convenient to take it along.

The vandal visits Venice that has existed as a republic for 1400 years, and laughs to scorn the armies and navies of the world. Here is where Shylock used to loan money on human flesh -- and other collaterals. Here he hears the song of the romantic gondolier. The lecturer heard the song of the romantic gondolier; let him sing about four minutes, and suppressed him and did a good job. His private opinion is, though he hates to oppose Byron and such, but his private opinion is, that the gondolier is a humbug -- as a singer. But not too fast. It is grand to glide down street in a gondola instead of a street car. Business men step out, put on their gloves, and glide down to their counting rooms. The ladies kiss good-bye, play all the secret deceptions of the sex in our own land, but keep the gondolier waiting instead of the private carriage. The go shopping just the same and compel the poor clerks to lay down tons of silks, bombazines, corduroys and the like, and then buy a paper of pins and have it sent home by the errand boy. Ladies there, are the same angels as at home, have dresses cut "bias," and have their back hair held up by a crupper just the same way.

The old doctor wanted to see Scylla and Charybdis. He was up at night with his everlasting spyglass. Some one asked what he wanted, "Wanted," said he, "man you do not know me! I want to see all the places mentioned in the Bible!" Explanation was made, and he exclaimed, "There's another night's rest gone. I thought it was Sodom and Gomorrah."

The vandal finally spreads himself abroad to Athens. He approaches the grand old city in its silence, as it lies at his feet as if seen from a balloon. Nowhere else in the world can another such picture be seen. He would digress to tell an anecdote, because he might forget it and because it had a moral. One of the party on board the Quaker City had a chronic habit of speech-making; it was natural, he could not help it. They sat in their tent one evening in the holy land and our speech-maker called the attention of a sailor to the mountains in the distance: "There, Jack, is the Mountain of Moab. For ought we know you may now be resting your eyes on the very spot of the mysterious grave of Moses." "Moses who?" said Jack. "Why, you ignorant booby! Moses led the children of Israel through the wilderness, 300 miles in forty years." "In forty years!" said Jack;. "Why, Ben Holliday would have put them through in forty-eight hours!"

It was a singular sight to stand before the Emperor of all the Russias; a plain, common spoken man, dressed in no better clothes than any of them; probably had no better. He might open his mouth, and ships would depart on his errands, armies collect for his service, a thousand trains fly at his bidding; yet his cordiality was sincere and he stood the only European monarch who welcomed them in their true capacity, as American sovereigns. He spoke of this, because the Emperor is the only true friend we have among the monarchs of the other side of the water. He felt on first-rate terms with Alexander. Alexander gave him freedom to scatter himself around at pleasure and leave just when he pleased. He showed that he was possessed of a heart, rather an uncommon thing for monarchs to have.

His passages descriptive of the Sphinx, a moonlight ride in Venice, and the appearance of Athens from the surmounting eminence, were really eloquent and finished. He is unmistakably a man of high natural ability and considerable culture, and could not fail to make his mark in other than his chosen themes. As a satirist and humorist, he places no dependence upon uncouth spelling or local vernacular. He has an easy, don't-carative manner and a little of the swagger of the traditional Yankee joker without a single low or ungrammatical phrase.

MARK TWAIN'S LECTURE. -- White's Hall was filled from cellar to garret, last night, by one of the best tickled audiences that ever assembled there to hear a lecture or see the speaker. Mark Twain tickled them. And he did it so easily and almost consistently, that they didn't know what they were laughing at more than half the time. Twain is witty, and his wit comes from his own fertile brain. His style is original; and his manner of speaking is not after the manner of men generally. His serious face and long drawn words are, of themselves, sufficient to make one laugh, even if there were not in every sentence expressed a sparkling gem of humor, and original idea. His anecdotes, with which the lecture is repleat, are rich, and, as he tells them, irresistibly funny. In some of his descriptions of European places and characters the lecturer delivers, at times, most eloquent passages, brilliant in thought and word.

That MARK TWAIN is a success as a lecturer, as well as writer, we think no one who heard "The American Vandal Abroad," last night, will dispute.

