ABSTRACT

It is more decent to parody Jules Verne than Sir Thomas Malory, and Mark Twain may therefore be deemed to have returned in his latest flight of humour to the limits of legitimate burlesque. We are introduced once more to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and the invaluable nigger, Tim [sic ]. These heroes obtain possession of a balloon, with a patent steering apparatus and a minimum pace of one hundred miles an hour. In this they cross the Atlantic, are driven by contrary winds to the middle of the Sahara, traverse Egypt, and finally come to anchor on “Mount Sinai, where the Ark was.” On their way they fall in with oases, dust-storms, mirages, caravans, and other familiar marvels of African travel, and have a narrow escape from a somewhat improbable congregation of lions and tigers. The point of the jest appears to lie: firstly, in the shifts and expedients of the ingenious Tom Sawyer, who is certainly never at a loss for any emergency, and is able to point out to his companions the ruins of Joseph’s granary, and the treasure hill of the Dervish and the Camel-driver in the Arabian Nights; and, secondly, in the attempt to express elementary scientific and geographical facts in terms of Yankee slang and Yankee logic. There are perpetual discussions, in which Tom Sawyer’s fragments of book-learning are pitted against the ignorance and dialectic smartness of Huck Finn and the nigger, and, of course invariably get the worst of it. The chief fault of the book is that it does not strike one as particularly funny, which is perhaps a 468considerable defect in what is professedly a work humour. It is a good thing, as someone once said, for a comic paper to have some jokes in it.