--a fame, indeed, which seemed to extend to realms peopled by noted
theological characters. From very humble beginnings--he used
facetiously to speak of coming up from the "very dregs of society"!
--Mark Twain achieved international eminence and repute. This
accomplishment was due to the power of brain and personality alone. In
this sense, his career is unprecedented and unparalleled in the history
of American literature.

It is a mark of the democratic independence of America that she has
betrayed a singular indifference to the appraisal of her literature at
the hands of foreign criticism. Upon her writers who have exhibited
derivative genius--Irving, Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow--American
criticism has lavished the most extravagant eulogiums. The three
geniuses who have made permanent contributions to world-literature, who
have either embodied in the completest degree the spirit of American
democracy, or who have had the widest following of imitators and
admirers in foreign countries, still await their final and just deserts
at the hands of critical opinion in their own land. The genius of Edgar
Allan Poe gave rise to schools of literature on the continent of Europe;
yet in America his name must remain for years debarred from inclusion in
a so-called Hall of Fame! Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, the two great
interpreters and embodiments of America, represent the supreme
contribution of democracy to universal literature. In so far as it is
legitimate for anyone to be denominated a "self-made man" in literature,
these men are justly entitled to such characterization. They owe
nothing to European literature--their genius is supremely original,
native, democratic. The case of Mark Twain, which is our present
concern, is a literary phenomenon which imposes upon criticism,
peculiarly upon American criticism, the distinct obligation of tracing
the steps in his unhalting climb to an eminence that was international