MT spoke in Iowa City on Friday, 15 January 1869. His visit was not a success. In its weekly edition for January 13, the Iowa City Republican advertised the lecture as a very promising event:

THE FIRST LECTURE. -- The first lecture of the Course will be delivered on Friday evening of this week, at Metropolitan Hall, by that celebrated humorist, Mark Twain. Subject: "The American Vandal Abroad." We have never heard this lecturer, but judging from his reputation we shall anticipate a rich and rare discourse. The Association has selected him because he has succeeded in making such a reputation, judging rightfully, that he could not have made it without merit. We hope to see an old fashioned crowd in attendance on Friday evening. The net proceeds of the lecture will be devoted entirely to good works in our city. The time, the occasion, the man, and the cause demand an overflowing house.

In its next edition, a week later, the paper panned MT's performance both on and off stage.

THE VANDAL IN IOWA CITY. -- A splendid audience turned out to hear Mark Twain discourse about "The Vandal Abroad," and we fear were generally disappointed. As a lecture it was a humbug. As an occasion for laughter on very small capital of wit or ideas it was a success. There were one or two passages of some merit. His apostrophe to the Sphinx was decidedly good, as was also his description of the ruins of the Parthenon, and of Athens by moonlight. Some touches of Venice did very well, but it was impossible to know when he was talking in earnest and when in burlesque. It was amusing and interesting to see such a crowd of people laughing together, even though we knew half of them were ashamed that they were laughing at such very small witticisms. We were very much disappointed that there was so little substance to his lecture. We would not give two cents to hear him again.

But, lest he might not have succeeded with his "Vandal Abroad," he illustrated the character at the Clinton House, where he stopped. The morning after the lecture nothing was seen of him up to nine o'clock, and the landlord, in his kindness, went to his room to see if he might not be in want of something, but received a storm of curses and abuse for disturbing him. Of course the landlord retreated and left him. After a while a terrible racket was heard, and unearthly screams which frightened the women of the house. The landlord rushed to the room and there found a splendid specimen of the vandal and his works. There, before him, was the veritable animal, with his skin on at least, but not much else, and in a towering rage. He had kicked the fastenings from the door, not deigning to open it in the usual way -- that would have been too much like other folks. He poured upon the landlord another torrent of curses, impudence and abuse. He demanded to know where the bell-pull was. The landlord told him they were not up yet, and they had not yet got the house fully completed. His kicking the door open and his lung performance were his substitute for a bell. At two o'clock P.M. he had not dressed, and whether he did before he left on the five o'clock train we did not learn. The Y.M.C.A. were wretchedly imposed upon by Mark Twain, and so of course were the audience. He is the only one engaged for the course whose personal character was unknown. In great contrast will he be followed by the glorious Howard, the Christian Hero and Soldier, who gave his own right arm to his country, and who was ever true to her cause and the cause of his great Master above.

He started off with that moral lecture on courage, in which he makes the wise observation that every man's courage has a limit, and then told how his limit was reached when he discovered a dead man in his father's office at midnight, after one of his truancies. The famous "Jumping Frog," that proved Twain a humorist and is still regarded as one of his greatest stories, followed. The rambling "Story of the Ram" was particularly humorous and brought out more laughter than any other, but it was not more lifelike than Tom Sawyer's conversation with Huckleberry Finn and himself on starting a crusade. In this Mr. Twain seemed to point an innocent idea at the socialistic idea of property which half-hidden, half-revealed, formed the basis of his tale.

Then came the "First Theft" of the watermelon, but without doubt the best story, and the one which the audience listened to with hushed attention, was the pathetic struggle with his conscience over his aiding to liberty runaway Darky Jim. Huck Finn and Jim on the raft, both running away from harsh treatment, is one of the prettiest pictures of anti[ante?]-emancipation life on the Mississippi that has ever been penned. Mark hit the educated conscience theory a pretty hard rap and then, just to show that he could tell a story that was not located in the Mississippi valley or in the far West, he gave the story of the christening. In this Mr. Twain showed himself not only a story writer but a mimic. He copied the Scotch-Irish preacher to perfection, and bowed the large audience out well pleased to have seen and heard America's greatest humorist.

