must be done.

Mark Twain never wholly escaped the penalty that his reputation as a
humorist compelled him to pay. He became more than popular novelist,
more than a jovial entertainer: he became a public institution, as
unmistakable and as national as the Library of Congress or the
Democratic Party. Even in the latest years of his life, though long
since dissociated in fact from the category of Artemus Ward, John
Phoenix, Josh Billings, and Petroleum V. Nasby, Mark Twain could never
be sure that his most solemn utterance might not be drowned in roars of
thoughtless laughter.

"It has been a very serious and a very difficult matter," Mr. Clemens
once said to me, "to doff the mask of humour with which the public is
accustomed, in thought, to see me adorned. It is the incorrigible
practice of the public, in this or in any country, to see only humour in
the humorist, however serious his vein. Not long ago I wrote a poem,
which I never dreamed of giving to the public, on account of its
seriousness; but on being invited to address the women students of a
certain great university, I was persuaded by a near friend to read this
poem. At the close of my lecture I said 'Now, ladies, I am going to
read you a poem of mine'--which was greeted with bursts of uproarious
laughter. 'But this is a truly serious poem,' I asseverated--only to be
greeted with renewed and, this time, more uproarious laughter. Nettled
by this misunderstanding, I put the poem in my pocket, saying, 'Well,
young ladies, since you do not believe me to be serious, I shall not
read the poem'--at which the audience almost went into convulsions of
laughter."

Humour is a function of nationality. The same joke, as related by an