Pudd'nhead Wilson. By " Mark Twain." (Chatto and Windus.) —Has
Mr. Samuel H. Clemens found Missouri audiences or readers slow to appreciate his jokes P Mr. David Wilson comes to a Missouri town to push his fortunes. Unluckily his first utter- ance when he lands from a steamer--did steamboats pass "every hour or so" up and down the Mississippi in 1830 ?—is about a yelping dog. that if he owned half of the beast he would kill his half. This would have been a fair joke in New York ; to the Missourians it seemed proof positive that the speaker was a foo!. Hence the sobriquet of " Padd'n.head " which the public opinion of the town fastens upon him. But he does not deserve it. On the contrary, he is a clever fellow. He understands, for instance, how the impressions of finger-tips may be made proofs of identity —is not this again a little before date in 1830 ? This is the point of the story, which is a somewhat gloomy but powerful tale of the slavery times. "Mark Twain's" negroes are not of the
Uncle Tom type; but the story is not on that account a less vigorous indictment of the old social order of the South.
Previous page
