Bible
says: 'He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Almighty shall
hold them in derision.' But the mark of this higher humour is that it
does not laugh at the weak, the helpless, the true, the innocent; only
at the false, the pretentious, the vain, the hypocritical.

"Mark Twain himself would be the first to smile at the claim that his
humour was infallible; but we say without doubt that he used his gift,
not for evil, but for good. The atmosphere of his work is clean and
wholesome. He made fun without hatred. He laughed many of the world's
false claimants out of court, and entangled many of the world's false
witnesses in the net of ridicule. In his best books and stories,
coloured with his own experiences, he touched the absurdities of life
with penetrating, but not unkindly, mockery, and made us feel somehow
the infinite pathos of life's realities. No one can say that he ever
failed to reverence the purity, the frank, joyful, genuine nature of the
little children, of whom Christ said, 'Of such is the kingdom of
heaven.'

"Now he is gone, and our thoughts of him are tender, grateful, proud.
We are glad of his friendship; glad that he expressed so richly one of
the great elements in the temperament of America; glad that he has left
such an honourable record as a man of letters; and glad also for his own
sake that after many and deep sorrows he is at peace and, we trust,
happy in the fuller light.

"'Rest after toil, port after stormy seas,
Death after life doth greatly please."'

"'We cannot live always on the cold heights of the sublime--the
thin air stifles'--I have forgotten who said it. We cannot flush
always with the high ardour of the signers of the Declaration, nor
remain at the level of the address at Gettysburg, nor cry
continually, 'O Beautiful! My country!' Yet, in the long dull
interspans between these sacred moments we need some one to remind
us that we are a nation. For in the dead vast and middle of the
years insidious foes are lurking--anaemic refinements, cosmopolitan
decadencies, the egotistic and usurping pride of great cities, the
cold sickening of the heart at the reiterated exposures of giant
fraud and corruption. When our countrymen migrate because we have
no kings or castles, we are thankful to any one who will tell us
what we can count on. When they complain that our soil lac