Walton High School - Periwinkle Yearbook (Bronx, NY)

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Mark Twain---ITI umorisl What art thou? The emboldened traveler spoke, And it replied, I am the American joke. loke of a people great, gay, bold, and free I type their masterhood. Mark Twain made me. lExcerpt from the American loke,'l by W. D. I-Iowellsl Because Mark Twain's humor is so characteristically American, it has endeared him forever in the hearts of his countrymen as well as of those abroad. I-Iowever, beneath his wit, which sometimes shows a coarse side and is at other times irreverent and flippant, a thoughtful philosopher, who possesses a keen shrewdness, is revealed. As the Years roll by, Mark Twain, the man, is fast dwindling into a legend whose humor must be valued apart from the author's person- ality and time. Fortunately, there was a certain drawl in his pen which saves much of his humorous work from flatness. Today, we can find little drollery in many of his writings save for the way in which the story is presented. For illustrative purposes we point to the following passage from The Innocents Abroad wherein he describes his emotions one night as a boy when he awoke and found the body of a murdered man in his room: I went away from there. I do not say that I went away in any sort of a hurry, but I simply went--That is sufficient. I went out at the window, and I carried the sash along with me. I 'did not need the sash, but it was handier to take it than it was to leave it, and so I took it. I was not scared, but I was considerably agitated. Always fond of following the counsel of others, he wrote his cele- brated jumping Frog of Calaveras County, employing a maxim of Rudyard KipIing's creation: first get the facts-then distort them as you please. Mark Twain, the droll comedian who was able to make the masses laugh long and heartily, could and did frequently become very deeply depressed and melancholy. Once at a girls' college he attempted to read them a really serious poem that he had written, believing this group to be an appropriate and receptive audience. I ' 3 I . 0

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I-lis first words, I have written a poem, were greeted by shrieks of laughter. But I have written a serious poem! I mean it! he replied earnestly.-More laughter. I-lere it is, he continued, producing the manuscript. The hilarious spectators laughed and applauded more than ever. I shall not read it,l' he announced in despair, putting away the script amid the laughter and applause of a highly amused audience. A similar scene occurred a short while later, when lvlr. Clemens was addressing a group of Columbia University students. As he appeared upon the platform to deliver a serious address, a spectator laughed loudly. The humorist, who at the time was grieving deeply over the recent death of one of his children, walked dejectedly from the stage. In the corridor, he chanced upon the young son of the dean. Patting thelchilcl, kindly upon the head, he said wistfully, My boy, never be a c own. When his finances were at their lowest ebb, a report was circu- lated throughout America that Mark Twain was dead. The humorist, who was able to keep his wit alive despite the numerous hardships he was forced to endure, dispatched the following message to a news- paper: The report of my death is greatly exaggerated. lt was after this message, which literally caused a continent to laugh,'that he published the book which might well be called his most facetious work, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The satirical, fantastic wit of the author is at its height when he portrays the Connecticut man as one who rides out at dawn in a suit of medieval armor and gradually becomes overheated under the mount- ing sun in what he calls that stove. A fly gets between the bars of his visor, and he cannot reach his handkerchief in his helmet to wipe the sweat from his streaming face, at last, when he cannot bear it any longer, he dismounts at the side of a brook and makes the distressed damsel, who has been riding behind him, take off his helmet and fill it with water and pour gallon after gallon down the collar of his wrought iron cutaway. Mark Twain boundlessly created laughter. There were very few elements in government, democracy, and justice of his own era that he