to beguile him away from it. Well, there are thousands of other interests occupying other men, but those interests don't appeal to the special tastes of the billiard champion or Paderewski. They are set down, therefore, as too lazy to do that or do this—to do, in short, what they have no taste or inclination to do. In that sense, then, I am phenomenally lazy. But when it comes to writing a book—1 am not lazy then. My family find it difficult to dig me out of my chair.

"Oh, yes I have met many interesting men in my wanderings round the world. Not long ago I dined with Stanley²⁵ in London. There were about 80 guests, and not one of them, I think, was not distinguished in some way. Oh, what a marvelous place London is! I think the most interesting personality I ever encountered was General Grant. How and where he was so much larger than other men I had ever met I cannot describe. It was the same sort of feeling, I suppose that made my friend, Thomas Starr King, whilst listening to a celebrated preacher, turn to me and exclaim, 'Whereabouts in that figure does that imperial power reside.' You had that feeling with Grant exactly.

"Of modern light literature I don't read much, as I have said; but hearking back to that topic for a moment I should like to say how I revel in Kipling. A strange coincidence I found out after I had read his first books was that he had come some 275 miles one day for the express purpose of seeing me. I was living in Elma,²⁶ and one day Kipling came down from New York and handed in his card. He had written on it 'From Allabhad,'²⁷ in his laconic way. I felt flattered at the time that he should have come so far out of his way to visit me, and doubly so when I found out afterwards who he was. Bret Harte I consider sham and shoddy, and he has no pathos of the real true kind. The works of Francis Cable I have been reading lately, and they appeal very strongly to me.²⁸ Some of his scenes are beautiful little vignettes drawn in strong and simple lines.

"About American politics? Well, I have been out of the run of them for some years. Of course, we have found out that an omnipotent democracy is not an unmitigated blessing; but America is not governed by the people, as you seem to think. She only seems to be—it is her politicians who do the governing. Once upon a time, about 14 years ago, we had a strong third party, and that party attracted some of the best men in the country to it. The Mugwumps, as they were called, went down in a subsequent Presidential election before the folly of the people, and it hasn't reappeared.^w But it's wanted badly enough. It seems to me that you've got right at the basis of things if you have that strong third party with the best men in it. It doesn't matter what their views are, so long as they are the best men. And now, concluded Mr. Clemens, having thoroughly established my reputation for humour by talking of politics seriously, I shall stop."

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And it was necessary to. To properly "do" Mark Twain one would have to bring him out in a serial tale.

III. Auckland New Zealand Herald, 21 November 1895, p. 5.

"Mark Twain/Arrival in Auckland"

Who has not read Mark Twain? Who has not revelled in his humour? And who has not felt a longing to meet such a man face to face? Auckland people will have that pleasure for a couple of nights or so. A HERALD representative had' that pleasure yesterday evening, at the Star Hotel, where Mr. Clemens (Mark Twain), with Mrs. and Miss Clemens are staying. The provoker of a myriad million laughs, is a gentleman who takes a walking exercise while conversing; he has a fine head and a quick eye, and it does not take long to find out that he can talk, to any extent, on almost any subject that may be started in his presence. He did not care about saying how he liked the people of New Zealand, because he said he had been asked that question before. Neither did he seem to care to talk about American humour until someone in the company quoted Lord Roseberry³⁰ to the effect that it was a new element in literature.

American Humour.

"Ah, yes," he said, "American humour is different entirely to French, German, Scotch, or English humour.³¹ And the difference lies in the mode of expression. Though it comes from the English, American humour is distinct. As a rule when an Englishman writes or tells a story, the 'knob' of it, as we would call it, has to be emphasised or italicised, and exclamation points put in. Now, an American story-teller does not do that. He is apparently unconscious of the effect of the joke. The similes used in America may be a little more extravagant than in England, but the method of treatment is modified. The method is quieter, more modified, and more subtle. Josh Billings said 'never take a bull by the horns; take him by the tail, and then you can let go when you want.' In any other country but America the part at which you should laugh would be put in italics and with exclamation marks."

