MARK TWAIN.•
THE United States are taking a lead in the humorous literature of the day. Bret Harte and Colonel John Hay and Artemus Ward are not alone. Their humour, it is true, is of a much more * Screamers. By Mark Twain. London: John Camden Hotten.
subtle character than that of Mark Twain, and the outcome rather of a political and social irony than of a keen sense of the ludicrous simply ; yet Mark Twain ranks high, and is much more certain to be understood and appreciated by a general public, especially in countries where the politics, manners, customs, and tone of thought of Americans are comparatively little known. The secret of his fun lies in the assumed childlike credulity with which he accepts the premises offered, and the real ability and assumed simplicity with which he follows them up to their logical but utterly absurd conclusions. For instance in writing of Ben- jamin Franklin, whose birth-place is a matter of dispute at Boston, he says. " He was twins, being born simultaneously in two different houses in the city of Boston." Aud in the same way he ignores the inference in Franklin's boast that he began life with only half-a-crown, and takes it simply as a statement of fact. "He was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia for the first time with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four rolls of bread under his arm. But really.. . it was nothing. Anybody could have done it." The fun in the tale of a watch is of the same kind, based on the absurd assumption that the watch is to be believed, and that the days and weeks are decided by the number of minutes told off from the moment when it was right and began to go wrong. Thus —the watch gaining—he informs us that " at the end of two months it was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac and away into November enjoying the snows, while the October leaves were still turning." Having had it altered, it lost, and he " gradually drifted back into yesterday,
then the day before, then into last week and at last I was lingering alone in the week before last, and the world was out of sight." And at length, when the bands get locked and travel together, he exclaims, with wounded sympathy for the helplessness of experience he had been taught to trust, " the oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch." The little volume before us contains a fair amount of excellent nonsense ; the stories of " The Good Little Boy who did not Prosper," " The Bad Little Boy who did not come to Grief," " My Watch—an Instructive Little Tale," "The late Benjamin Franklin," and parts of a few others, excite laughter enough to satisfy the ambition of any comic writer. But the book is rather a hotch-potch, and of very unequal merit. The tales are not all " screamers." Some even have a distinctly serious purpose, though put humorously, such as those on the comparative safety of railway travelling, on the foolishness of writing for a livelihood without talent and education, and on the pomp and ugliness of the conventional funeral. Then there is an an amusing, though rather pointless satire—pointless because the Saturday cannot be charged with stupidity—on the Saturday Review, in the form of an imaginary notice of Mark Twain's story,—" The Innocents Abroad,"—copied from that paper, in which our author makes the pretended reviewer assume the same innocent and credulous tone which is the essence of his own fun. " Why," he makes the reviewer write, " repeat more of his audacious and exasperating falsehoods ? Let us close, fittingly, with this one,—he affirms that ' in the mosque of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, I got my feet so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime, and general impurity that I wore out more than two thousand pair of boot jacksgetting my boots off that night, and even then some Christian hide peeled off with them.' It is monstrous Such statements are simply lies,—there is no other name for them.
We will give one specimen of his colossal ignorance, and one only. He did not know until he got to Rome that Michael Angelo was dead ! And then, instead of crawling away and hiding his shameful ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express a pious, grateful sort of satisfaction that he is gone and out of his troubles ! " Other papers are of a very vulgar type, such as the one " About Barbers," " Dan Murphy," the "True Story of Chicago," and " Vengeance " ; one or two are such extravagant rubbish that they incline one to throw the book to the other end of the room, as " How I Edited a Paper" and " An Enigma." The only piece, however, which seems the result rather of a forced and laboured than a natural drollery is the first, an essay on the nursery rhyme, "Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle."
