MARK TWAIN

relation of some discreditable occurrence in which he had
been concerned. I remember once at dinner, when the con-
versation turned to the subject of jails and the experience
of occupying a cell, he said:

" CI passed a night in jail once.'

"Clara, who was present, was shocked.

" Why, Father,' she said, 'how in the world did you
come to be in jail?'

"He did not make any excuse; he did not say that it
had been a mistake and that he had made it warm for
the authorities afterwards. Most of us would have quali-
fied, palliated, let ourselves down easy. Nothing of the
sort; he looked mildly at Clara, and replied:

" 'Drunk, I guess.' "

He believed others to be as truthful as himself, until he
found his confidence misplaced. Then, for the time sus-
picious, he was apt to distrust those who were loyal, to
discredit that which was truth. It was largely because of
his disappointment in persons taken too easily on trust
that he was moved at times to rail at mankind in general,
the falsity of the human race at large. Yet, to the last, his
confidence was easily won, and not always by those en-
titled to that great honor.

Always from youth to age he strove against oppres-
sion, superstition, sham, hypocrisy, evil in every form.
He fought in the open, with that most powerful of all
weapons, truth—unanswerable logic supplemented by rid-
icule. He believed that no abuse could withstand ridicule,
and he went far toward proving it.

He saw life at a quizzical slant, but he was not, first of
all, a humorist. His phrase was likely to carry a laugh
with it, but more often than not it carried some deep re-
vealment of human truth, or human injustice. A hundred
maxims in the foregoing pages testify to this. The expres-
sion that is merely humorous does not long survive. There

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