interesting for its pictures of the negro and slavery, from a different
point of view from that taken by Mrs. Stowe in _Uncle Tom's Cabin._
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--During his lifetime, Mark Twain's humor was the
chief cause of his well-nigh universal popularity. The public had never
before read a book exactly like his _Innocents Abroad_. Speaking of an
Italian town, he says, "It is well the alleys are not wider, because they
hold as much smell now as a person can stand, and, of course, if they were
wider they would hold more, and then the people would die." Incongruity, or
the association of dissimilar ideas, is the most frequent cause of laughter
to his readers. His famous cablegram from England that the report of his
death was much exaggerated is of this order, as is also the following
sentence from _Roughing It:_--
"Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter,
and the stranger began to explain with another."
Such sentences convey something more than a humorous impression. They
surpass the usual historical records in revealing in an incisive way the
social characteristics of those pioneer days. His humor is often only a
means of more forcibly impressing on readers some phase of the philosophy
of history.
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