The Tocsin of Revolt; And Other Essays (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922. Excerpt: ... XV MEMORIES OF MARK TWAIN MEMORIES OF MARK TWAIN I THERE can be but very few of the countless thousands of Mark Twain's admirers whose admiration was born as early as mine, now more than half-a-century ago, in fact in 1867, when his first book, the 'Jumping Frog and other sketches, ' was published and when a copy came into my possession, I being then a bookish lad of only fifteen. For two score years I "read after him," as the phrase is; and so it is that I have been able to profit by what I believe to be an inestimable advantage for the proper appreciation of an author, --that of following his work from first to last, growing up with it, as it ripened and varied and broadened, revealing more and more richly the man whose self-expression it was. It is a far cry from the 'Jumping Frog' to the 'Mysterious Stranger'; and the long road from the bold humor of the one to the bitter satire of the other had many an unexpected turning. Four years after the 'Jumping Frog' had appeared I was elected to the Lotos Club, altho I was then still an undergraduate at Columbia; and I have a doubtful impression that in the Lotos Club, then newly settled in its first home at Irving Place, next to the Academy of Music, I saw Mark more than once, gazing at him, with the remote respect proper in a youth, who had his own vague literary aspirations, for an author who had already published the widely popular 'Innocents Abroad.' What I can assert with absolute conviction is that I did see him in 1875 at the hundredth performance of the happy-go-lucky dramatization of his half of the 'Gilded Age, ' (in which Charles Dudley Warner had been his collaborator). John T. Raymond, a most accomplished comedian, had identified himself with the optimistic character of Colonel Mulberry Sellers. At...