rather than by the more dubious productions, in which we fail to see at
every moment the winning qualities and the characteristic form of this
very interesting American. As one would not judge of Tennyson by his
dramas, nor Thackeray by his journalistic chit-chat, nor Sir Walter
Scott by those romances which he wrote after his fecundity had been
exhausted, so we must not judge Mark Twain by the dozen or more
specimens which belong to the later period, when he was ill at ease and
growing old. Let us rather go back with a sort of joy to what he wrote
when he did so with spontaneity, when his fun was as natural to him as
breathing, and when his humour was all American humour--not like that of
Juvenal or Hierocles--acrid, or devoid of anything individual--but
brimming over with exactly the same rich irresponsibility which belonged
to Steele and Lamb and Irving. It may seem odd to group a son of the
New World and of the great West with those earlier classic figures who
have been mentioned here; yet upon analysis it will be discovered that
the humour of Mark Twain is at least first cousin to that which produced
Sir Roger de Coverley and Rip Van Winkle and The Stout Gentleman."

The details of the Gambetta-Fourtou duel, in which Mark played a
somewhat frightened second, have furnished untold amusement to
thousands. And his description of the inadvertent _faux pas_ he
committed at his first public lecture is humorous for any age and
society. The sign announcing the lecture read--"Doors open at 7. The
Trouble will begin at 8." For three days, Mark had been in a state of
frightful suspense. Once his lecture had seemed humorous; but as the
day approached, it seemed to him to be but the dreariest of fooling,
without a vestige of real fun. He was so panic-stricken that he
persuaded three of his friends, who were giants in stature, genial and
stormy voiced, to act as claquers and pound loudly at the faintest
suspicion of a joke. He bribed Sawyer, a half-drunk man, who had a