Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/422

 MARK TWAIN

based largely upon his name, he felt bound in honor to pay them. In 1895-96 he took his wife and second daughter on a lecturing tour around the world, wrote Following the Equator, and cleared off the obligations of the house in full.

The years 1897, 1898, and 1899 were spent in England, Switzerland, and Austria. Vienna took the family to its heart, and Mark Twain achieved such a popularity among all classes there as is rarely won by a foreigner anywhere. He saw the manu facture of a good deal of history in that time. It was his fortune, for instance, to be present in the Austrian Reichsrath on the memorable occasion when it was invaded by sixty policemen, and sixteen re fractory members were dragged roughly out of the hall. That momentous event in the progress of parliamentary government profoundly impressed him.

Mark Twain, although so characteristically Ameri can in every fiber, does not appeal to Americans alone, nor even to the English-speaking race. His work has stood the test of translation into French, German, Russian, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, and Magyar. That is pretty good evidence that it pos sesses the universal quality that marks the master. Another evidence of its fidelity to human nature is the readiness with which it lends itself to dramatiza tion. The Gilded Age, Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and Pudd nhead Wilson have all been successful on the stage.

In the thirty-eight years of his literary activity Mark Twain has seen generation after generation of

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