us that we are a nation. For in the dead vast and middle of the
years insidious foes are lurking--anaemic refinements, cosmopolitan
decadencies, the egotistic and usurping pride of great cities, the
cold sickening of the heart at the reiterated exposures of giant
fraud and corruption. When our countrymen migrate because we have
no kings or castles, we are thankful to any one who will tell us
what we can count on. When they complain that our soil lacks the
humanity essential to great literature, we are grateful even for
the firing of a national joke heard round the world. And when Mark
Twain, robust, big-hearted, gifted with the divine power to use
words, makes us all laugh together, builds true romances with
prairie fire and Western clay, and shows us that we are at one on
all the main points, we feel that he has been appointed by
Providence to see to it that the precious ordinary self of the
Republic shall suffer no harm."

STUART P. SHERMAN: "MARK TWAIN."
The Nation, May 12, 1910.




THE MAN


American literature, indeed I might say American life, can exhibit no
example of supreme success from the humblest beginnings, so signal as
the example of Mark Twain. Lincoln became President of the United
States, as did Grant and Johnson. But assassination began for Lincoln
an apotheosis which has gone to deplorable lengths of hero-worship and