Americanisms.

Americanisms then cropped up in the conversation, for many of these contain a big bulk of meaning, and expressed just what one wants to say.

"Yes," said Mark Twain, "there are many expressions said to be American and slang. Many are local, but here and there a phrase comes

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that just fits into what is wanted. And many so-called Americanisms come from the English. Take the expression, 'Fire him out,' which has come into use during the last few years. That expression was used by Shakespere in one of his sonnets.³² Then most people suppose that everyone who 'guesses' is a Yankee; the people who guess, do so because their ancestors guessed in Yorkshire."

Then, naturally, the word "boom" came in, of which the man supposed to have first used it, in a newspaper, has said that he got the idea for the use of the term from the designation given the the rise of water in the Mississippi.

"The sound of the word," said Mr. Clemens, elaborating this in his quick way, "has a good deal to do with the adoption of a term. If it has a good strong sound, and that sound seems to express the thing you want, then it has a chance to live."

Extravagant Phrasing.

"You a little while ago said," remarked our representative, "that American writers may be extravagant in the construction of their phrases, while an English writer would use exclamation marks or italics to bring out the 'knob' of his story. Would not the one counterbalance the other?"

"I was not saying that extravagant similes should not be used. Simple extravagance would be utterly reprehensible. But where a thing is happily phrased you do not care whether the figure is extravagant or not. For instance, what fault could you find in this: A captain of a ship is describing the perils his vessel went through; 'Why,' says a listener, 'You must have shipped a great deal of water;' 'Sir,' says the captain, 'we pumped the Atlantic Ocean through my ship sixteen times.' How are you to find fault with that? It is extravagant; but it is good fun, and does no harm."

A most interesting chat having taken place on American humorous writers, from Lieut. Derby,³³ whom Mr. Clemens considers the father of American humour, he went on to speak of the difference in writing now. If Harriet Beecher Stowe was writing "Uncle Tom's Cabin" now, it would have been written differently—that is, not so diffusively. And the same might be said of Dickens. They wrote for their time.

"And how did the change come?" said he. "That is a change to which every one contributes. These things are contributions of Time. I was once idiot enough to ask the partner of Mr. Bell as to who was the inventor of the telephone. The reply I got was, Do you not know that 1500 men had been at work on the telephone for 5000 years—do you suppose that anyone could invent any such instrument in any one lifetime? It is the same with literature. English writing has been a good deal bound up with

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conventionalism; American writing has been less so. Though conventions exist in all countries."

The names of a good many American writers having been mentioned, the question was asked, had any American woman developed any capacity for dealing with American humour.

"The only woman I know of," was the reply, "was a writer who wrote, possibly as far back as the '40's, 'The Widow Bedott Papers.'³⁴ These were written by a girl of twenty. The book was a good one, and it lived for say 15 years, or possibly 20 years, and it is a good long life for a book."

Conventionalities.

"A good many people think you do not show any very great reverence for subjects they regard reverentially. Take your 'Innocents Abroad' for instance."

"Yes I know. I once wrote an article for an American literary journal that has a vast circulation amongst young people. I was asked to change something in that article.³⁵ I asked the editor what he wanted changed. He said I had put a clergyman in a ridiculous position. My reply was he had put himself there. If he liked to strike the clergyman out he could. But I could put no one in his place. It was a story I would have told in the pulpit, if they would have given me a pulpit to tell it from. The people who object to the backyard of Joseph ofArimathea³⁶ being spoken of as if it were my own backyard, could not care if I spoke of a Mahommedan's backyard. There are so many curious notions in the world about irreverence."

"Well," said our representative, in conclusion, "I suppose you will be writing a book about us and the rest of the people you see in your travels."

"Yes, I do not think I could do it under better auspices, for I have had not time to see anything. Travelling and lecturing are like oil and water; they don't mix. There are many fine sights in New Zealand that I haven't seen."

The first lecture of Mark Twain's will be held this evening in the City Hall.

