According to her judgment,
Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner are lacking in the requisite mental
grasp for the "stupendous task of interpreting the great tableau of the
American scene." Nor does she regard their effort at collaboration as a
success from the standpoint of art. The charm of Colonel Sellers wholly
escapes her; she cannot understand the almost loving appreciation with
which this cheaply gross forerunner of the later American industrial
brigand was greeted by the American public. The book repels her by
"that mixture of good sense with mad folly--disorder"; but she praises
Mark Twain's accuracy as a reporter. The things which offend her
sensibilities are the wilful exaggeration of the characters, and the
jests which are so elaborately constructed that "the very theme itself
disappears under the mass of embroidery which overlays it." "The
audacities of a Bret Harte, the grosser temerities of a Mark Twain,
still astonish us," she concludes; "but soon we shall become accustomed
to an American language whose savoury freshness is not to be disdained,
awaiting still more delicate and refined qualities that time will
doubtless bring.
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