The Otago Witness, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. {WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 1910.) THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2928, 27 April 1910, Page 51

The Otago Witness, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. {WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 1910.) THE WEEK.

«• Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dint. -« JtTVBtTAIi. , . . „ “ Good nature and good sense must ever join. -*- POPS. In the death of Mark Twain the world has lost one of its chief benefactors, since it may, be claimed for him that ha has made more people laugh!'’ than has any other man of his day and generation. It was Douglas Jerrold—• himself a humourist of no mean order—* . who exclaimed, “ 0 glorious laughter, thou man-loving spirit, that for a tima doth take the burden from the weary ’ back, that doth lay salve to the weary! feet, bruised and cut' by flints and', shards ”; while no less a wit than Sydney, Smith is credited with the remark, “ Man could not direct his way by plain reason i and support his life by tasteless food, bu£K God has given us wit and flavour and j brightness and laughter and perfumes to enliven the days of man’s pilgrimage and j to charm his pained steps over the burning, marl.” George Meredith, in his “ Essay,) on Comedy ” —perhaps the most correct I analysis of the logic of laughter even ; j penned—declares that “to touch and i kindle the mind through laughter mands more than sprightliness—a mosfi | subtle delicacy.” And after pointing oufi that people are ready to surrender them-, j selves to “ witty thumps on the back, breast, and sides, all except the head.”Meredith skilfully describes the foes which to right and to left beset the mam who wishes to make his-fellows laugh;—■ : “We have in this world men whom Rabelais would call agelasts; that is to say, non-laughers—men who are, in thafi respect, as dead bodies, which, if you prick them, do not bleed. The old grey boulder stone that has finished its peregrination from the rock to the valley is as easily to be set rolling up again as these men laughing. No collision of circumstances in our mortal career strikes a light for them. It is but one step from being agelistic to misogelastic, and the laughter-hater soon learns to dignify his dislike as an objection in morality. We have another class of men who ar® pleased to consider themselves antagonists of the foregoing, and whom we may term hypergelasts—the excessive laughers, ever laughing, who are as clappers of a bell that may be rung by a breeze, a grimace; who are so loosely' put together that a wink will shake them. And to laugh ats anything is to have no appreciation of the Comic of Comedy.” Perhaps tha (highest • tribute we can pay to Mark Twain’s memory is to say that by hi# stories and sketches he has made the lot of the megelast, or laughter-hater, a hard 1 one; whilst he can in no -wise be accused of pandering to the vacant grimacing of the hypergelasts. Were we to seek for a fit epitaph to place over Mark Twain’s grave, it would be difficult to discover lines more suitable that those of Milton —* himself sadly deficient in a sense of humour—in “ L’ Allegro ” ;—• Hence loathed melancholy, But come thou goddess fair and free, In heaven yclept Euphrasyne, And by men heart-easing mirth. i « • • V Haste thee Nymph and bring with the# Jest and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods. and. becks and .wreathed smiles;' Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek, And love to. live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled care derides, And laughter holding both his sides'.

While in a sens© Milton’s image of “laughter holding both his sides” undoubtedly describes the character and influence of Mark Twain, yet the great humourist was a philosopher, and a moralist who has left his mark upon the life and thought of the world. Mr Samuel E. Moffett, in a biographical sketch published four or five years Mflk

