ABSTRACT
The great age of English satire seemingly pledged itself so deeply to classical models that one perhaps finds it difficult to conceive of satire divorced from that kind of knowledge and sympathy with the ancient traditions. The idea that satire postulates a natural goodness which civilised life destroys can be misleading. Satire as the people are most familiar with it directs its attacks against excesses and deviations in a prevailing order the worth of whose standards and the civilising value of whose institutions the satirist accepts. The satiric craft pursued in the primitive communities with which Twain was most familiar, having, almost ab initio, to work out its purposes and methods. Twain was assigned, with a colleague, to report the proceedings of the Nevada Territory Assembly and its Constitutional Convention of 1863. This was a bicameral legislature and Twain was the inspiration behind the founding of a burlesque 'Third House' which elected him President.
