THE GREAT MAN GONE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 800, 25 April 1910, Page 8

THE GREAT MAN GONE.

A SHORT APPRECIATION. [By "Dominica."] . It was the name of his arch that made us realise the world was in immediate danger of losing Mark Twain. Had the cabled message said that he was seriously ill, we should; have hoped against hope, in our belief that the need the world had of him, of his cheery laughter and his genial soul, would bold him here with cords too strong for any ordinary dangerous illness to sever. But at the dreaded words "angina pectoris" our own hearts stood still. It is a disease that for its ruthlessness, for the sudden end that its agony brings, has been dear to many a novelist, and as over and over again those two words in the pages of a novel "have been the message of doom in the cabled message they could be read only one way, and they prepared us for the tidings that came a few hours later that Mark Twain, was dead. It means more to us than the news of tho death of many a writer who has written greater things than 'he, for Mark Twain, like Sir l Walter Scotit, and Robert Louis Stevenson, was greater than any thing he ever wrote, and his big personality impressed those who read oi him, more than-his brilliant work. Humorists, as a class, are not kindly, and they have generally been far more dreaded than loved, for tho laughter that has greeted their most brilliant mots has boon aocomipariiedi with a feeling of dread and distrust) as to where the next shaft would be shot. • But Mark Twain, with all his laughter, was genial and kindly; lie never sneered and his laughter never hurt. His laughter was indeed tho sign of a thoroughly healthy soul. One could never imagine his saying, as that brilliant relentless wit Voltairo did, that he envied the beasts because of their ignorance of what people said of them. Mark Twain did not wear a thiii skin like that, nor did his recollections of his boyhood ever lead to such a mournful confession as Hood's that:

Now. 'tie little joy To know I'm farther off from.heaven i Than when I was a boy. Mark Twain was probably much nearer heaven as a. man of noble sympathies, • than even in his , rollicking Tow_ Sawyer days.." . " Kindliness is perhaps a characteristic of American' humour, almost as distinctively its own, as its love of esag-' geratiori. Much of'.what Mark Twain wrote had this American touch, of exaggeration, but he was cosmopolitan in his sympathies and in the matters with wKoh he dealt, and it is this as much as his lack of interest in national politics as a subject for his- criticisms that set him apart from the humorists among his countrymen.. The American at the tomb of Columbus, and the Jumping Frog, and quite a* large portion of the Tramps Abroad, such for instance as that notice over the coliseum, might have been written by, any American, but only Mark Twain-could have written Huckleberry Finn, and the Yankee at the Court of King Arthur,, and Joan of Arc, and More Tramps Abroad, arid the Prince and the Pauper, with . their mixture of deadly earnestness,. and of humour, whimsical, rollicking and satirical. • 'Mark Twain, it has, been said, would have liked on occasion to be taken seriously, and it was his ambition to write serious history.. He certainly was at his veij happiest .when dealing with historical subjects, and perhaps when reading the story' of ■ his Yankee and the Prinoe, one hardly realises how much solid reading inUst have gone to their preparation.. He had a great gift for going to the heart of the matter, illuminating it with his own personality, and touching it off with a characteristically humorous touch here and there, that was apt to. make the careless reader behove ho was . reading an entirely humorous work, whereas Mark Twain himself knew better. For instance, in the book which was published after his visit to Australia and India, "More iTramps Abroad," he devotes several pages to the story of the Indian Mutiny, and this story, concise'almost to.the point of sketchiness though it appears, has been considered by competent judges to be one of the finest things ever written on that almost threadbare subject. His story of the Australian blacks again is a brilliant piece of work, crammed full of information and observation, but nearly every reader of that book has been more impressed ' with the' humorous : sketches than with the far finer serious work. As for his life of Joan of Arc, it is one of ,the most tender, brave, beautiful things in the language, and one' - would not be surprised to learn that in the end it was considered his greatest 1 work.

Mark Twain laughed at the world, and with the world. He invented extraordinary stories- for the world to laugh at/ and to the. end of his days ho saw the Spirit of Mirth just 'a little iff advance of the Spirit of Tragedy, but it was not because, near-sighted, his eyes coul4 not discern the darker ■figure. '

He was fully aware of the misery and the injustice and the cruelty in the world. In the "Prince and the Pauper," in "Tho Yankee it the Court of King Arthur," and in "Joan of Arc," even in "Tom Sawyer," there are flashes of biting reproach. Where he saw oppression and cruelty,' where he saw stupidity that was crueller than deliberate wickedness his eyeß flamed, and his sword was out with a flourish. 1t,,, was perhaps mainly against remembered wrongs that one found him tilting—how oould it be otherwise when his books dealt with past one must road with blind eyes not to find that the thrusts at ancient giants had the power to > wound the giants of nowadays. And sometimes he rodo straight at them, with jance in rest, thoso giants of to-day. One has said that ■he did not use his wit to wound. There'were occasions when ho used it to kill, and there are few more biting things than his "Czar's Soliloquy."

These were the things that went to make up the personality of Mark Twain, but it'is as the-gentle, genial humourist- that' he will be longest remembered, the man in the everlasting white'suit welcoming visitors .to his beautiful home, the man who, when financial misfortune overtook • him, set to work to laugh another fortune from the Fates, the man who would always rather laugh tlian frown, and who found laughing easy work. There were none lilte him, but he was of a glorious brotherhood, and one fancies that when he joined their number he would bo welcomed first by a man whom England loved as America has loved Mark Twain,' a man who worked as hard to make England pitiful as Samuel Clemens . worked to keep America sane, a man whose. sympathies were as broad, and whose, indignation as deep, a man on whom Laughter waited merrily and whom Pity blessed. Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, what a noble pair I