January – William Dean Howells, in Harper’s Monthly, “Editor’s Study,” p.319-21, praised CY.

Mr. Clemens, we call him, rather than Mark Twain, because we feel that in this book our arch-humorist imparts more of his personality than in anything else he has done. Here he is to the full the humorist, as we know him; but he is very much more, and his strong, indignant, often infuriate hate of injustice, and his love of equality, burn hot through the manifold adventures and experiences of the tale. …

This kind of humor, the American kind, the kind employed in the service of democracy, of humanity, began with us a long time ago; in fact Franklin may be said to have torn it with the lightning from the skies…. No one need deny himself …the pleasure we feel in Mr. Clemens’s book as its highest development [Budd, Contemporary 293-5].