After the lecture came the reception to Clemens at the Commercial Club. It was fairly well attended, but no doubt hundreds of people would have paid their respects to the veteran fun-maker if it could have been known that no special invitation was expected. Mr. Clemens was accompanied by Maj. and Mrs. Pond, but Mrs. Clemens begged to be excused, as she was tired out with the journey. The affair was simple and informal. Mayor and Mrs. Pratt, President Calderwood, of the Commercial Club, and several other gentlemen presented the callers to the guest of honor and he had his hands full to chat with the many that crowded about to see the humorist as a man.

Mr. Clemens had been in bed all day, and his lecture took nearly all his conserved energy, but he chatted pleasantly and kept everyone at ease with his droll observations. A light refreshment followed the reception in the parlors, and about 11 o'clock Maj. Pond and President Calderwood escorted Mark Twain to his hotel.

Among those at the reception were Mayor and Mrs. Robert Pratt, C.H. Pryor and ladies, Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Preston, Dr. and Mrs. Charles M. Jordan, Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Edsten, Mr. and Mrs. J.S. McLain, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Gregory, Mr. and Mrs. James Pye, Dr. W.E. Leonard, C.R. Cameron, M.D. Shutter, E.W. Herrick, Rev. and Mrs. Dr. Sneed, George Strong, F.V. Brown, W.M. Hopkins, A.B. Choat, W.O. Stout, W.B. Stout, D. Willard, Harry Wheeler, W.C. Corbett, W.H. Randall, Al. Warner and Frederick Clarke.

This is the fifth of the series of lectures to be given by Mr. Clemens in a trip around the world. Maj. Pond says that it has been successful far beyond his highest expectation. He claims to have made money enough to take the party around the world and $1,000 to spare up to this point. Twain will give his readings in St. Paul this evening, thence go to Winnipeg and subsequently to Butte and Helena, Mont.

A dinner is to be given to Mr. Clemens and Maj. Pond at the Minneapolis Club this noon.

The program last night was not one calculated to bring out boisterous merriment. The selections were permeated by a quiet humor that made them entertaining, but in all of them was an underlying vein of philosophy pointing to some moral -- a moral not always strictly orthodox. Perhaps this was something of a disappointment to many of those who attended, expecting to be convulsed with laughter, but it was not for that reason less enjoyable. As given, it was a judicious blending of the pathetic and homely with those occasional scintillations of wit that flashed like dew drops in the morning sun, and in obedience to the law of contrasts each bringing out the other in stronger and more pronounced relief. There is no gainsaying the fact that the big audience was delightfully entertained during the short hour and a half and that it quitted the theater reluctantly when the end of the program was announced.

Including in the selections given last night were the famous "Story of the Jumping Frog," "My First Theft" and the rambling story of "Granther's Ram," a tale with a beginning that promised well but which was never finished. The story of finding a corpse in his father's office was a weird and uncanny bit of recital -- a thing in which Mark Twain particularly excels. Possibly the best of all was the story of Huck Finn helping the negro Jim to escape from slavery. There was a humorously pathetic tone to the story of Huck Finn's struggles with his conscience which would not let him rest easy either when he was endeavoring to hide or betray the slave whom he was aiding to escape to freedom. The one in which Tom Sawyer proposes to Huck Finn and Jim that they organize a crusade and rescue the "Holy Land" from the grasp of the infidels was a delightful bit of boy nature and boyish aspiration, and was thoroughly enjoyable. The program closed with a sketch of a Scotch-Irish christening in which the pompous preacher was pictured perfectly.

As Mr. Clemens turned to leave the stage, there was a storm of applause and in obedience to the demand for another story, he gave the "Whistling Story," which no one can tell so well as he. When he had finished, he remained standing on the stage and bowed the large audience out -- an audience that was well pleased to have met the most genial humorist of the present age.

The reception given to the distinguished humorist at the Commercial Club by the members of the club and the newspaper men of the city was a most informal affair, but none the less pleasant on that account. The gathering was not nearly so large as expected, and for this Mr. Clemens was, no doubt, thankful, as he was not in condition to enjoy a crush. Mayor and Mrs. Robert Pratt, Maj. and Mrs. Pond, and President Calderwood attended to the introductions and saw that all had an opportunity of a few moments' conversation with the celebrated humorist, who is as affable off the stage as he is enjoyable on it. Mrs. Clemens was indisposed and could not attend.

