will soon blow itself out. This item of yours will be remembered
and talked about when all your other work is forgotten. The murder
at Dutch Nick's will be quoted years from now as the big sell of
these times."

Said Mark: "I believe you are right; I remember I once did a thing
at home in Missouri, was caught at it, and worried almost to death.
I was a mere lad, and was going to school in a little town where I
had an uncle living. I at once left the town and did not return to
it for three years. When I finally came back I found I was only
remembered as 'the boy that played the trick on the schoolmaster.'"

Mark then told me the story, began to laugh over it, and from that
moment "ceased to groan." He was not discharged, and in less than
a month people everywhere were laughing and joking about the
"murder at Dutch Nick's."

Out of that full, free Western life, with its tremendous hazards of
fortune, its extravagant alternations from fabulous wealth to wretched
poverty, its tremendous exaggerations and incredible contrasts, was
evolved a humour as rugged, as mountainous, and as altitudinous as the
conditions which gave it birth. Mark Twain may be said to have created,
and made himself master of, this new and fantastic humour which, in its
exaggeration and elaboration, was without a parallel in the history of
humorous narration. At times it seemed little more than a sort of
infectious and hilarious nonsense; but in reality it had behind it all
the calculation of detail and elaboration. There was something in it
of the volcanic, as if at the bursting forth of some pentup force of
primitive nature. It consisted in piling Pelion on Ossa, until the
structure toppled over of its own weight and fell with a stentorian