The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-06-29
erom the New York Post.

from the New York Post.
Z lark TWAIN'S memory may suffer
MI from a certain paradoxical habit
1 L we have fallen into when passing
Judgment on the illustrious dead. The
1abit consists in picking out for particu-
ar commentator in the man what one
east expects. If the world thinks of him
rs a great humorist, the point to make II
that at bottom he was really a philoso-
oher If his shafts struck at everybody
md everything, the thing to say is that
lie liked best what he hit hardest. If one
If his books sold million copies and an
other book sold 5000 copies, the attempt Is
made to base his future fame on the COM
oaratively unknown book. The motive
behind such reasoning is commendable
enough. Is is the desire not to judge SUI
perfcially, the desire to get at the real
man behind the mask which all OF u.s.
according to tradition, wear in life. 1t is
praiseworthy purpose, but. in the
lands of the unskilfed or the careless,
,erilous one. And worse than either is
he intellectual snob whose business it is
,onstitutionally to disagree with the obvi-
GUS We make no attempt to classify the
writer who has declared that Mark
Twain, when he wrote 'Innocents
Abroad" was terribly in earnest; that he
set out to satirize and was funny only
because he could not help it. This repre-
sents the extreme of a tendency that is
manifest on every side. to turn Mark
Twain into everything but what he was
a great compeller of laughter.
One gets dreadfully weary of such top
sy-turvy criticism. There are times when
one would like to believe that Napoleon
will be remembered because he won Aus
terlitz and Marengo, and not because he
divided up France into a vast number of
small peasant holdings; that Lincoln was
A great man because he signed the Proc
amation of Emancipation, and wrote the
Gettysburg address, and not because he
kept his temper under criticism and In ad-
versity; that Oliver Wendell Holmes will
Breakfast Table" his "Old Ironsides,"
md his "Chambered Nautilus" and not
for his Father William only. 1t is well
enough to try to pierce behind the veil of
Maya, but no amount of analysis can do
away with the popularity accepted beliefs
that mothers are primarily maternal, that
actresses talents lie In the direction of
he stage, that joyful people laugh and
hat people who make wry faces are
either pessimists or dyspeptics. What use
is there In trying to make serious book
)ut of the ''Innocents Abroad" when we
know we'll that the Mark Twain who
wrote 1t was primarily maker? For
ourselves, we confess that we have been
unable to find any grave purpose in the
jumping Frog of Calaveras." We recall
the Hawaiian stranger whom Twain
kissed for his mothers sake before rob-
',''- him of his small change. We recall
the horse he rode in Honolulu; 1t had
many fine points, and Twain hung his hat
upon one of them. We recall that other
horse behind which Twain went driving
one Sunday with the lady of his choice;
t was milk-dealer's horse on week
lays. and it persisted in travelling dag.
)nally across the street and stopping be-
fore every gate. These adventures are
,asy to recall, but the hidden serious pur-
pose within them remains hidden from
is.
The serious element in Mark Twain, the
nan and the writer, 1t would, of course
,e futile to deny. His hatred of sham,
| his hatred Of cruelty, his hatred Of OPP
preston, appear in the 'Innocents
| Abroad" as they do in his Connecticut
Yankee" and in his bitter assaults on the
| Christian Scientists and the American
missionaries in China of the Boxer days
But to say that Mark Twain was great
| ,,umorst because he was an Intensely
serious man is not. true, whatever truth
there may be in the formula that humor'
lists are humorists because they are mer
| of sorrow We would say that humorist'
are often sad because they are humor
lists, and that from much laughing thu
rebound must necessarily be toward mucf
| grief II 1t Is commonly asserted that thu
| humorist laughs because of the incon
gruities of life, 1t Is, nevertheless. just al
safe to maintain that the man born Il
laughter. will be driven by his instincts
to search out incongruities. There wal
no fundamental pessmism In Mari
Twain AS Mr.. He wells brings out In hi