I looked at my watch; I was never more taken aback. I had
been sitting there exactly an hour and twenty minutes. It seemed ten
minutes at the outside. If you have ever tried to address a public
meeting, you will know what this means. It means that Mark Twain is a
consummate public speaker. If ever he chose to say anything, he would
say it marvellously well; but in the art of saying nothing in an hour,
he surpasses our most accomplished parliamentary speakers."
The nation which had been reared upon the wit of Sidney Smith, the irony
of Swift, the _gros sel_ of Fielding, the extravagance of Dickens, was
ripe for the colossal incongruities and daring contrasts of Mark Twain.
They recognized in him not only "the most successful and original wag of
his day," but also a rare genius who shared with Walt Whitman "the
honour of being the most strictly American writer of what is called
American literature." We read in a review of 'A Tramp Abroad',
published in The Athenaeum in 1880: "Mark Twain is American pure and
simple.
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