Clemens. He is ours, he is one of us, we have a personal pride in
him--dear "Mark Twain," the beloved child of the American nation. And
it was through our laughter that he won our love.

He is the exponent of the typically American style of fun-making, the
humorous story. I asked Mr. Clemens one day if he could remember the
first money he ever earned. With his inimitable drawl he said:

"Yes, Marsh, it was at school. All boys had the habit of going to school
in those days, and they hadn't any more respect for the desks than they
had for the teachers. There was a rule in our school that any boy
marring his desk, either with pencil or knife, would be chastised
publicly before the whole school, or pay a fine of five dollars. Besides
the rule, there was a ruler; I knew it because I had felt it; it was a
darned hard one, too. One day I had to tell my father that I had broken
the rule, and had to pay a fine or take a public whipping; and he said:

"'Sam, it would be too bad to have the name of Clemens disgraced before
the whole school, so I'll pay the fine. But I don't want you to lose
anything, so come upstairs.'

"I went upstairs with father, and he was for-_giving_ me. I came
downstairs with the feeling in one hand and the five dollars in the
other, and decided that as I'd been punished once, and got used to it, I
wouldn't mind taking the other licking at school. So I did, and I kept
the five dollars. That was the first money I ever earned."

The humorous story as expounded by Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, and Robert
J. Burdette, is purely American. Artemus Ward could get laughs out of
nothing, by mixing the absurd and the unexpected, and then backing the