seriously what I say of Mark Twain, since he has
become an integral part of American literature. There may perhaps come a
time when his works will be sold in sets, carefully arranged on all
self-respecting bookshelves, pointed to with pride as a proof of
culture, and never read. They will perhaps one day be the Rogers's
statuettes of literature. But that day is evidently far off. I do not
think that any jester of the older day--the day of Touchstone or of
Rigoletto, with a rooted sorrow in his heart, could have been more
pessimistic and more hopeless than Mark Twain. To change the words of
Autolycus--"For the life to come, I jest out the thought of it!"

"You who admire Don Quixote," said an infuriated Mark Twainite, "should
not talk of coarseness. There are pages in that romance of Cervantes
which I would not allow my son or daughter to read."

One should give both sides of an argument, and I give this other side to
show what may be said against my views. But the coarseness of Cervantes
is, after all, a healthy coarseness. Modern ideas of purity were not
his. Ignorance in those days--the days of Cervantes--did not mean
innocence. Even the fathers of the Church were quite willing to admit
that the roots of water lilies were in the mud, and there was no
conspiracy to conceal the existence of the mud. Mark Twain's coarseness,
however, is more than that of Cervantes or Shakespeare. Neither
Cervantes nor Shakespeare is ever irreverent.

To them, even the ordinary things of life have a certain sacerdotal
quality; but Mark Twain abhorred the sacerdotal quality as nature abhors
a vacuum. To say that he has affected the American spirit or the
American heart would be to go too far--for Americans are irreverent only
on the surface. It seems to me that they are the most reverent people in
the world toward those essential qualities which make up the spiritual
parts of life. Curiously enough, however, Mark Twain is just at present
the one author to whom all Europe and all outlanders point as the great
typical American writer!

That a delightful kind of American humour may exist without
exaggeration, or the necessity of debasing the moral currency, many
joyous books in our literature show. There are a few, of course, that
are joyous without self-consciousness; but for real joyousness and charm
and innocent gaiety, united to a knowledge of the psychology of the
American youth, none so far has equalled Booth Tarkington's "Penrod,"