ystallized anti-slavery
sentiment, it was read all over the world, it was dramatized and gave
countless thousands their first visualization of the slave traffic. That
her presentation of it was in many respects untrue has long since been
admitted, but she was writing a tract and naturally made her case as
strong as she could. From a literary standpoint, too, the book is full
of faults; but it is alive with an emotional sincerity which sweeps
everything before it. She wrote other books, but none of them is read
to-day, except as a matter of duty or curiosity.

And let us pause here to point out that the underlying principle of
every great work of art, whether a novel or poem or painting or statue,
is sincerity. Without sincerity it cannot be great, no matter how well
it is done, with what care and fidelity; and with sincerity it may often
attain greatness without perfection of form, just as "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
did. But to lack sincerity is to lack soul; it is a body without a
spirit.

We must refer, too, to the most distinctive American humorist of the
last half century, Samuel Langhorne Clemens--"Mark Twain." Born in
Missouri, knocking about from pillar to post in his early years,
serving as pilot's boy and afterwards as pilot on a Mississippi
steamboat, as printer, editor, and what not, but finally "finding
himself" and making an immense reputation by the publication of a
burlesque book of European travel, "Innocents Abroad," he followed it up
with such widely popular stories as "Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn,"
"The Prince and the Pauper," and many others, in some of which, at
least, there seems to be an element of permanency. "Huckleberry Finn,"
indeed, has been hailed as the most distinctive work produced in
America--an estimate which must be accepted with reservations.

Three living novelists have contributed to American letters books of
insight and dignity--William Dean Howells, George W. Cable and Henry
James. Mr. Howells has devoted himself to careful and painstaking
studies of American life, and has occasionally struck a note so true
that it has found wide appreciation. The same thing may be said of Mr.
Cable's stories of the South, and especially of the Creoles of
Louisiana; while Mr. James, perhaps as the result of his long residence
abroad, has ranged over a wider field, and has chosen to depict the
evolution of character by thought rather than by deed, in his early work
showing a rare insight. Of the thr