ABSTRACT
MARK TWAIN's Nnw nooK. What would the great old romantic voyagers and travellers, the heroes ofHackluyt and Purchas, say of the monster Yankee picnic to Europe and the Holy Land? I think that if those worthies 'vere to get hold of a copy of Mark Twain's account of the excursion, there would be laughter in Elysium. At any rate, I can hardly believe it possible for an earthly reader-unless, indeed, like Charles Lamb's Scotchman, he is joke-proof-to peruse Twain's new book, The In11oce11ts Abroad, without 'laughing consumedly.' The work, however, though rich in joke and jest is not, like Gilbert a Becket's dreary comic histories, a merely funny book. On the contrary, it is a very full and matter-of-fact record of travel in Europe and the East, delightfully flavored with humor and plentifully spiced with wit. Addison's sober citizen complained that there were too many plums and no suet in his pudding, but no one can say that Twain's literary pudding is wanting in suet or too full of plums.
