Thaler, "lies in the little sketches, the literary snap-shots. The
shorter his work, the more striking it is. He draws directly from life.
No other writer has learned to know so many different varieties of men
and of circumstances, so many strange examples of the Genus Homo, as he;
no other has taken so strange a course of development." The deeper
elements of Mark Twain's humour did not escape the attention of the
Germans, nor fail of appreciation at their hands. In his aphorisms,
embodying at once genuine wit and experience of life, they discovered
not merely the American author, but the universal human being; these
aphorisms they found worthy of profound and lasting admiration.
Sintenis found in Mark Twain a "living symptom of the youthful joy in
existence"--a genius capable at will, despite his "boyish extravagance,"
of the virile formulation of fertile and suggestive ideas. His latest
critic in Germany wrote at the time of his death, with a genuine insight
into the significance of his work: "Although Mark Twain's humour moves
us to irresistible laughter, this is not the main point in his books;
like all true humorists, _ist der Witz mit dem Weltschmerz verbunden_,
he is a witness to higher thoughts and higher emotions, and his purpose
is to expose bad morals and evil circumstances, in order to improve and
ennoble mankind." The critic of the 'Berliner Zeitung' asserted that
Mark Twain is loved in Germany more than all other humorists, English or
French, because his humour "turns fundamentally upon serious and earnest
conceptions of life." It is a tremendously significant fact that the,
works of American literature most widely read in Germany are the works
of--striking conjunction!--Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain.

The 'Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' fired the laugh heard round the
world. Like Byron, Mark Twain woke one morning to find himself famous.
A classic fable, which had once evoked inextinguishable laughter in
Athens, was unconsciously re-told in the language of Angel's Camp,