ADVERTISEMENT.
“Mark Twain” is too well known to the public to require
a formal introduction at my hands. By his story of the Frog,
he scaled the heights of popularity at a single jump, and won for
himself the sobriquet of The Wild Humorist of the Pacific
Slope. He is also known to fame as The Moralist of the Main;
and it is not unlikely that as such he will go down to posterity.
It is in his secondary character, as humorist, however, rather
than in the primal one of moralist, that I aim to present him in
the present volume. And here a ready explanation will be
found for the somewhat fragmentary character of many of these
sketches; for it was necessary to snatch threads of humor wherever
they could be found—very often detaching them from serious
articles and moral essays with which they were woven and
entangled. Originally written for newspaper publication, many
of the articles referred to events of the day, the interest of
which has now passed away, and contained local allusions,
which the general reader would fail to understand; in such
cases excision became imperative. Further than this, remark
or comment is unnecessary. Mark Twain never resorts to tricks
of spelling nor rhetorical buffoonery for the purpose of provoking
a laugh; the vein of his humor runs too rich and deep to make
surface-gilding necessary. But there are few who can resist the
quaint similes, keen satire, and hard good sense which form the
staple of his writings.
J. P.
