indeed, though less tenderly. (It seems proper to explain
that in applying this term to mankind he did not mean that the race was
foredoomed, but rather that it ought to be.)

Reading the 'Innocents', the conviction grows that, with all its
faults, it is literature from beginning to end. Reading the 'Tramp',
the suspicion arises that, regardless of technical improvement, its
percentage of literature is not large. Yet, as noted in an earlier
volume, so eminent a critic as Brander Matthews has pronounced in its
favor, and he undoubtedly had a numerous following; Howells expressed.
his delight in the book at the time of its issue, though one wonders how
far the personal element entered into his enjoyment, and what would
be his final decision if he read the two books side by side to-day. He
reviewed 'A Tramp Abroad' adequately and finely in the Atlantic, and
justly; for on the whole it is a vastly entertaining book, and he did
not overpraise it.

'A Tramp Abroad' had an "Introduction" in the manuscript, a pleasant
word to the reader but not a necessary one, and eventually it was
omitted. Fortunately the appendix remained. Beyond question it contains
some of the very best things in the book. The descriptions of the German
Portier and the German newspaper are happy enough, and the essay on the
awful German language is one of Mark Twain's supreme bits of humor. It
is Mark Twain at his best; Mark Twain in a field where he had no rival,
the field of good-natured, sincere fun-making-ridicule of the manifest
absurdities of some national custom or institution which the nation
itself could enjoy, while the individual suffered no wound. The present
Emperor of Germany is said to find comfort in this essay on his national
speech when all other amusements fail. It is delicious beyond words to
express; it is unique.

In the body of the book there are also many delights. The description of
the ant might rank next to the German language almost in its humor, and
the meeting with the unrecognized girl at Lucerne has a lively charm.

Of the serious matter, some of the word-pictures are flawless in their
beauty; this, for instance, suggested by the view of the Jungfrau from
Interlaken:

There was something subduing in the influence of that silent and
solemn and awful presence; one seemed to meet the immutable, the
indestructible, the eternal, face to face, and to feel the trivial
and fleeting nature of his own existence t