"irreverent" as the Boston Brahmins thought—and espec1ally irreverent toward them!—when they gave him a seat below the salt: it degrades, "takes down," punctures, ridicules as pretentious and absurd everything of a spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual nature, the recognition of which, the participation in which, would retard the smooth and simple operation of the business man's mind. Mark Twain, as we shall presently see, enables the business man to laugh at art, at antiquity, at chivalry, at beauty and return to his desk with an infinitely intensified conceit in his own Worthmess and well-being.
That is one aspect of his humour. In another aspect, he releases, in a hundred murderous fantasies, all the spleen which the business life, with its repression of individuality, involves. Finally, in his books about childhood, he enables the reader to become :a boy again, just for a day," to escape from the emotional stress of maturity to a simpler and more primitive moral plane. In all these respects, Mark Twain's humour affords that "economy of expenditure in feeling" which, as we now perceive, the business man requires as much as the pioneer.
Glance, now, at a few examples of Mark Twain's humour: let us see whether they corroborate this argument.
In A Tramp Abroad Mark Twain, at the opera in Mannheim, finds himself seated directly behind a young girl:
"How pretty she was, and how sweet she was! I wished she would speak. But evidently she was absorbed in her own thoughts, her own young-girl dreams, and found a dearer pleasure in silence. But she was not dreaming sleepy dreams—no, she was awake, alive, alert, she could not sit still a moment. She was an enchanting study. Her gown was of a soft white silky stuff that clung to her round, young figure like a fish's skin, and it was rippled over with the gracefullest little fringy films of lace; she had deep, tender eyes, with long, curved lashes; and she had peachy cheeks, and a dimpled chin, and such a dear little dewy rosebud of a mouth; and she was so dove-like, so pure, and so gracious, so sweet and bewitching. For long hours I did mightily wish she would speak. And at last she did; the red lips parted, and out leaped her thought—and with such a guileless and pretty enthusiasm, too: 'Auntie, I just know I've got five hundred fleas on me!'"
