t to be established
in a cottage.

It is hard to understand that in spite of a towering fame Mark Twain
was still not regarded by certain American arbiters of reputations as
a literary fixture; his work was not yet recognized by them as being of
important meaning and serious purport.

In Boston, at that time still the Athens of America, he was enjoyed,
delighted in; but he was not honored as being quite one of the elect.
Howells tells us that:

In proportion as people thought themselves refined they questioned
that quality which all recognize in him now, but which was then the
inspired knowledge of the simple-hearted multitude.

Even at the Atlantic dinners his place was "below the salt"--a place of
honor, but not of the greatest honor. He did not sit on the dais with
Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Howells, and Aldrich. We of a
later period, who remember him always as the center of every board--the
one supreme figure, his splendid head and crown of silver hair the
target of every eye-find it hard to realize the Cambridge conservatism
that clad him figuratively always in motley, and seated him lower than
the throne itself.

Howells clearly resented this condition, and from random review corners
had ventured heresy. Now in 1882 he seems to have determined to declare
himself, in a large, free way, concerning his own personal estimate
of Mark Twain. He prepared for the Century Magazine a biographical
appreciation, in which he served notice to the world that Mark Twain's
work, considered even as literature, was of very considerable importance
indeed. Whether or not Howells then realized the "inspired knowledge of
the multitude," and that most of the nation outside of the counties of
Suffolk and Essex already recognized his claim, is not material. Very
likely he did; but he also realized the mental dusk of the cultured
uninspired and his prerogative to enlighten them. His Century article
was a kind of manifesto, a declaration of independence, no longer
confined to the obscurities of certain book notices, where of course
one might be expected to stretch friendly favor a little for a popular
Atlantic contributor. In the open field of the Century Magazine Howells
ventured to declare:

Mark Twain's humor is as simple in form and as direct as the
statesmanship of Lincoln or the generalship of Grant.

When I think how purely and wholly American it is I am a little
puzzled at its universa