he was allowed too much of another sort,
for the pictures do not compare with his earlier work.

Among the new matter in the book were-"Some Fables for Good Old Boys and
Girls," in which certain wood creatures are supposed to make a scientific
excursion into a place at some time occupied by men. It is the most
pretentious feature of the book, and in its way about as good as any.
Like Gulliver's Travels, its object was satire, but its result is also
interest.

Clemens was very anxious that Howells should be first to review this
volume. He had a superstition that Howells's verdicts were echoed by the
lesser reviewers, and that a book was made or damned accordingly; a
belief hardly warranted, for the review has seldom been written that
meant to any book the difference between success and failure. Howells's
review of Sketches may be offered as a case in point. It was highly
commendatory, much more so than the notice of the 'Innocents' had been,
or even that of 'Roughing It', also more extensive than the latter. Yet
after the initial sale of some twenty thousand copies, mainly on the
strength of the author's reputation, the book made a comparatively poor
showing, and soon lagged far behind its predecessors.

We cannot judge, of course, the taste of that day, but it appears now an
unattractive, incoherent volume. The pictures were absurdly bad, the
sketches were of unequal merit. Many of them are amusing, some of them
delightful, but most of them seem ephemeral. If we except "The Jumping
Frog," and possibly "A True Story" (and the latter was altogether out of
place in the collection), there is no reason to suppose that any of its
contents will escape oblivion. The greater number of the sketches, as
Mark Twain himself presently realized and declared, would better have
been allowed to die.

Howells did, however, take occasion to point out in his review, or at
least to suggest, the more serious side of Mark Twain. He particularly
called attention to "A True Story," which the reviewers, at the time of
its publication in the Atlantic, had treated lightly, fearing a lurking
joke in it; or it may be they had not read it, for reviewers are busy
people. Howells spoke of it as the choicest piece of work in the volume,
and of its "perfect fidelity to the tragic fact." He urged the reader to
turn to it again, and to read it as a "simple dramatic report of
reality," such as had been equaled by no other American writer.

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