rejected by the builder was made the corner-stone of his literary edifice." So much for Mark Twain's motives in becoming a humorist. He had adopted this rôle unwillingly, as a compromise, at the expense of his artistic self-respect, because it afforded the only available means of satisfying that other instinct which, in the unconsciousness of his creative instinct, had become dominant in him, the gregarious, acquisitive instinct of the success-loving pioneer. And what a corroboration that instinct now received! Was ever a choice more thrillingly ratified by public opinion! "Limelight and the center of the stage," says Mr. Paine, "was a passion of Sam Clemens's boyhood, a love of the spectacular that never wholly died.... Like Tom Sawyer, he loved the glare and trappings of leadership." The permanent dream of his childhood, indeed, had been to become "something gorgeous and active, where his word--his nod, even, constituted sufficient law." Here we see exhibited what Alfred Adler calls the "masculine protest," the desire to be more than manly in order to escape the feeling of insecurity, for Mark Twain, who was a weak child, could never have survived in the rough-and-tumble of Hannibal life if he had not exerted his imagination and prevailed over his companions by means other than physical. This dream had been fulfilled in his piloting career, which was at once autocratic and spectacular. United now, a deep craving to shine, with his other desire to make money, to please his family, to "make good" in pioneer terms, it received a confirmation so prodigious that the despised, rejected, repressed, inarticulate poet in Mark Twain was immediately struck dumb and his doubts and chagrins and disappointments were lulled to rest.