MARK TWAIN.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 799, 23 April 1910, Page 4

MARK TWAIN.

There is a. story . that when Dickens died a little girl; in Lon : don East asked, with tears, "Is Fathor Christmas dead too?" The story is probably apocryphal, but its currency, and the sad delight with which it was heard at the time and is still received, speak with unmatchable eloquence of the widespread and profound sorrow that accompanied the great novelist's passing. The news, of the death of Mark Twain, which is recorded today, ,will be received, not only in America, ■; but in nearly every country in : the world, with the same feelings of acute and loving regret. All of us, save the oldest, were young when Me. Clemens, in discovering America for the world outside the scope of the Monroe Dootrine, discovered also a vein of vigorous !and kindly humour of a richness without parallel in the records of mo-dern-literature. He was not a great literary artist; he was not an eloquent writer; his latest' considerable, work, ani,unnecessary and;.valueless' contribution to the foolish "controversy over the identity of ShakesiPEAßE, showed that no title was.less to him , than that of "man of letters." Yet for more than a generation'his voluminous writings.have enjoyed a popularity, and he himself has enjoyed a fame, which no modern writer and, in some particulars, no writer in any age, has ever commanded. What is it in Mark Twain that has won for him the affection of'all English-speaking people? Not, we think, the abundant energy of his genial'satire or the undoubted excellence of his subtle trapdoor humour—so poisonless but bo searching and explosive, yet so spotlessly free from clamour and farco; not 'even the unexampled bounty of his entertainment. 'Rather is it a recognition of the steadfast courage of his labours in despite of great personal sorrow and material disaster, and the sweetness of his spirit—his love for weak and little and helpless things and his kindly ironical sympathy with the oddities of mankind and mankind's circumstances.. He shared with Bret Harte the quality of creating, without any of the artifices of objective analysis with: which even the best modern painters of the human comedy cannot dispense, characters as vital and permanent as those of Dickens, to whom, though it would -take too long to demonstrate this, he is indebted for the hyperbolio manner that is characteristic of his best humorous work. When- Swinburne and Meredith died last year, they were mourned rather as great men than as friends of humanity, although, especially in the .case of Meredith, it was a wide public that mourned the man as well as tho writer. The death of Mark Twain, however, will fill hundreds of thousands of men and women with a sense of personal loss. Men love better those who can entertain than thoEe who can merely instruct, and we are not sure that he has not done more for humanity who has filled the- world with happy laughter than • the sombre statesmen whose noblest labours are essentially comments upon the pains and difficulties of the human race. By his cessation from his old activity and his comparative silence, the great American humorist began some time ago to prepare his public for this end of his contribution to the happiness of.the world, but it will be very long before the world leaves unread the much-loved volumes of his tireless . life. By his death America loses a great citizen and honoured writer, and the rest of the English-speaking race loses a light that mado warm and cheerful many a dark and wretched day..