This is but the barest outline of Mark Twain's life,--such a brief
summary as we must have before us if we wish to consider the conditions
under which the author has developed and the stages of his growth. It
will serve, however, to show how various have been his forms of
activity,--printer, pilot, miner, journalist, traveler, lecturer,
novelist, publisher,--and to suggest the width of his experience of
life.


II

A humorist is often without honor in his own country. Perhaps
this is partly because humor is likely to be familiar, and familiarity
breeds contempt. Perhaps it is partly because (for some strange reason)
we tend to despise those who make us laugh, while we respect those who
make us weep--forgetting that there are formulas for forcing tears quite
as facile as the formulas for forcing smiles. Whatever the reason, the
fact is indisputable that the humorist must pay the penalty of his
humor, he must run the risk of being tolerated as a mere fun-maker, not
to be taken seriously, and not worthy of critical consideration. This
penalty has been paid by Mark Twain. In many of the discussions of
American literature he has been dismist as tho he were only a competitor
of his predecessors, Artemus Ward and John Phoenix, instead of being,
what he is really, a writer who is to be classed--at whatever interval
only time may decide--rather with Cervantes and Molière.

Like the heroines of the problem-plays of the modern theater, Mark
Twain has had to live down his past. His earlier writing gave but little
promise of the enduring qualities obvious enough in his later works.
Noah Brooks has told us how he was advised if he wisht to "see genuine