writing as he would have written, and acting as he would have acted; and presenting to the world true, faithful, and living effigies of that boy. The feat has been accomplished; there is no character in fiction more fully, more faithfully, presented than the character of Huckleberry Finn. . . . It may be objected that the characters are extravagant. Not so. They are all exactly and literally true; they are quite possible in a country so remote and so primitive. Every figure in the book is a type; Huckleberry Finn has exaggerated none. We see the life --the dull and vacuous life--of a small township upon the Mississippi River forty years ago. So far as I know, it is the only place where we can find that phase of life portrayed.” Mark Twain impressed one always as writing with utter individuality --untrammelled by the limitations of any particular sect of art. In his books of travel, he reveals not only the instinct of the trained journalist for the novel and the effective, but also the feeling of the artist for the beautiful, the impressive, and the sublime. His descriptions, of striking natural objects, such as the volcano of Mount Kilauea in the Sandwich Islands, of memorable architecture, such as the cathedral at Milan, show that he possessed the “stereoscopic imagination” in rare degree. The picture he evokes of Athens by moonlight, in the language of simplicity and restraint, ineffaceably fixes itself in the fancy. Mark Twain was regarded in France as a remarkable “impressionist” and praised by the critics for the realistic accuracy and minuteness of his delineation. Kipling frankly acknowledged the great debt that he owed him. Tennyson spoke in high praise of his finesse in the choice of words, his feeling for the just word to catch and, as it were, visualize the precise shade of meaning desired. In truth, Mark Twain was an impressionist, rather than an imaginative artist. That passage in 'A Yankee in King Arthur's Court' in which he describes an early morning ride through the forest, pictorially evocative as it is, stands self-revealed--a confusedly imaginative effort to create an image he has never experienced. If we set over beside this the remarkable descriptions of things seen, as minutely evocative as instantaneous photographs--such, for example, as the picture of a summer storm, or preferably, the picture of dawn on the Mississippi, both from Huckleberry Finn--pictures Mark Twain had seen and lived hundreds of times, we see at once the striking superiority of the realistic impressionist over the imaginative artist. I have always felt that the most lasting influence of his life--the influence which has left the most pervasive impression upon his art and thought--is portrayed in that classic and memorable passage in which he portrays the marvellous spell laid upon him by that mistress of his youth, the great river.