Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
A good deal of the humor of Twain differs from that of Ward and the rest only in being funnier. As a newspaperman out in Nevada and California, when he had recently adopted his pen-name (from the Mississippi leadsman's cry for two fathoms' draught), he assiduously followed the techniques of the others.
To his pleasure and relief, the lectures went down equally well with New York audiences. Next, he acted as correspondent on a chartered Mediterranean tour. The letters he sent back were made into a book. Innocents Abroad: it was an immediate hit. Twain was not the first American to draw attention to the shortcomings of the Old World, but he was the first to face it with such bravado: to say that Lake Tahoe far exceeded Como in beauty, that the Arno would suffice as a river if only it had some water, that many of the Old Masters were over-rated and that their nauseous adulation of princely patrons' was undemocratic, that foreigners ought to learn to talk properly. Not all his ammunition was reserved for Europe; his fellow-countrymen came in for their share of derision. But the book voiced the thoughts of the thousands of Americans who with glazed eye and aching feet had followed the rule of their guide-book round Europe; it announced that America had something better than refinement, and was not impressed-or at least, not bowled over. A Tramp Abroad, written some years later, was less proudly philistine, but made similar kinds of jokes about Americans in European. .
Some of this humor has not worn well. Nevertheless, it represented a sustained effort beyond the capabilities of the Nasbys and Billingses. Books and articles flowed from Twain, and each increased his reputation as America's greatest humorist. Roughing It, about his adventures in the Far West, contained some richly funny episodes. The Gilded Age was a novel satirizing the get-rich-quick years after the Civil War.
