man of feeling. To the great humorist--to Mark Twain--the world was a
tragi-comedy. Like Smile Faguet, he seemed at times to feel that grief
is the most real and important thing in the world--because it separates
us from happiness. He was an exemplar of the highest, truest, sincerest
humour, perfectly fulfilling George Meredith's definition: "If you laugh
all round him, tumble him, roll him about, deal him a smack, and drop a
tear on him, own his likeness to you and yours to your neighbour, spare
him as little as you shun, pity him as much as you expose, it is the
spirit of Humour that is moving you." Mark Twain's fun was
light-hearted and insouciant, his pathos genuine and profound. "He is,
above all," said that oldest of English journals, 'The Spectator', "the
fearless upholder of all that is clean, noble, straightforward, innocent,
and manly. . . . If he is a jester, he jests with the mirth of the
happiest of the Puritans; he has read much of English knighthood, and
translated the best of it into his living pages; and he has assuredly
already won a high degree in letters in having added more than any writer
since Dickens to the gaiety of the Empire of the English language."

Mark Twain's humour flowed warm from the heart. He enjoyed to the
utmost those two inalienable blessings: "laughter and the love of
friends." He woke the laughter of an epoch and numbered a world for his
friends. "He is the true consolidator of nations," said Mr. Augustine
Birrell. "His delightful humour is of the kind which dissipates and
destroys national prejudices. His truth and his honour, his love of
truth and his love of honour, overflow all boundaries. He has made the
world better by his presence."