him down to the proper size, Mark indignantly ordered
him to bring a jackplane at once and get the matter over. To all his
protests the attendant paid no attention at all.

In one of the earliest critical articles about Mark Twain, which
appeared in 'Appleton's Journal of Literature, Science and Art' for July
4,1874, Mr. G. T. Ferris gives an excellent appreciation of his humour.
"Of humour in its highest phase," he says, "perhaps Bret Harte may be
accounted the most puissant master among our contemporary American
writers. Of wit, we see next to none. Mark Twain, while lacking the
subtilty and pathos of the other, has more breadth, variety, and ease.
His sketches of life are arabesque in their strange combinations. Bits
of bright, serious description, both of landscape and society, carry us
along till suddenly we stumble on some master-stroke of grotesque and
irresistible fun. He understands the value of repose in art. One tires
of a page where every sentence sparkles with points, and the author is
constantly attitudinizing for our amusement. We like to be betrayed
into laughter as much in books as in real life. It is the unconscious,
easy, careless gait of Mark Twain that makes his most potent charm. He
seems always to be catering as much to his own enjoyment as to that of
the public. He strolls along like a great rollicking schoolboy, bent on
having a good time, and determined that his readers shall have it with
him."

Mark Twain is the most daring of humorists. He takes his courage in his
hands for the wildest flights of fancy. His humour is the caricature of
situations, rather than of individuals; and he is not afraid to risk his
characters in colossally ludicrous situations. His art reveals itself
in choosing ludicrous situations which contain such a strong colouring
of naturalness that one's sense of reality is not outraged, but
titillated. Hence it is that his humour, in its earlier form, does not
lend itself readily to quotation. His early humour is not epigrammatic,
but cumulative and extensive. Each scene is a unit and must appear as
such. Andrew Lang not inaptly catches the note of Mark Twain's earlier
manner, when he speaks of his "almost Mephistophelean coolness, an
unwearying search after the comic sides of serious subjects, after the
mean possibilities of the sublime--these with a native sense of
incongruities and a glorious vein of exaggeration."

Mark Twain began his career as a wag;