And so we see Mark Twain, with his "dry and dusty" heart, "washing about on a forlorn sea of banquets and speech-making," the saddest, the most ironical figure in all the history of this Western continent. The king, the conquering hero, the darling of the masses, praised and adored by all, he is unable even to reach the cynic's paradise, that vitriolic sphere which has, after all, a serenity of its own. The playboy to the end, divided between rage and pity, cheerful in his self-contempt, an illusionist in the midst of his disillusion, he is the symbol of the creative life in a country where "by the goodness of God, we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practise either of them." He is the typical American, people have said: let heaven draw its own conclusions. As for ourselves, we are permitted to think otherwise. He was the supreme victim of an epoch in American history, an epoch that has closed. Has the American writer of to-day the same excuse for missing his vocation? "He must be very dogmatic or unimaginative," says John Eglinton, with a prophetic note that has ceased to be prophetic, "who would affirm that man will never weary of the whole system of things which reigns at present.... We never know how near we are to the end of any phase of our experience, and often when its seeming stability begins to pall upon us, it is a sign that things are about to take a new turn." Read, writers of America, the driven, disenchanted, anxious faces of your sensitive countrymen; remember the splendid parts your confrères have played in the human drama of other times and other peoples, and ask yourselves whether the hour has not come to put away childish things and walk the stage as poets do. End of Project Gutenberg's The Ordeal of Mark Twain, by Van Wyck Brooks