Did Haliburton really mis-represent? Did he really present only sectional and class culture and civilization in America? Was he justified in choosing an obscure, socially disreputable creature from a section of American society to be the critic of American institutions and civilization? Why did he not choose someone socially higher—an American gentleman—to represent typical Americanism? The truth is Haliburton actually did represent all phases of American culture and civilization. There is the interlocutor in _The Clockmaker_—the Squire, Rev. Mr. Hopewell, and Mr. Everett, who was a real person, a president of Harvard and a diplomat, and there are pictures of the finer social and intellectual life of Nova Scotia and the United States. Felton and Curtis missed all this. How did they happen to miss it? Because Haliburton’s lesser characters were just bits of _genre humor_, whereas Sam Slick was such an outstandingly clear and vivid—unique—creation in comic characterization that Felton and Curtis saw only Sam Slick and immediately conceived him as a mis-representation of the whole of American culture and civilization. That they did so is a tribute to the genius of Haliburton. For it contains the answer as to what is Haliburton’s real originality as a creative humorist. The answer is this: The fact that Haliburton created a composite character, uncultured and socially inferior, to be the supreme critic of his social and intellectual betters and of American or republican culture, institutions, and civilization, is an _absolutely original achievement in creative satire and comic characterisation_. With a single stroke of genius Haliburton places himself beside Dean Swift as a satirist, and raises himself to the status of one of the world’s perduring satirists and humorists. Finally: Haliburton influenced not only American humorous literature but also American _fine_ literature. We note, first, the constructive influence of his editorial labors in compiling and distributing in the United States and other countries the best American humorous fiction, as in his _Traits of American Humor_, and _The Americans at Home_. Too much has been said of his influence on Artemus Ward, Josh Billings, and other American humorists writing in dialect in prose. But his influence on American humor in dialect in _verse_ has hardly, if at all, been rightly or fully appreciated. Lowell came under the influence of Haliburton in writing his humorous verse. In his _Biglow Papers_ Lowell not only imitated, but also actually borrowed, ludicrous conceits and situations from _The Clockmaker_ series. This fact is important, because in the last analysis Haliburton produced his humorous effects more by grotesque conceits and ludicrous situations than by dialect.