Page:Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu/244

 that frog that's any better than any other frog," in the literal retranslation becomes, "I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog," and Mark Twain parenthetically adds, "If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no judge."

Sketches New and Old went very well, but the book had no such sale as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which appeared a year later, December, 1876. From the date of its issue it took its place as foremost of American stories of boy life, a place that to this day it shares only with Huck Finn. Mark Twain's own boy life in the little drowsy town of Hannibal, with John Briggs and Tom Blankenship—their adventures in and about the cave and river—made perfect material. The story is full of pure delight. The camp on the island is a picture of boy heaven. No boy that reads it but longs for the woods and a camp-fire and some bacon strips in the frying-pan. It is all so thrillingly told and so vivid. We know certainly that it must all have happened. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has taken a place side by side with Treasure Island.