as a great poet but he
couldn't spell," or where he says of the feast of raw dog, tendered him
by the Indian chief, Wocky-bocky, "It don't agree with me. I prefer
simple food." On the whole, it may be said of original humor of this
kind, as of other forms of originality in literature, that the elements
of it are old, but their combinations are novel. Other humorists, like
Henry W. Shaw ("Josh Billings") and David R. Locke ("Petroleum V.
Nasby"), have used bad spelling as a part of their machinery; while
Robert H. Newell ("Orpheus C. Kerr"), Samuel L. Clemens ("Mark Twain"),
and more recently "Bill Nye," though belonging to the same school of
low or broad comedy, have discarded cacography. Of these the most
eminent, by all odds, is Mark Twain, who has probably made more people
laugh than any other living writer. A Missourian by birth (1835), he
served the usual apprenticeship at type-setting and editing country
newspapers; spent seven years as a pilot on a Mississippi steam-boat,
and seven years more mining and journalizing in Nevada, where he
conducted the Virginia City _Enterprise_; finally drifted to San
Francisco, and was associated with Bret Harte on the _Californian_, and
in 1867 published his first book, _The Jumping Frog_. This was
succeeded by the _Innocents Abroad_, 1869; _Roughing It_, 1872; _A
Tramp Abroad_, 1880, and by others not so good.

Mark Twain's drolleries have frequently the same air of innocence and
surprise as Artemus Ward's, and there is a like suddenness in his turns
of expression, as where he speaks of "the calm confidence of a
Christian with four aces." If he did not originate, he at any rate
employed very effectively that now familiar device of the newspaper
"funny man," of putting a painful situation euphemistically, as when he
says of a man who was hanged, that he "received injuries which
terminated in his death." He uses to the full extent the American
humorist's favorite resources of exaggeration and irreverence. An
instance of the former quality may be seen in his famous description of
a dog chasing a coyote, in _Roughing It_, or in his interview with the
lightning-rod agent in Mark Twain's _Sketches_, 1875. He is a shrewd
observer, and his humor has a more satirical side than Artemus Ward's,
sometimes passing into downright denunciation. He delights
particularly in ridiculing sentimental humbug and moralizing cant. He
runs atilt, as has been said, at "copy-book texts," at th