ABSTRACT
A few years ago Mr. Kipling called on Mark Twain at Hartford. Afterwards, in an account of his visit, he described the temptation which had beset him to steal the great man's corncob pipe as a relic. It was a nice touch of homage, corning from the man who has done more than any other to carry on the traditions established by the American writers, and in so doing in a large measure to supersede him. These traditions may be briefly described as the wish to set down as bluntly and forcibly as possible whatever one has to say, and the refusal to allow any intermediary between oneself and one's subject. Before Mr. Kipling rose glowing in the East, Mark Twain held the field. He was the ideal of masculine writers. There were no half ways with his readers-either they swore by him through thick and thin or unconditionally they cast him aside. Probably no author has been so little read by women, although, on the other hand, there was hardly a boy in the English-speaking world who would not have bartered his soul for Mark Twain's corncob pipe as a relic. He did just what boys and elemental men like: he came straight to the point; he feared no one; and he esteemed laughter above all the gifts of God.
