specimens of American humor, frolicsome, extravagant, and audacious," to
look up the sketches which the then almost unknown Mark Twain was
printing in a Nevada newspaper. The humor of Mark Twain is still
American, still frolicsome, extravagant, and audacious; but it is riper
now and richer, and it has taken unto itself other qualities existing
only in germ in these firstlings of his muse. The sketches in the
'Jumping Frog' and the letters which made up the 'Innocents Abroad' are
"comic copy," as the phrase is in newspaper offices--comic copy not
altogether unlike what John Phoenix had written and Artemus
Ward,--better indeed than the work of these newspaper humorists (for
Mark Twain had it in him to develop as they did not), but not
essentially dissimilar.

And in the eyes of many who do not think for themselves, Mark Twain was
only the author of these genuine specimens of American humor. For when
the public has once made up its mind about any man's work, it does not
relish any attempt to force it to unmake this opinion and to remake it.
Like other juries, it does not like to be ordered to reconsider its
verdict as contrary to the facts of the case. It is always sluggish in
beginning the necessary readjustment, and not only sluggish, but
somewhat grudging. Naturally it cannot help seeing the later works of a
popular writer from the point of view it had to take to enjoy his
earlier writings. And thus the author of 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'Joan of
Arc' was forced to pay a high price for the early and abundant
popularity of the 'Innocents Abroad.'

No doubt, a few of his earlier sketches were inexpensive in their
elements; made of materials worn threadbare by generations of earlier
funny men, they were sometimes cut in the pattern of his predecessors.
No doubt, some of the earliest of all were crude and highly colored, and