A simple lunch was served about 11 o'clock, after which the celebrated funmaker was escorted to his hotel by Mr. Calderwood.

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.

"So far as Joan of Arc is concerned," he said, when asked about the authorship of the memoirs now being published in Harper's Magazine, "I have been asked that question several times. I have always considered it wise, however, to leave an unclaimed piece of literary property alone until time has shown that no one is going to claim it. Then it is safe to acknowledge you wrote that, whether you did or not. It is in this way that I have become recognized and respected as the author of 'Beautiful Snow,' 'Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep' and other literary gems."

When asked how he came to take the nom de plume of Mark Twain he said that that well known equivalent for "two fathoms" on the sounding line had been used as a nom de plume for a few marine notes furnished a New Orleans paper by the oldest captain on the river -- Isaiah Sellers. "When the word came out to Virginia City that Sellers was dead," said he, "I did not think it would be much of a crime to rob that corpse of that nom de plume, and I did so."

Mark Twain, the American humorist, stood before an immense audience in Music hall last evening and demonstrated his latest scheme for the moral regeneration of the human race. The speaker appeared in this city over ten years ago and the decade has wrought great changes in his appearance. His immense shock of hair has turned nearly white, but his humor is just as vigorous and his style as entertaining as ever. Mr. Clemens has been ill for several weeks and his appearance last evening was almost on the eve of his long contemplated tour around the world by way of Australia. His lecture was given for the benefit of the News-boys' home.

Mark Twain's theory for the moral regeneration of the race is sensationally unique. He proposes that man shall be guilty of the entire category of crimes and misdemeanors, thereby gaining impressions of wickedness which he will never forget, and by the experience thus gained he will shun wickedness. The audience became convulsed when the speaker deliberately assured them that he had passed through two-thirds of the crimes of which the human race is capable and that he hoped in a few more years to complete the list and reach the stage of perfect moral manhood. His matter of fact manner in reaching startling conclusions is one of the chief powers of the great humorist.

The effort of Mr. Clemens was preluded by two very pleasing violin solos by Fiora Drescher of New York and a couple of flute solos by Mr. Dewey Haywood of Chicago.

Miss Drescher is a very beautiful woman, with large, dark eyes and dark hair. She plays with a great deal of expression and feeling. Her violin is over a hundred years old and has been owned by Remenyi, Ole Bull and Camilla Urso. Mr. Haywood is the husband of Miss Drescher. They were married three weeks ago today in Chicago. Mr. H.J. Kroessen of this city was accompanist.

Mark Twain in a dress suit and an immaculate expanse of white shirt front has none of the slouchy appearance that his latest pictures give to him, on the contrary, he is spruce and trim. He has a shaggy bunch of iron-gray hair about his head, and his eyes are set deep under a broad forehead. He speaks with a twang and a drawl that is in keeping with his humor and would be amusing if he were speaking solemnly, but when it is used in telling funny stories it is more than amusing, it produces spontaneous laughter in every audience he has ever tried it on. Acaconda people were no exception, they are enjoyed the programme and will long remember the night they saw and heard Mark Twain.

Then came the story about Mr. Twain's first theft, when he stole a watermelon from a peddler's wagon, and finding that it was green, how his conscience troubled him, until he returned it to the peddler and made him give him a ripe one in exchange for it. The next narrative was about Tom Sawyer's crusade, and that was followed with the final number of the programme, the ghost story about the golden arm.

After the lecture many were honored with an introduction to the noted humorist and called on him at the Butte where Mr. Clemens, wife and daughter and Major J. B. Pond and wife are stopping.

The lecture last night was attended by the best people in the city and thoroughly enjoyed by them. It was largely made up from selections from his works. The quaintness and originality of the man and his manner gave an added charm to the stories. The finale of the lecture was a ghost story, which ended with a surprise to the audience, and illustrated as well perhaps as anything the peculiar humor of the man.

After the lecture Mr. Clemens (Mark Twain) and Maj. Pond were the guests of the Electric club, and it is unnecessary to say that they had a jolly good time.

