to assume in the eyes of his countrymen an embodiment of the national
spirit. He was the self--made man in the self--made democracy. He was
at once his own creation and the creation of a democracy. There were
humorists in America before Mark Twain; there are humorists in America
still. But Mark Twain succeeded not merely in captivating the great
mass of the people; he achieved the far more difficult and unique
distinction of convincing his countrymen of his essential fellowship,
his temperamental affinity, with them. This miracle he wrought by the
frankest and most straightforward revelation of the actual experiences
in his own life and the lives of those he had known with perfect
intimacy. It is true that he wrote a few books dealing with other
times, other scenes, than our own in the present and in America. But I
daresay that his popularity with the mass of his countrymen would not
have been in any degree lessened had he never written these few books.
Indeed, it is hardly to be doubted that his books were successful in the
ratio of their autobiographic nature. For the character he revealed in
those books of his which are essentially autobiographic, is the
character dear to the American heart; and the experiences, vicissitudes,
and hardships, shot through and irradiated with a high boisterousness of
humour, found a joyous sympathy in the minds and hearts of men who had
all "been there" themselves. In Mark Twain the American people
recognized at last the sturdy democrat, independent of foreign
criticism; confident in the validity and value of his own ideas and
judgments; believing loyally in his country's institutions, and
upholding them fearlessly before the world; fundamentally serious and
self-reliant, yet with a practicality tempered by humane kindliness,
warmth of heart, and a strain of persistent idealism; rude, boisterous,
even uncouth, yet withal softened by sympathy for the under-dog, a
boundless love for the weak, the friendless, the oppressed; lacking in
profound intellectuality, yet supreme in the possession of the simple