If I take too many exceptions to this account of the, “ordeal” of Mark Twain it is because I believe it to be a book worthy the most scrupulous consideration. Side by side with the vulgar myth of Mark Twain I foresee that this interpretation of him will take its place for a long time to come, correcting the other, pleasing the judicious by its general truthfulness and its felicitous language, even invading the textbooks and becoming classic. I think it should do these things, but I hope it will also be perceived to be, something after the manner of, say, Voltaire’s _Lettres Anglaises_, a clever tract, another resounding shot in the warfare which Mr. Brooks is waging on behalf of the leadership of letters. Herein he has set forth the career of a man of letters who should have been leader and was not, with implications on every vivid page as to why and how others may take warnings from his failure. “Has the American writer of today the same excuse for missing his vocation?” Mr. Brooks concludes. “‘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 yourself whether the hour has not come to put away childish things and walk the stage as poets do.” III. TWO NOTES ON YOUTH THE RELEASE OF YOUTH