With more solidity and depth than most of that class of writers, Mark Twain keeps coming to the front instead of sinking into oblivion, and the name is as familiar to the rising generation as it was when he first made his appearance in the literary world. To have accomplished this, there must have been more to his work than simply humor. This humor must have been true to life rather than an exaggeration to provoke mirth. In many cases, it is a question whether his mirth is not rather pathos, and the two are so delightfully blended that it is not hard to conceive why Mark Twain stands where he does today.

The house was one ripple of laughter from the beginning to the end, the only regrettable feature being that Portland only has this one opportunity to hear him. After the fall of the curtain and the house was thinning out, the applause was sufficient to call him before the curtain, and a request was called out from the audience to give the "Stammerer's Tale," which he did most graciously.

The audience last night was very fashionable, as well as extremely large. Every seat in both the dress circle and balcony was occupied, with numbers standing, and the gallery was well filled. The lecture consisted of the following original selections from Twain's writings: "My First Theft," "The Jumping Frog," "Character of the Blue Jay," "A Fancy Dress Incident," "Bit Off More Than He Could Chew," "Tom Sawyer's Crusade," "Fighting a Duel in Nevada," and "A Ghost Story." The entertainment consumed an hour and a half, and at its close the lecturer took occasion to thank his hearers for such a cordial reception on a summer evening, and expressed his sincere gratification that hhis meeting with the public of Portland was of such a substantial and pleasing character.

The sketches from Adam's Diary, which Mr. Clemens presented for the first time last evening, showed probably more originality than any of the other selections, while his "Watermelon" story was probably the most humorous, and the "Ghost Story" brought out his wonderful ability as a story teller, to the best advantage.

On the whole the entertainment was very enjoyable, and no one who is at all acquainted with Mr. Clemens' works will regret having heard him.

The lecturer was not at his best last night, having but recently left the bed to which he was confined for weeks with a carbuncle that at one time threatened his life. Indeed he was obliged to go to bed immediately upon his arrival in the afternoon. But notwithstanding his condition he kept the vast audience in a constant ripple of laughter from first to last, and when he suggested stopping he was greeted by cries of "go on, go on," accompanied by enthusiastic applause. He was however compelled to cut his time somewhat, only speaking about an hour and twenty minutes.

Mr. Clemens is a small, slight man, with spare face, a little the worse for wear, with shaggy eyebrows about his twinkling eyes and a drooping mustache falling over his mouth. But the distinguishing mark of the man -- a unconscious pun -- is the mass of bushy iron gray hair which encircles his head like a halo to speak poetically, or like the Wild Man of Borneo to be literal. He speaks with a peculiar drawl, and in a sort of confidentially conversational manner which makes everything wonderfully effective. If what he said were printed word for word it would not seem particularly humorous, but told in his inimitable style it is irresistably funny.

The program last night began with an account of the lecturer's first theft. He thought it was the first watermelon he ever stole, but was not entirely clear on that point. By what he is still compelled to consider an inexcusable mistake he took a green melon from the wagon of a farmer who was peddling them out. When he realized the true character of his act he immediately repented. He felt a moral uplifting which compelled him to restore the melon to the farmer. He delivered it, accompanied by a lecture on the sin of selling green melons which led the farmer to reform, so that Mark was rewarded by the consciousness of leading a fellow creature into the paths of rectitude, besides getting a ripe melon for the green one which the farmer supposed he had sold.

One of his most graphic descriptions was an account of a boyhood's experience, sneaking into his father's office at midnight to sleep on the couch, where unknown to him a murdered man had been stretched out awaiting an inquest. The people held their breath as a told how his hair rose when he discovered a nameless something on the floor, but the gruesome feeling changed to uproarious hilarity when he told how, when the moonlight finally gleamed upon the corpse, he "went away," taking the window sash with him, "not that I needed the sash, but it was more convenient to take it."

The crowd was also immensely "tickled" over the story of the jumping frog. An extract from Tom Sawyer, the plan for the crusade, afforded an excellent opportunity for the dialect work of which Twain is a master.

The Arlington orchestra furnished several choice selections while the audience was gathering, and at the close of the entertainment.

