ill a
standard work" and "a deservedly high authority"--apparently in
colleges. In the 1892 edition of this _magnum opus_, Mark is dismissed
with less than four lines, and ranked below Irving, Holmes and
Lowell--nay, actually below Artemus Ward, Josh Billings and Petroleum V.
Nasby! The thing is fabulous, fantastic, _unglaublich_--but nevertheless
true. Lacking the "higher artistic or moral purpose of the greater
humourists" (_exempli gratia_, Rabelais, Moliere, Aristophanes!!), Mark
is dismissed by this Professor Balderdash as a hollow buffoon.... But
stay! Do not laugh yet! Phelps himself, indignant at the stupidity, now
proceeds to credit Mark with a moral purpose!... Turn to "The Mysterious
Stranger," or "What is Man?"...

College professors, alas, never learn anything. The identical gentleman
who achieved this discovery about old Mark in 1910, now seeks to dispose
of Dreiser in the exact manner of Richardson. That is to say, he essays
to finish him by putting him into Coventry, by loftily passing over
him. "Do not speak of him," said Kingsley of Heine; "he was a wicked
man!" Search the latest volume of the Phelps revelation, "The Advance of
the English Novel," and you will find that Dreiser is not once mentioned
in it. The late O. Henry is hailed as a genius who will have "abiding
fame"; Henry Sydnor Harrison is hymned as "more than a clever novelist,"
nay, "a valuable ally of the angels" (the right-thinker complex! art as
a form of snuffling!), and an obscure Pagliaccio named Charles D.
Stewart is brought forward as "the American novelist most worthy to fill
the particular vacancy caused by the death of Mark Twain"--but Dreiser
is not even listed in the index. And where Phelps leads with his baton
of birch most of the other drovers of rah-rah boys follow. I turn, for
example, to "An Introduction to American Literature," by Henry S.
Pancoast, A.M., L.H.D., dated 1912. There are kind words for Richard
Harding Davis, for Amelie Rives, and even for Will N. Harben, but not a
syllable for Dreiser. Again, there is a "A History of American
Literature," by Reuben Post Halleck, A.M., LL.D., dated 1911. Lew
Wallace, Marietta Holley, Owen Wister and Augusta Evans Wilson have
their hearings, but not Dreiser. Yet again, there is "A History of
American Literature Since 1870," by Prof. Fred Lewis Pattee,[23]
instructor in "the English language and literature" somewhere in
Pennsylvania. Pattee has praises for Marion Crawford, Marg