extended works gradually came to be translated into German, French,
Italian, and the languages of Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula.

The elements of the colossally grotesque, the wildly primitive, in Mark
Twain's works, the underlying note of melancholy not less than the
lawless Bohemianism, found sympathetic appreciation among the Germanic
races. George Meredith has likened the functionings of Germanic humour
to the heavy-footed antics of a dancing bear. Mark Twain's stories of
the Argonauts, the miners and desperadoes, with their primitive,
orgiastic existence; his narratives of the wild freedom of the life on
the Mississippi, the lawless feuds and barbaric encounters--all appealed
to the passion for the fantastic and the grotesque innate in the
Germanic consciousness. To the Europeans, this wild genius of the
Pacific Slope seemed to function in a sort of unexplored fourth
dimension of humour--vast and novel--of which they had never dreamed.
It is noteworthy that Schleich, in his 'Psychopathik des Humors',
reserved for American humour, with Mark Twain as its leading exponent,
a distinct and unique category which he denominated _phantastischen,
grossdimensionalen_.

To the biographer belongs the task of describing, in detail, the lavish
entertainment and open-hearted homage which were bestowed upon Mark
Twain in German Europe. In writing of Mark Twain and his popularity in
Germanic countries, Carl von Thaler unhesitatingly asserts that Mark
Twain was feted, wined and dined in Vienna, the Austrian metropolis, in
an unprecedented manner, and awarded unique honours hitherto paid to no
German writer. In Berlin, the young Kaiser bestowed upon him the most
distinguished marks of his esteem; and praised his works, in especial
'Life on the Mississippi', with the intensest enthusiasm. When Mark
Twain received a command from the Kaiser to dine with him, his young