writes : " Mark Twain, although so characteristically American in tverj fibre, does not alone appeal to Americans.' or even to the English-speaking race. His work has stood the lest of translation into French, German, Russian, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, and Magyar. That is pretty good evidence that it possesses the universal quality that marks the master. Another ■evidence of its fidelity to human nature is the readiness with which it lends itself to .'dramatisation. ' The Gilded Age,' ' Tom Sawyer,' 'The Prince and the Pauper,' and 'Pudd'n-head Wilson' have all been successful on the stage. In the thirty■eight years of his literary activity, Mark Twain has seen generation after generation of 'American humourists' rise, expand into sudden popularity, and disappear, Reaving hardly a memory behind. If he lihas not written himself out like them, if 'his place in literature has become every -year more assured, it is because his -'humour' lias been somewhat radically 'differentfrom theirs. It has been irresistibly laughter-provoking, but its sole end flbas never been to make people laugh. Its more important purpose has been to make them think and feel. And with jfche progress of the years Mark Twain's own thoughts have become finer, his own 'feelings deeper and more responsive. Sympathy with the suffering, hatred of injustice and oppression, and enthusiasm ■for all that tends to make the world a more tolerable place for mankind to live in have grown with his accumulating 'knowledge of life, as it is. That is why Mark Twain has become a classic, not only at home, but in all lands where people ihear and think about the common joys and sorrows of humanity." What Die--'kens was to England, Mark Twain has (been to America, and allowing for the difference in national characteristics, the parallel will be found to be an exceedingly close one. The tribute which •George Gissing paid to Dickens may ■therefore well be applied to Mark Twain. Gissing wrote: "It was as a humourist that Dickens made his name. . . Holding, as he did, that the first duty of an author is to influence his reader for good, Dickens necessarily esteemed as the most jpre-ckms of his gifts, that by virtue of which he commanded so great an audience. iWithout his humour he might have been a vigorous advocate of social reform, but as a novelist he would have failed ; and as to the advocacy of far-reaching reforms by men who have only earnestness and eloquence to work with, English history tells its tale. Only •because they laughed with him so heartily did multitudes of people turn to discussing the question his page •suggested. As a storyteller, pure and simple, the powers that remained to him, ii humour be subtracted, would never have ensured popularity. Nor on the •other hand would they have availed him an the struggle for artistic perfection, "which is a better thing. Humour is the soul of his work. Like the soul of man, it permeates a living fabric, which but for 'ffts creative breath could never have existed." The same charge has over and over again been levelled against Dickens End Mark Twain—namely, that they seenre their humourous effects by the use of extravagance and exaggeration. Here G.Lssing's comments ire exceedingly apropos. "In the forced marriage of Jack Jißunsby t' the o;reat M'Stinger, Dickens, iff think, reaches his highest point. iiWe cannot call it screaming farce ; it appeals not only to the groundlings. itLa-ughter, holding both his sides, was #iever more delightfully justified; gall and the megrims were never more delightfully dispelled. It is the ludicrous in its /purest form, tainted by no sort of uniindliness, and leaving behind nothing but the after taste of self-forgetful mirth. . .

iQßetween Dieken's farce and his scenes of ihumour the difference is obvious. In ■Mantalini, or Jack Bunsby, we have .■nothing illuminative: they, amuse, and there the matter ends. But true humour always suggests a thought, always throws light on human nature. The humourist may not be fully conscious of his own (meaning, he always indeed implies more •than he can possibly have thought out; and therefore it is that we find the •best humour inexhaustible, ever fresh, ■when we return to it, ever as our knowledge of life increases more suggestive tof wisdom."

Mark Twain was not only humourist and moralist, but par excellence a reformer. This note can be caught continually by careful readers of his (books, but in Mr Morel’s preface to King [Leopold's Soliloquy,” a satire iwhich was penned in scathing condemnation of the “ Crime on the Congo,” and ifor the publication of which Mark Twain absolutely declined to receive any remuneration, it is felt to the full. Mr Morel wrote :—“ It is, I think, accurate ito say that American opinion generally [looks upon Mark Twain as a moral force Ifor righteousness. Here [i.e., in England] ye are apt to look upon him merely as la humourist. His own people should Jknow him best, and their view is the long tone and the right one. Behind Mark ■Twain’s' humour' pulsates a passion for human liberties, a fierce opposition to autocracy, a hatred of every form of in(justice, a detestation of conventionality, icant, and humbug. He is a democrat ijusqn’au bout des ongles. In his belief, 4he sanctity' of the forest homes of a primitive race is as inviolable ‘in the 'eyes of Almighty God as the palace of .the millionaire—perhaps more so. . . . •It was my privilege to stir Twain .ton the Congo question. When I visited .She States in the fall of 1904 with the :®bject of presenting a memorial to President Roosevelt, on behalf of the Congo Association, and as one of the ■British delegates at the International .Peace Conference at Boston, I carried smong letters of introduction to prominent [citizens a communication for Mark Twain fyojn a personal friend of his (and a good

