After my marriage, she
edited everything I wrote. And what is more--she not only edited my
works, she edited ME! After I had written some side-splitting story,
something beginning seriously and ending in preposterous anti-climax,
she would say to me: 'You have a true lesson, a serious meaning to
impart here. Don't give way to your invincible temptation to destroy
the good effect of your story by some extravagantly comic absurdity.
Be yourself! Speak out your real thoughts as humorously as you please,
but--without farcical commentary. Don't destroy your purpose with an
ill-timed joke.' I learned from her that the only right thing was to
get in my serious meaning always, to treat my audience fairly, to let
them really feel the underlying moral that gave body and essence to my
jest."
The quality with which Mark Twain invests his disquisitions upon morals,
upon conscience, upon human foibles and failings, is the charm of the
humorist always--never the grimness of the moralist or the coldness of
the philosopher.
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