ABSTRACT
The boy of to-day is fortunate indeed, and, of a truth, he is to be congratulated. While the boy of yesterday had to stay his stomach with the unconscious humour of Sandford aud Merto11, the boy of to-day may get his ftll of fun and of romance and of adventure in Treasure Islmul and in Tom Brotvll and in Tom Sawyer, and now in a sequel to Tom Sa111yer, wherein Tom himself appears in the very nick of time, like a young god from the machine. Sequels of stories which have been widely popular are not a little risky. H11ckleberry Fi1111 is a sharp exception to this general rule. Although it is a sequel, it is quite as worthy
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of wide popnlarity as Trm Sawyer. An American critic once neatly declared that the late G. P.R. James hit the bull's-cyc of success with his first shot, and that for ever thereafter he went on firing through the same hole. Now this is just what Mark Twain has not done. Hucklebrrry Fi1111 is not an attempt to do Tom Sawyer over again. It is a story quite as unlike its predecessor as it is like. Although Huck Finn appeared fmt in the earlier book, and although Tom Sawyer reappears in the later, the scenes and the characters arc otherwise wholly different. Above all, the atmosphere of the story is different. Tom Sawyer was a talc of boyish adventure in a village in Missouri, on the Mississippi river, and it was told by the author. Huckleberry Fim1 is autobiographic; it is a talc of boyish adventure along the Mississippi river told as it appeared to Huck Finn. There is not in Huckleberry Fi1111 any one scene quite as funny as those in which Tom Sawyer gets his friends to whitewash the fence for him, and then uses the spoils thereby acquired to attain the highest situation of the Sunday school the next morning. Nor is there any distinction quite as thrilling as that awful moment in the cave when the boy and the girl arc lost in the darkness, and when Tom Sawyer suddenly sees a human hand bearing a light, and then fmds that the hand is the hand of Indian Joe, his one mortal enemy; we have always thought that the vision of the hand in the cave in Tom Sawyer is one of the very finest things in the literature of adventure since Robinson Crusoe ftrSt saw a single footprint in the sand of the seashore. But though Huckleberry Fitlll may not quite reach these two highest points of Trm Sawyer, we incline to the opinion that the general level of the later story is perhaps higher than that of the earlier. For one thing, the skill with which the character of Huck Finn is maintained is marvellous. We sec everything through his eyes-and they arc his eyes and not a pair of Mark Twain's spectacles. And the comments on what he sees arc his comments-the comments of an ignorant, superstitious, sharp, healthy boy, brought up as Huck Finn had been brought up; they are not speeches put into his mouth by the author. One of the most artistic things in the book-and that Mark Twain is a literary artist of a very high order all who have considered his later writings critically cannot but confess-one of the most artistic things in Huckleberry Fim1 is the sober self-restraint with which Mr. Clemens lets Huck Finn set down, without any comment at all, scenes which would have afforded the ordinary writer matter for endless moral and political and sociological disquisition. We refer particularly to the account of the Grangcrford-Shephcrdson feud, and of the
shooting of Boggs by Colonel Sherburn. Here are two incidents of the rough old life of the South-Western States, and of the Mississippi Valley forty or fifty years ago, of the old life which is now rapidly passing away under the influence of advancing civilization and increasing commercial prosperity, but which has not wholly disappeared even yet, although a slow revolution in public sentiment is taking place. The Grangerford-Shepherdson feud is a vendetta as deadly as any Corsican could wish, yet the parties to it were honest, brave, sincere, good Christian people, probably people of deep religious sentiment. Not the less we see them taking their guns to church, and, when occasion serves, joining in what is little better than a general massacre. The killing of Boggs by Colonel Sherburn is told with equal sobriety and truth; and the later scene in which Colonel Sherburn cows and lashes the mob which has set out to lynch him is one of the most vigorous bits of writing Mark Twain has done.
