formulation of an idea grew upon him; and Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
is a mine of homely and memorable aphorism, epigram, injunction.

According to Mark Twain's classification, the comic story is English,
the witty story French, the humorous story American. While the other
two depend upon matter, the humorous story depends for its effect upon
the manner of telling. The witty story and the comic story must be
concise and end with a "point"; but the humorous story may be as
leisurely as you please and have no particular destination. Mark Twain
always maintained that, while anyone could tell effectively a comic or a
witty story, it required a person skilled in an art of a rare and
distinctive character to tell a humorous story successfully. Mark Twain
was himself the supreme exemplar of the art of telling a humorous story.
Take this little passage, for example, which convulsed one of his London
audiences. He was speaking of a high mountain that he had come across
in his travels. "It is so cold that people who have been there find it
impossible to speak the truth; I know that's a fact (here a pause, a
blank stare, a shake of the head, a little stroll across the platform, a
sigh, a puff, a smothered groan), because--I've--(another pause)--been
--(a longer pause)--there myself." Who could equal Mark Twain as a
humorous narrator, in his recital of the alarums and excursions,
criminations and recriminations, over the story of somebody else's dog
he sold to General Miles for three dollars? He delighted numerous
audiences with his story of inveighing Mrs. Grover Cleveland at a White
House reception into writing blindly on the back of a card "He didn't."
When she turned it over she discovered that it bore on the other side,
in Mrs. Clemens' handwriting, the startling words: "Don't wear your
arctics in the White House." I shall never forget his recital of the
story of how his enthusiasm oozed away at a meeting in behalf of foreign
missions. So moving was the fervid eloquence of the exhorter that,