This season it is "Moments With Mark Twain," a collection of excerpts from his works for quick and handy reading. We may look for further books in this series in 1923, 1924, 1925, &c., to be entitled "Half Hours With Mark Twain" (the selections a trifle longer), "Pleasant Week-Ends With Mark Twain," "Indian Summer With Mark Twain," &c.[pg 304]
There is an interesting comparison between this sample bottle of the humor of Mark Twain and that contained in the volume entitled "Something Else Again," by Franklin P. Adams. The latter is a volume of verse and burlesques which have appeared in the newspapers and magazines.
In the days when Mark Twain was writing, it was considered good form to spoof not only the classics but surplus learning of any kind. A man was popularly known as an affected cuss when he could handle anything more erudite than a nasal past participle or two in his own language, and any one who wanted to qualify as a humorist had to be able to mispronounce any word of over three syllables.
Thus we find Mark Twain, in the selections given in this volume, having amusing trouble with the pronunciation of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci, expressing surprise that Michael Angelo was dead, picking flaws in the old master's execution and complaining of the use of foreign words which have their equivalent "in a nobler language—English."
There certainly is no harm in this school of humor, and it has its earnest and prosperous exponents today. In fact, a large majority of the people still like to have some one poke fun at the things in which [pg 305]they themselves are not proficient, whether it be pronunciation, Latin or bricklaying.
But there is an increasingly large section of the reading public who while they may not be expert in Latin composition, nevertheless do not think that a Latin word in itself is a cause for laughter. A French phrase thrown in now and then for metrical effect does not strike them as essentially an affectation, and they are willing to have references made to characters whose native language may not have been that noblest of all languages, our native tongue.
That such a school of readers exists is proved by the popularity of F.P.A's verses and prose. If any one had told Mark Twain that a man could run a daily newspaper column in New York and amass any degree of fame through translations of the "Odes of Horace" into the vernacular, the veteran humorist would probably have slapped Albert Bigelow Paine on the back and taken the next boat for Bermuda. And yet in "Something Else Again" we find some sixteen translations of Horace and other "furriners," exotic phrases such as "eheu fugaces" and "ex parte" used without making faces over them, and a popular exposition of highly technical verse forms which James Russell Lowell and Hal Longfellow would have considered terrifically high-brow. [pg 306]And yet thousands of American business men quote F.P.A. to thousands of other American business men every morning.
Can it be said that the American people are not so low-brow as they like to pretend? There is a great deal of affectation in this homespun frame of mind, and many a man makes believe that he doesn't know things simply because no one has ever written about them in the American Magazine. If the truth were known, we are all a great deal better educated than we will admit, and the derisive laughter with which we greet signs of culture is sometimes very hollow. In F.P.A. we find a combination which makes it possible for us to admit our learning and still be held honorable men. It is a good sign that his following is increasing.[pg 307]