The string on which the great humorist strung the many anecdotes and jests that made up the body of the evening's entertainment was a pretended moral lecture, which he said he had in mind to work out at his leisure. Thus he would tell some droll story and draw therefrom some far-fetched moral, which found its chief pith and merit in being far-fetched. The following will serve as a poor sample of a dozen of its kind:

"When I was a boy my father lived in a little Missouri village on the banks of the Mississippi river. The place was so small that it was necessary for one man to hold several such offices as coroner, mayor, postmaster, in order to maintain the dignity of each. My father was the incumbent. He had a small office built wherein his numerous functions were discharged. It was not often that he got to act as coroner, but now and then the community furnished a corpse. In the office was a sofa, which was to me a very useful article of furniture. We boys were told not to go fishing. For that reason we went. On returning from one of these excursions, I did not care to go at once into the home circle. I preferred letting the home atmosphere cool down till next morning. Accordingly I would creep into that office and use that sofa as a bed.

"One day there had been a fight in the village while I was out fishing. One man had killed another with a bowie knife. The corpse had been stripped to the waist and laid out on the floor of the little office ready for the inquest next morning. Late at night I came in, ignorant of what had occurred. I crept to the sofa was just sinking into the deep, sweet sleep which is the reward of honest toil when a strange feeling came over me as I thought I saw some uncanny object on the floor. I first resolve to feel it, but concluded I would wait. Just beyond it were some squares of moonlight on the floor and I decided to wait till the moonlight crept along to where the thing lay. Only those who have waited for the moon at midnight know how slow it is. At last there lay a pallid human hand in the ghostly light. I tried to turn over and count a thousand till the moon should reveal what I knew now was there, but I got no further than seventy-five. After what seemed an interminable time, the white, muscular arm, then the rigid, set face, then the body with the knife wound on the left side came into view. I went away from there. I do not mean to imply that I left hurriedly. I simply went. I went through the window. I took the sash along with me. I did not have any special use for the sash, but under the circumstances it was easier to take it than it was to leave it.

"Now, in planning my great lecture on morals, I mean to introduce this story to illustrate the principle that early in life a young man should certainly gauge his limitations. He should know just exactly how brave he is, how far he can rely on his own courage before he is compelled to begin to use his discretion."

In similar vein the lecturer gave the story of the bucking horse from his "Roughing It," which he said he proposed to use in his great lecture "to show that we should be careful how we make the acquaintance of strangers." Then he shot off at a merry tangent to say that Mount Ranier had been pursuing this policy toward him during his first visit. To illustrate the moral that conclusions must not be drawn hastily, the gave the story of the preacher's long baptismal harangue over what he supposed to be a boy baby, till the name of Mary Ann was announced. In much the same tone followed the story of the grandfather and the ram, and of Jim and Huckleberry Finn when these two worthies were running away, and of "My first theft."

Leaving this hypothetical lecture on morals, Mr. Clemens was proceeding to give the substance of his famous essay on the German language, when a rough voice from the gallery cried out: "Haf you been to Heidelberg?" "Yes," retorted the lecturer, with ready wit; "I studied German there and I learned many other things there also, among them how to drink beer." The questioner subsided.

As a conclusion, Mr. Clemens gave his famous ghost story. It was the strongest piece given by him, or rather, he gave it most strongly, and when the unexpected denouement was reached there was many a sudden jump among those who had been betrayed into breathless expectancy through the weird magic of the well-told dialect story.

As a mark of honor Mr. Clemens was called before the curtain, and in response he gave "The Stammerer" in mirth-provoking style.

Among those who occupied boxes were the members of the Torbert Concert company, who appear at the Seattle theater on Saturday night. Major Pond speaks in the highest terms of this company, Miss Torbert being, in fact, a protoge of his, his first appearance with her dating from her membership in Beecher's church.

Twain is a man of medium height and size with a rather calm and serene looking countenance. He wears an iron grey moustache and a bushy head of decidedly grey hair that makes one believe Twain is trying to rival Paderewski. His style is rather original. He speaks slowly with a peculiar drawl and gives one the idea that nothing on earth could make him talk any faster.

As for the entertainment, however, it must be admitted that it was disappointing. Perhaps expectations were raised too high. The people started in to laugh at once as though they were there for that purpose and thought they ought to. After he had narrated a couple of his yarns, however, they subsided somewhat, and only occasionally broke out again. Twain did not seem to be able to get the audience under his control although he had the opportunity to do it very easily at the beginning.

