He died at his new country seat in
Connecticut in 1910. Mr. Paine has written his life in three
great volumes, and there is a twenty-five volume edition of his
"Works."
All the evidence seems to be in. Yet the verdict of the public
seems not quite made up. It is clear that Mark Twain the writer
of romance is gaining upon Mark Twain the humorist. The
inexhaustible American appetite for frontier types of humor
seizes upon each new variety, crunches it with huge satisfaction,
and then tosses it away. John Phoenix, Josh Billings, Jack
Downing, Bill Arp, Petroleum V. Nasby, Artemus Ward, Bill Nye--
these are already obsolescent names. If Clemens lacked something
of Artemus Ward's whimsical delicacy and of Josh Billings's
tested human wisdom, he surpassed all of his competitors in a
certain rude, healthy masculinity, the humor of river and
mining-camp and printing-office, where men speak without
censorship. His country-men liked exaggeration, and he
exaggerated; they liked irreverence, and he had turned iconoclast
in "Innocents Abroad.
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