ABSTRACT
Of all our humorists, alive or dead, Mark Twain is the most widely popular and the most typically American. It is not too much, I think, to say that he is the most popular because he is the most typically American. This underlying source of his popularity has, however, been more generally realized abroad than at home, where the fastidious niceness of the professional critic has too often been unable to perceive in the creations of our greatest humorist anything more than the contortions of the professional buffoon. It was but a few years ago, for example, that a solemn critic in our most decorous periodical refused him admission to the sacred circle presided over by the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, and declared that a circus-clown was as likely to attract the attention of the dramatic critic as Mark Twain that of the serious reviewer. And this a quarter of a century after the intelligent and sympathetic criticism of the Revue des Deux Mo11des had introduced the author of the jumpiug Frog and the Irmoceuts Abroad to the delighted audience of Europe!
