ABSTRACT
Mark Twain and Bret Harte may be pronounced the most marked types of humorists. The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It, are the most thoroughly enjoyable examples of Mark Twain's humor. Like most of the American humorists, Mark Twain depends chiefly on exaggeration as the effective element in his art. This has long been acknowledged the peculiar characteristic in the humorous processes. It is humor which runs abroad with rambling, careless steps, not the humor which selects deliberately a fixed goal, and disembarrasses itself of every superfluity before commencing the race. Mark Twain rarely touches the latent springs of human sentiment, nor is his style more than narrative and descriptive. Mark Twain's early literary training was that of a writer for newspapers, where news was scarce and hard to get, and the public demanded their intellectual fare dressed with the hottest, strongest condiments.
