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MARK TWAIN: 'What is Man?'
"The humorous writer," says Thackeray, "professes to awaken and direct
your love, your pity, your kindness, your scorn for untruth, pretension,
and imposture, your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed,
the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all
the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself
to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and
speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem him.--sometimes
love him." This definition is apt enough to have been made with Mark
Twain in mind. In an earlier chapter, is displayed the comic phase of
Mark Twain's humour. Beneath that humour, underlying it and informing
it, is a fund of human concern, a wealth of seriousness and pathos, and
a universality of interests which argue real power and greatness. These
qualities, now to be discussed, reveal Mark Twain as serious enough to
be regarded as a real moralist and philosopher, humane enough to be
regarded as, in spirit, a true sociologist and reformer.
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