“The primary cause of its success, we conceive, may be found in its sound, sagacious, unexaggerated views of human nature—not of human nature as it is modified by artificial institutions and subjected to the despotic caprices of fashion, but as it exists in a free and comparatively unsophisticated state, full of faith in its own impulses and quick to sympathize with kindred humanity; adventurous, self-relying, untrammelled by social etiquette; giving full vent to the emotions that rise within its breast; regardless of the distinctions of caste, but ready to find friends and brethren among all of whom it may come in contact. “Such is the human nature delineated in Sam Slick. “Another reason for Sam Slick’s popularity is the humor with which the work is overflowing. Of its kind it is decidedly original. In describing it we must borrow a phrase from architecture, and say that it is of a ‘composite order;’ by which we mean that it combines the qualities of English and Scotch humor—the hearty, mellow spirit of the one, and the shrewd, caustic qualities of the other. It derives little help from the fancy, but has its ground-work in the understanding, and affects us by its quiet truth and force and the piquant satire with which it is flavored. In a word—_it is the sunny side of common sense_.” A review of “Nature and Human Nature” drew attention to the fact that no writer has produced purer conceptions of the female character than are to be found in Sam Slick’s works. They show none of those morbid, sexualistic tendencies which are betrayed in some modern novels written by young ladies, or in semi-scientific papers on sexual subjects by “advanced females.” Tacitus praised the social purity of the Germans at the expense of his corrupt fellow-countrymen. “No one there makes a jest of vice,” which we may now read, “No one there writes novels about adultery.” Sam Slick tells us how he romped and flirted with country girls; but in all he has written there is not the slightest trace of impropriety, even by the most remote implication. There is no harm in Sam Slick’s jokes, which were originally intended for rough, plain-spoken backwoods Bluenoses of sixty years ago; for, while impurity corrupts, however refined it may be, coarseness does not. The Bible is often coarse, but never impure. Some years before Sydney Smith made what is generally set down as his best joke, as to a day being so hot that it would be a comfort to “_take off our flesh and sit in our bones_,” it had made its appearance in “Sam Slick;” and the country girl who says, “I guess I wasn’t brought up at all, I growed up,” probably suggested Topsy’s, “spec I growed.”