Actually at least three interviewers had got to Clemens on his first full day in Australia. With one of them he strolled around Sydney, chatting easily yet coherently. "Asked whether he considered his own writings to be more correctly described as 'witty' or 'humorous,' Mr. Clemens said without hesitation that he did not think them witty, but he did think they were humorous. Wit, he thinks, is something that flashes itself upon the hearer; humor something that scintillates and meanders. Wit need not be funny; humor must be funny."³⁷ Another interviewer amplified his attack

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on Bret Harte: "I detest him, because I think his work is 'shoddy.' His forte is pathos, but there should be no pathos which does not come out of a man's heart. He has no heart, except his name, and I consider that he has produced nothing that is genuine."'¹⁸ Though this opinion raised some dust, Clemens would apologize only for having made it public. Throughout his tour, especially before getting to India, he commented warmly on other contemporaries. The Minneapolis Times, 24 July 1895, p. 2, reported: "Bill Nye he professes to admire very much and has a deep affection for James Whitcomb Riley." Nye was saluted in "How to Tell a Story," which praised Riley in strong detail and which fully granted that its main precept went back to the technique of Artemus Ward. Clemens had been emulating him for over thirty years without trying to hide the fact; the Winnipeg (Canada) Nor'-Wester, 21 July 1895, p. 1, recorded that Clemens was still lavish with praise.³⁹ The year 1895 may mark his peak as a truly professional humorist—openly gathering material for his next book, scheming on the platform for laughs, making some effort to state the theory behind his vocation, and judging his fellow professionals with mostly warm shrewdness.

He said surprisingly little else about the pattern of national differences used to launch "How to Tell a Story." At heart he may have felt that it blurred the broader insight, casually stated in a personal letter of 1906, that humor is one of "those riches which are denied to no nation on the planet."⁴⁰ Maybe he felt he was currently displaying the best of the American lode to packed theaters and should leave the saying so to the reviews—which trumpeted that note indefatigably. Certainly he took care not to offend, on the spot and as a feed guest, the English-speaking peoples of the Empire. Except for the coolness over A Connecticut Yankee the British had paid well for his books and lectures; to belabor their taste would smack of ingratitude and verge on foolhardiness.⁴¹ While his French market was tiny he thoroughly disliked French character and society most of the time for deeper reasons. This Francophobia helped lash the interview of January 189,5 into its cogent if hardly brilliant scepticism about French wit, which "How to Tell a Story" had been willing to assume. He used another interview to challenge a reverse cliche about the Scotch:

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To me this is his single most thoughtful statement about humor, with complexities far beyond any world of "sharp, clean, pointed" jokes, and its humility rings true. Long since, he had realized that fashions in humor come and go; another interviewer in 1895 had him observing that a "humorous book has not the same chance of life as a narrative ... for it depends on the style, in which the taste changes."⁴⁷ Though his own fame transcends the thirty year term he allowed, the estimate was cold-eyed and basically sound.

It is tempting to regret that Clemens said so little and still less that is cogent about humor in the abstract. Yet humorists, I suggest, succeed best when unselfconscious; this much seems clear without drifting into the maelstrom of trying to sound the bottom of humor from either the creator's or the beneficiary's view; when not ironically owlish, such attempts often bring more vertigo than clarity. Clemens was quoted as saying in 1895, again with humility and even bewilderment rather than pomposity: "One of us, say a scribbler like myself, pen in hand, may get a moment of enlightenment. A sudden thought may slip in, and then comes humour. That, however, is a contribution which the gods have sent his way, and which really is not of man. It comes from some place, the key of which he does not possess to open it at his will."⁴⁸ Nor should we regret that Clemens theorized no further about national patterns in humor. Even today most such comparisons imply that pulling the long bow is exclusively American, push their own favorite writers as typical if not quintessential, display thin knowledge of world literature, and mistake ad hoc taboos and anxieties for the basic traits of a culture. At all but his worst as a humorist, Clemens was both unprogrammatic and supranational. Happily his practice was nobly better than his attempts to state the principles behind it.

DUKE UNIVERSITY

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