neer, but
it could not give him fine instincts or nice discriminations or
elevated tastes. His works are pure and suitable for children, just
as the work of most shallow and mediocre fellows. House dogs and
donkeys make the most harmless and chaste companions for young
innocence in the world. Mark Twain's humor is of the kind that
teamsters use in bantering with each other, and his laugh is the
gruff "haw-haw" of the backwoodsman. He is still the rough, awkward,
good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands on the river steamer
and chewed uncured tobacco when he was three years old. Thoroughly
likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters. It is
an unfortunate feature of American literature that a hostler with
some natural cleverness and a great deal of assertion receives the
same recognition as a standard American author that a man like
Lowell does. The French academy is a good thing after all. It at
least divides the sheep from the goats and gives a sheep the
consolation of knowing that he is a sheep.

It is rather a pity that Paul Bourget should have written "Outre
Mer," thoroughly creditable book though it is. Mr. Bourget is a
novelist, and he should not content himself with being an essayist,
there are far too many of them in the world already. He can develop
strong characters, invent strong situations, he can write the truth
and he should not drift into penning opinions and platitudes. When
God has made a man a creator, it is a great mistake for him to turn
critic. It is rather an insult to God and certainly a very great
wrong to man.

_Nebraska State Journal_, May 5, 1895

I got a letter last week from a little boy just half-past seven who
had just read "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer." He said: "If
there are any more books like them in the world, send them to me
quick." I had to humbly confess to him that if there were any others
I had not the good fortune to know of them. What a red-letter-day it
is to a boy, the day he first opens "Tom Sawyer." I would rather
sail on the raft down the Missouri again with "Huck" Finn and Jim
than go down the Nile in December or see Venice from a gondola in
May. Certainly Mark Twain is much better when he writes of his
Missouri boys than when he makes sickley romances about Joan of Arc.
And certainly he never did a better piece of work than "Prince and
Pauper." One seems to get at the very heart of old England in that
dearest o