hose
picture, in _The Open Question_, of a Southern family impoverished by
the war, is exceedingly vivid and bears all the marks of the utmost
fidelity. Nor must I omit to mention that the stage has borne a modest
but not insignificant part in this movement of national
self-portraiture. Mr. Augustus Thomas' _Alabama_ is a delightful picture
of Southern life, while Mr. James A. Herne's _Shore Acres_ takes a
distinct place in the literature of New England, his _Griffith
Davenport_[P] in the literature of Virginia.

There must, of course, be many gaps in this summary enumeration. It is
very probable that many novelists of distinction have altogether escaped
my notice; and I have made no attempt to include in my list the writers
of short magazine stories, many of them artists of high accomplishment.
One omission, however, I must at once repair. "Mark Twain's"
contributions to the work of self-realisation have been in the main
retrospective, but nevertheless of the first importance. He is the
"sacred poet" of the Mississippi. If any work of incontestable genius,
and plainly predestined to immortality, has been issued in the English
language during the past quarter of a century, it is that brilliant
romance of the Great Rivers, _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_.

Intensely American though he be, "Mark Twain" is one of the greatest
living masters of the English language. To some Englishmen this may seem
a paradox; but it is high time we should disabuse ourselves of the
prejudice that residence on the European side of the Atlantic confers
upon us an exclusive right to determine what is good English, and to
write it correctly and vigorously. We are apt in England to class as an
"Americanism" every unfamiliar, or too familiar, locution which we do
not happen to like. As a matter of fact, there is a pretty lively
interchange between the two countries of slipshod and vulgar
"journalese;" and as the picturesque reporter is a greater power in
America than he is with us, we perhaps import more than we export of
this particular commodity. But there can be no rational doubt, I think,
that the English language has gained, and is gaining, enormously by its
expansion over the American continent. The prime function of a language,
after all, is to interpret the "form and pressure" of life--the
experience, knowledge, thought, emotion, and aspiration of the race
which employs it. This being so, the more tap-roots a language sends
down int