The German edition of his works, in six volumes, published by Lutz of Stuttgart, in 1898, I believe, contained an introduction in which he was hailed as the greatest humorist in the world. Among German critics he was regarded as second only to Dickens in drastic comic situation and depth of feeling. Robinson Crusoe was held to exhibit a limited power of imagination in comparison with the ingenuity and inventiveness of Tom Sawyer. At times the German critics confessed their inability to discover the dividing line between astounding actuality and fantastic exaggeration. The descriptions of the barbaric state of Western America possessed an indescribable fascination for the sedate Europeans. At times Mark Twain's bloody jests froze the laughter on their lips; and his “revolver-humour” made their hair stand on end. Though realizing that the scenes and events described in 'Tom Sawyer', 'Huckleberry Finn', 'Roughing It', and 'Life on the Mississippi' could not have been duplicated in Europe, the German critics revelled in them none the less that “such adventures were possible only in America--perhaps only in the fancy of an American!” “Mark Twain's greatest strength,” says Von Thaler, “lies in the little sketches, the literary snap-shots. The shorter his work, the more striking it is. He draws directly from life. No other writer has learned to know so many different varieties of men and of circumstances, so many strange examples of the Genus Homo, as he; no other has taken so strange a course of development.” The deeper elements of Mark Twain's humour did not escape the attention of the Germans, nor fail of appreciation at their hands. In his aphorisms, embodying at once genuine wit and experience of life, they discovered not merely the American author, but the universal human being; these aphorisms they found worthy of profound and lasting admiration. Sintenis found in Mark Twain a “living symptom of the youthful joy in existence”--a genius capable at will, despite his “boyish extravagance,” of the virile formulation of fertile and suggestive ideas. His latest critic in Germany wrote at the time of his death, with a genuine insight into the significance of his work: “Although Mark Twain's humour moves us to irresistible laughter, this is not the main point in his books; like all true humorists, _ist der Witz mit dem Weltschmerz verbunden_, he is a witness to higher thoughts and higher emotions, and his purpose is to expose bad morals and evil circumstances, in order to improve and ennoble mankind.” The critic of the 'Berliner Zeitung' asserted that Mark Twain is loved in Germany more than all other humorists, English or French, because his humour “turns fundamentally upon serious and earnest conceptions of life.” It is a tremendously significant fact that the works of American literature most widely read in Germany are the works of--striking conjunction!--Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain.