securely rest his right to survive as an author on those opening
chapters in 'Life on the Mississippi' in which he makes clear the
difficulties, the seeming impossibilities, that fronted those who wisht
to learn the river. These chapters are bold and brilliant; and they
picture for us forever a period and a set of conditions, singularly
interesting and splendidly varied, that otherwise would have had to
forego all adequate record.


III

It is highly probable that when an author reveals the power of evoking
views of places and of calling up portraits of people such as Mark
Twain showed in 'Life on the Mississippi,' and when he has the masculine
grasp of reality Mark Twain made evident in 'Roughing It,' he must needs
sooner or later turn from mere fact to avowed fiction and become a
story-teller. The long stories which Mark Twain has written fall into
two divisions,--first, those of which the scene is laid in the present,
in reality, and mostly in the Mississippi Valley, and second, those of
which the scene is laid in the past, in fantasy mostly, and in Europe.

As my own liking is a little less for the latter group, there is no need
for me now to linger over them. In writing these tales of the past Mark
Twain was making up stories in his head; personally I prefer the tales
of his in which he has his foot firm on reality. The 'Prince and the
Pauper' has the essence of boyhood in it; it has variety and vigor; it
has abundant humor and plentiful pathos; and yet I for one would give
the whole of it for the single chapter in which Tom Sawyer lets the
contract for white-washing his aunt's fence.