Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/420

 MARK TWAIN

understanding, and full of fresh, eager interest in all Europe had to show, but frankly avowing that he did not know what in the mischief the Renaissance was,&quot; had developed into an accomplished scholar and a man of the world for whom the globe had few surprises left. The Mark Twain of 1895 might con ceivably have written The Innocents Abroad, al though it would have required an effort to put him self in the necessary frame of mind, but the Mark Twain of 1869 could no more have written Joan of Arc than he could have deciphered the Maya hieroglyphics.

In 1873 the family spent some months in England and Scotland, and Mr. Clemens lectured for a few weeks in London. Another European journey fol lowed in 1878.

A Tramp Abroad was the result of this tour, which lasted eighteen months. The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, and Huckleberry Finn ap peared in quick succession in 1882, 1883, and 1885. Considerably more amusing than anything the humorist ever wrote was the fact that the trustees of some village libraries in New England solemnly voted that Huckleberry Finn, whose power of moral uplift has hardly been surpassed by any book of our time, was too demoralizing to be allowed on their shelves.

All this time fortune had been steadily favorable, and Mark Twain had been spoken of by the press, sometimes with admiration, as an example of the financial success possible in literature, and sometimes with uncharitable envy, as a haughty millionaire,

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