“Mark Twain” is too well known to the public to require a formal
introduction at my hands. By his story of the Frog he scaled the heights
of popularity at a single jump and won for himself the 'sobriquet' of
The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope. He is also known to fame as The
Moralist of the Main; and it is not unlikely that as such he will
go down to posterity. It is in his secondary character, as humorist,
however, rather than in the primal one of moralist, that I aim to
present him in the present volume. And here a ready explanation will be
found for the somewhat fragmentary character of many of these sketches;
for it was necessary to snatch threads of humor wherever they could be
found--very often detaching them from serious articles and moral
essays with which they were woven and entangled. Originally written for
newspaper publication, many of the articles referred to events of the
day, the interest of which has now passed away, and contained local
allusions, which the general reader would fail to understand; in such
cases excision became imperative. Further than this, remark or comment
is unnecessary. Mark Twain never resorts to tricks of spelling nor
rhetorical buffoonery for the purpose of provoking a laugh; the vein of
his humor runs too rich and deep to make surface gliding necessary. But
there are few who can resist the quaint similes, keen satire, and hard,
good sense which form the staple of his writing.