Ward. Why did he make some people laugh till they cried,
while others were all untouched? His secret probably was almost entirely
one of manner, a trick of almost idiotic _naivete_, like that of Lord
Dundreary, covering real shrewdness. He had his rustic chaff, his
Puritan profanity; his manner was the essence of his mirth. It was one
of the ultimate constituents of the ludicrous, beyond which it is useless
to inquire.

With Mark Twain we are on smoother ground. An almost Mephistophilean
coolness, an unwearying search after the comic sides of serious subjects,
after the mean possibilities of the sublime,--these, with a native sense
of incongruities and a glorious vein of exaggeration, make up his stock-
in-trade. The colossal exaggeration is, of course, natural to a land of
ocean-like rivers and almighty tall pumpkins. No one has made such
charming use of the trick as Mark Twain. The dryness of the story of a
greenhorn's sufferings who had purchased "a genuine Mexican plug," is one
of the funniest things in literature. The intense gravity and self-pity
of the sufferer, the enormous and Gargantuan feats of his steed, the
extreme distress of body thence resulting, make up a passage more moving
than anything in Rabelais. The same contrast, between an innocent style
of narrative and the huge palpable nonsense of the story told, marks the
tale of the agricultural newspaper which Mr. Twain edited. To a joker of
jokes of this sort, a tour through Palestine presented irresistible
attractions. It is when we read of the "Innocents Abroad" that we
discern the weak point of American humour when carried to its extreme.
Here, indeed, is the place where the most peculiarly American fun has
always failed. It has lacked reverence and sympathy, and so, when it was
most itself, never approached the masterpieces of Thackeray and Dickens.
To balance its defect by its merit, American humour has always dared to
speak out, and Mark Twain especially has hit hard the errors of public
opinion and the dishonest compromises of custom.

SUSPENDED ANIMATION.

It used to be thought that a man who said he liked dry champagne would
say anything. In the same way, some persons may hold that a person who
could believe in the recurrent Australian story of "suspended
animation"--artificially produced in animals, and prolonged for
months--could believe in anything. It does not do, however, to be too
dogmatic about matters of opinion in