Book Description
Excerpt from Mark Twain's Library of Humor There is no one whom people wish out of the way more than some well-meaning person who insists upon formally making them acquainted with a company of old friends, and is so full of his own performance that he won't see they are on hand-shaking terms already, and all they want is a chance to get at one another. Now if there is any one class of their authors whom the American people do know rather better than any other, it is the American humorists, from Washington Irving to Bill Nye, and we are not going to repeat their names here, or lecture upon their qualities. We have tried to arrange our Library so as to include passages representative of every period and section, and we think that the chaotic order which we have chosen will be found to facilitate the course of those who like to come upon their favorite authors unexpectedly. For example, the reader accustomed to the cheap artifices of other editors will be surprised to meet, first, a selection from the chief compiler's own work, which he would naturally have expected to find in the small print of an appendix; but throughout, the compiler has subordinated his diffidence as an author to his taste as an editor, and has put in a piece of his literature as often as he thought the public would stand it. We need not say that, if he could have had his way throughout, this Library would have consisted solely o. extracts from his own books. But he was afraid the public would not stand it, not because it did not like his books, but because had them all by heart already. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