The story of " Baker's Cat" exhibits, perhaps, the profoundest though less broadly-marked humour—of a similar kind to that of Bret Harte—and it shows the same intimacy with the gold-diggers
of California ; there is, too, a pathos in it which we do not detect in any other story,—unless it be in that of the " Undertaker's,"—
and there is a fond belief in the sagacity and motive of his beloved cat's actions, and in the intelligent meaning and expression of his looks—which raise him in his imagination to his own level of speak- ing humanity, and entitle him to apologies;—characteristics which we observe to be common to all profound lovers of animals, and to be a certain index of a tender heart. The cat is named Tom Quartz, and follows Baker to his work
" Well, one day when the shaft was down about eight foot the rock got so hard that we had to put in a blast—the first blasting we'd ever done since Tom Quartz was born. And then we lit the fuse, and clumb out, and got off about fifty yards, and forgot and left Tom Quartz sound asleep on the gunny sack. In about a minute we seen a puff of smoke burst up out of the hole, and then everything let go with an awful crash, and about four million tons of rocks and dirt, and smoke, and splinters shot up about a mile and a half into the air; and, by George, right in the midst of it was old Tom Quartz going end over end, and a-snorting, and a-sneezing, and a-clawing, and a-reaching for things like all possessed. Bat it warn't no use, you know ; it warn't no use, And that was the last we see of him for about two minutes and a half, and then all of a sudden it begin to rain rocks and rubbage, and directly he come down ker-whop about ten foot off from where we stood. Well, I reckon he was p'raps the orneriest-looking beast you ever see. One ear was sot back on his neck, and his tail was stove up, and his eye-winkers was singed off, and be was all blacked up with powder and smoke and all sloppy with mud and slush from one end to the other. Well, sir, it warn't no use to try to apologise ; we couldn't say a word. He took a sort of a disgusted look at hisself, and then he looked at us ; and it was jest exactly the same as if he had said, ' Gents, may be you think it's smart to take advantage of a cat that ain't bad no experience in quartz- mining, but I think different!' and then he turned on his heel and marched off home, without ever saying another word. That was jest his style. And may bo you won't believe it ; but after that you never see a cat so prejudiced against quartz-mining as what he was. And by and bye, when he did get to going down in the shaft agin, you'd a been astonished at his sagacity. The minute we'd touch off a blast and the fuse'd begin to sizzle, he'd give a look as much as to say, ' Well, I'll have to get you to excuse me ;' and it was surprising the way he'd run out of that hole and go for a tree. Sagacity? It aint no name for it, 'Twas inspiration ! I said, 'Well, Mr. Baker, this prejudice against quartz-mining was remarkable, considering how he came by it. Couldn't you ever cure him of it?'—'Cure him? No. When Tom Quartz was sot once he was always sot, and you might a bloomed him up as much as three million times, and you'd never a broke him of his cussed prejudice agin quartz-mining."
We shall take an extract also from the " Undertaker's Story," not because that and " Baker's Cat" are nearly so much of " screamers " as several others, but because they show—in a very droll, grotesque garb, it is true—as we have said, a more serious and cultivated humour, a deeper meaning, and a kindlier feeling than the others
Now, that corpse,' said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of deceased approvingly, ' was a brick—every way you took him he was a brick. He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last moments. Friends wanted metallic burial case—nothing else would do. I couldn't get it. There warn't going to be time—any- body could see that. Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it. Said he went more on room than style, any way,
in a last final container. Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying who he was and wher' he was from. Now you know a fellow couldn't roust out such a gaily thing as that in a. little country town like this. What did corpse say ? Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address and general destination onto it with a blacking brush and a stencil plate, long with a verse from some likely hymn or other, and p'int him for the tomb, and mark him C. 0. D., and just let him skip along. Ile warn't distressed any more than you be—on the contrary, just as carm and collected as a hearse-horse ; said he judged that wher' he was going to a body would find it considerable better to attract attention by a picturesque moral character than a natty burial case with a swell door-plate on it. Splendid man, he was. I'd drurther do for a corpse like that 'n any I've tackled in seven year. There's some satisfaction in buryin' a man like that. You feel that what you're doing is appreciated. Lord bless you, so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly satisfied ; said his relations meant well, per- fectly well, but all them preparations was bound to delay the thing more or less, and he' idn't wish to be kept layin' around. You never see such a clear head as what be had—and so carm and so cool. Just a hunk of brains—that is what he was. Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's head to t'other. Often and over again he's had brain fever a-raging in one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about it—didn't affect it any more than an Injun insur- rection in Arizona affects the Atlantic States. Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was down on flummery—didn't want any procession—fill the hearse full of mourners, and get out a stern line and tow him behind. He was the most down on style of any remains I ever struck. A beautiful simple-minded creature—it was what he was, you can depend on that. He was just set on having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a whole raft of directions ; then he had the minister stand up behind a long box with a table-cloth over it and read his funeral sermon, saying 'Angcore, angcore !' at the good places, and making him scratch out every bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then he made them trot out the choir so's he could help them pick out the tunes for the occasion, and he got them to sing Pop Gots the Weasel,' because he'd always liked that tune when he was down-hearted, and solemn music made him sad ; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes (because they all loved him), and his rela- tions grieving around, he just laid there as happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all over how much he enjoyed it.'"
In a future edition, we trust Mark Twain will carefully weed out the vulgar papers, and the extravaganzas, and the no-sense as distinguished from the nonsense.
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