Mark Twain as Reformer-

friend of Congo Reform), Lord Norbury. } My conversation with Mark Twain will ' always remain one of the pleasantest recollections of my visit. The charm of his remarkable personality, the piercing kindly eyes beneath their shaggy brows, | Mie lofty forehead crowned with tumbled masses of pure white silky hair, the frail body tenanted by its unconquerable spirit made a deep impression upon me. And as great, perhaps, seemed the effect upon him while listening to the unfolding of a crime which in its motives and its cumulative effects has never been surpassed in infamy. I can see him now, pacing up and down his bedroom in uncontrollable indignation,, breaking out, ever and again, with his favourite exclamation, ' By George,' or with some rapid searching question. When we parted for the last time Mark Twain promised me to use his pen for the cause of the Congo natives. He has done so most effectively in this pamphlet, placing the manuscript unreservedly in the hands of the. leaders in the United States and England, and declining to accept a penny piece from the proceeds of publication. . . . Some there may be who will object to the healthy but brutal frankness of the language used. The cult of kid gloves and rose water is not the cult of Mark Twain. For that the world is the richer."

Carlyle, when he heard of the death of Dickens, wrote, “ The good and gentle Dickens; every inch-an honest man.” And the goodness and the gentleness were Mark Twain’s also; in addition to which he was in the very highest and best sense of the word “ an honest man.” Four or five years ago Mr Frederick A. King told in the pag-es of the New York Bookman the story of Mark Twain’s debts, and at this juncture it appears eminently appropriate to summarise that story : —“ In 1884 the publishing firm of C. L. Webster and Company was organised bo publish the works of Mark Twain, Of this firm Mark Twain was president, but he took little active part in the management of his affairs,. Able to conceive in broad outlines successful policies, he was singularly deficient in the power to handle the details of their execution. On April, 1894, the firm whose business enterprises had always figured in large sums through the immense popularity of the authorpublisher’s own works, the ‘ Memoirs of Genera] Grant,’ and the ‘ Life of Pope Leo ’ made an assignment for the benefit of its creditors. The bankrupt firm acknowledged liabilities approximating SO.OOOdoI. What in the ordinary view of commercial affairs would have furnished but one item in the list of failures which record the misfortune of 90 per cent, of the men who engage in business became in this instance a noticeable case through the eminence of the. chief actor. What might he have done? The law could lay claim upon his personal assets. To surrender these possessions proved no act of self-sacrifice, considering his wife’s fortune, upon which v the law had no claim. His wife, however, joined him in the act of self-renunciation, and they stood together penniless. Beyond this point there could be no legal, and to many minds no moral, responsibility for the debts of this firm. One can speculate upor the force of the temptation to take advantage of the position. Mark Twain was sixty years old, and ill at that. Having sacrificed all he possessed to meet the demands ok his creditors he might justly claim the benefit of what remained to him of capacity of wealth-producing labour. . . . In the latter part of 1895 he started out on a tour of the Englishspeaking countries of the world to give readings and lectures from his own works. When the undertaking was begun it was with the resolution to clear up the debt in three years. Allowing for the unexpected it was feared that it would take four ; then, at the age of 64, a new start in life would be open to the author. It took but two years and a-half to pay the debt. He began the effort in the latter part of 1895 and, finished; it in the early part of 1898. His return to America and his home in 1900 was in the nature of a triumph.” How well he prospered during the remaining years of his life is evident in the fact that his publishers estimate the fortune which he has bequeathed to his daughter at fully a million dollars.

Mark Twain as Man of Business.