His entertainment is rather informal in style. He slides easily from one story into another without much warning and introduces anecdotes as they come to his mind. Some of them impress one as being very funny, although all of them are of rather a dry sort of humor, but some others fall somewhat flat.

"There she comes! There she comes!" ejaculated Mr. Briggs, as he hopped around on the dock, with smiling face.

"There's Maj. Pond," exclaimed the deacon, as the big vessel neared the dock. Maj. Pond stood on the edge of the gangway, peering onto the dock, and by his side, all dressed for the platform, stood Mark Twain. Behind him stood Mrs. Clemens and Miss Clemens.

"Here we are, Major!" shouted Deacon Briggs.

The boat's officers blew their whistles, shouted commands, and in a moment the big vessel stood close to the dock. The gang plank was run aboard. Purser Pierce stepped aside and off came big Maj. Pond, chin whiskers, white straw hat, good natured countenance and all. He was closely followed by Mark Twain and his family.

"Is there a carriage here?" queried the humorist.

"Right this way," replied Mr. Briggs, as he started across the dock for a hack that stood in waiting at the corner.

Twain bustled along at the heels of the quick stepping deacon, and his wife and daughter came along with Maj. Pond.

"Drive to the First Methodist church faster than you ever drove before," ordered Mr. Briggs as he climbed nimbly onto the box with the driver.

"I'll run 'em all the way," replied the Jehu.

The whip cracked, the horses sprang forward and the carriage went whirling away at a furious pace.

MR. CLEMENS' LECTURE
It Was Mostly Made Up of Readings and Very Funny Stories

It was about 9 o'clock when the audience that filled the First Methodist church heard the cry outside, "Here he comes," and hundreds of expectant eyes turned toward the door through which the famous humorist entered escorted by Rev. Dr. Thoburn. "It looked for a time," said Mr. Clemens by way of introduction, "as if I would be a few minutes late." Then he recited the story of the frog jumping match, so familiar to all readers of his stories; told of going to his father's doctor office one night after having played truant and finding the body of a man who had been killed. Mark told a story of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, followed by the ghost story, which was related so artistically that the final "Wough!" brought every one to his feet. There was also a story of a new clergyman at a christening. The clergyman dilated at length on an excuse for the small size of the little one whom he understood to be a boy. Ending an eloquent peroration to the effect that the infant might prove a modern Caeser or Hannibal, he asked abruptly, "But what is his name?" "Name is it?" replied one of the company, "Why his name it is Mary Ann."

Mr. Clemens and his party left last night for St. Paul, where he lectures tonight.

Hartford Christian Secretary [unsigned]
1877: May 17

Our city of Hartford can boast the greatest humorist in current literature. Mr. Clemens owes nothing to erratic spelling like "Artemas Ward," or to exciting political themes like some other witty writers. He is altogether original and unique. "The Innocents Abroad," is an exhaustless feast vastly entertaining and full of information as a book of travels. The same charm of genius in an unusual direction fills the fascinating pages of "Tom Sawyer." The boy hero and the other children are so lifelike that the reader hardly needs the author's assurance that real boys and genuine parts are in the book. One gets very fond of Tom notwithstanding his grave faults, some of which you almost wish had been omitted. But he is a brave, manly boy after all, and the finest scene in the whole story to one reader at least, is where he receives a whipping to shield a little, terrified girl. The childish attachment between these two and the manly protection Tom accords to little Becky both at school and amid the horrors of being lost in the cave, are very finely described. To one who had only seen the other side of Tom's character these noble traits would have seemed impossible. The "pain-killer" adventure is funny beyond expression as is much of Tom's career. The last few chapters are extremely sensational and strike one as too remarkable to be natural adventures for little boys. One cannot help regretting that so fine a fellow as Tom lies and smokes, but the intention was not to describe a model boy. Yet these traits solely detract from the hero. Those who regard Mark Twain as only "a funny man," greatly underestimate his power. Wit is the spice of his books not the substance. In this story are some most exquisitely beautiful descriptions. That of early morning in one place particularly, is delicious in its perfect picture of nature and its beautiful poetry.