possesses in a high degree appeal to so many and so widely varied
publics,--first of all, no doubt, to the public that revels in hearty
and robust fun, but also to the public which is glad to be swept along
by the full current of adventure, which is sincerely touched by manly
pathos, which is satisfied by vigorous and exact portrayal of character,
which respects shrewdness and wisdom and sanity and which appreciates a
healthy hatred of pretense and affectation and sham. Perhaps no one book
of Mark Twain's--with the possible exception of 'Huckleberry Finn'--is
equally a favorite with all his readers; and perhaps some of his best
characteristics are absent from his earlier books or but doubtfully
latent in them. Mark Twain is many-sided; and he has ripened in
knowledge and in power since he first attracted attention as a wild
Western funny man. As he has grown older he has reflected more; he has
both broadened and deepened. The writer of "comic copy" for a
mining-camp newspaper has developed into a liberal humorist, handling
life seriously and making his readers think as he makes them laugh,
until to-day Mark Twain has perhaps the largest audience of any author
now using the English language. To trace the stages of this evolution
and to count the steps whereby the sage-brush reporter has risen to the
rank of a writer of world-wide celebrity, is as interesting as it is
instructive.


I

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS was born November 30, 1835, at
Florida, Missouri. His father was a merchant who had come from Tennessee
and who removed soon after his son's birth to Hannibal, a little town on
the Mississippi. What Hannibal was like and what were the circumstances
of Mr. Clemens's boyhood we can see for ourselves in the convincing