The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903, 1902-02-22
Il H E COU r l E r


But Mark Twain is unique. His stories
and disquisitions have peculiar flavor
that is never acquired by imitation OF
someone else. He is not a statesman
and he is not a sage. Neither is he a
scholar. His observations have fire.
quently the concentrated wisdom of the
sage, the philosopher, and the states
man. Contrariwise when he talks SER
iously of public questions he is puerile,
illogical, impractical. Like the kings
fool in his cap and bells and with his
bauble in his hands he can hit ancient,
feeble institutions whack that makes
them reel But dress him i'm armor,
give him a spear and set him on a war
horse, and he is futile and twice the
fool he is in cap and bells.
Cervantes gave the final blow to
knight errantry. Don QuiXote showed
the Castilians that the world had
found out that the knights armor was
made of tin pans, that they tilted at
windmills, and after that their armor
was of only decorative use in baronial
halls or as relics in museums.
Mark Twain is a satirist of social
customs and pretensions, of institutions
outworn and left high and dry on the
beach, but still considered sea-worthy
by the public who must. have some
body point to the open seams in the
hull and the decayed decks before the
rottenness of the hulk is apparent.
Mark Twain began with the old pill
grims who in Innocence Abroad"
wept copiously at all the sights of the
Holy Land. Pretension and cant in
religion, society, and business have
struck them. He has done a service to
his century and to his country of in
estimable importance. His essay on
the utilities and dishonest pretensions
of Christian Science healers states the
case against the delusion succinctly
and unforgettably. A long-winded ar
gument, however fiawless, makes no
strong impression on the mind. Mark
Twain lays bare the truth so that one
sees it himself without the Intervention
of the demonstration, and what the eyes
have seen and the mind has registered
is hard to dislodge.
In a current magazine Mr.. Clemens
tells an altogether modern detective
story, that is, the satire is modern. "A
Double Barrelled Detective Story
deals with the acute detective myth.
The author ignores all the rules and
literary conventions that he has heard
of and can thus consciously avoid, but
his story is very interesting and
luminous. Mr.. Clemens is an old man
and when he leaves America for the
only better country no one can take
his place.
Since the records began there have
been only four great satirists, and see
how far apart they are: Juvenal was
born about a hundred years before the
first century. Sixteen hundred and
fifty years later Cervantes and Rabe-
lais were born, and a hundred years
later Dean Swift opened his eyes on
an existence which he hated perhaps
as much as any of our brethren.
Horace, Voltaire, Butler, Pope, and
Lowell are not exclusively satirists, or,
more exactly, their satirical work is
not their most important contribution
to literature and to the influence of
their own times.
In American literature there is moth
ing else like Mark Twain's work
Around him there is a wide, bare space,
him from all other writer's.
The most superficial student of our
literature knows Mark Twain and his
work and recognizes the fact that al
though he has founded no school he
has had more to do with compromising