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equipped human nature with a “moral sense” but without the necessary means to lead, except passively, the moral life. Twain might ridicule human conceit in several ways: by locating his species as a mere speck in the infinite vastness of space or by treating the human creature as the assembled concatenation of infinitesimally small but overproud particles or as the product of millions of years of evolutionary process leisurely fumbling its way toward some undisclosed end. It was the very absurdity of the human condition, regarded through the lens of incongruous frames of reference, that inevitably summoned humorous remark. “It is easy to find fault if one has that disposition,” Pudd’n-head Wilson records. “There once was a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.”
    In 1896, Twain remarked, “The mysterious and the fabulous can get no fine effects without the help of remoteness; and there are no remotenesses any more.” That was a dilemma he might easily remedy. By locating the human comedy in the distant reaches of space or in a cholera germ in the bloodstream of a tramp, or by reaching back into prehistory, all the way back to the Garden of Eden, Twain found there remained plenty of fine effects to be had. He might observe human foibles in himself and others and dramatize them under such alien conditions and thereby construct a different sort of comedy, one that applied broadly to universal human nature and could teach the lessons of humility and a common destiny. Humility is a social virtue and laughter is its companion. Humiliation, by contrast, is a stigma, alienating and corrosive. However cynical Twain became in his later years, his comedy never degenerated into the merely derisive or spiteful. He remained to the end the reader’s genial companion and ally.
    Despite his insistence that originality was impossible, Twain often enough transcended the terms of his own intellectual system and explored literary territory that was at least fresh and often unexampled. He did this in his “Autobiography” by ransacking his recollection vaults, creating a life out of fickle remembrance, and offering it to an indefinite future. He did it as well in his comedies of first and final things. His Captain Stormfield, who sailed for heaven but arrived at the wrong port, is sympathetically ridiculous because he has brought with him the baggage of wrongheaded but conventional expectation about the hereafter. Stormfield learns that planet Earth is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things; it is referred to locally as the “Wart.” He tries his hand at plucking a harp (he knows only one tune) and using his wings (he collides with a Bishop, and they exchange sharp words), only to find out that these customs are not required. When Stormfield drops his pre-possessions about paradise and his final reward, he begins to see things anew and more clearly, and we do too. We also begin to suspect why he is there and not the other place.
    Twain also wrote often about beginnings, most extensively about the experiences of Adam and Eve in the Garden and after. By doing so, he was willfully depriving himself of his constituted gospel of training and inherited ideas. Eve characterizes the pair’s situation in their innocent state: “Interests were abundant; for we were children, and ignorant; ignorant beyond the conception of the present day. We knew nothing —nothing whatever. We were starting at the very bottom of things—at the very beginning; we had to learn the a b c of things.” Twain did not conceive of the pair, nor do they really conceive of themselves, as children—obedient or otherwise. They are self-appointed “scientists,” who through repeated observation and experimentation are trying to get the hang of the place called Paradise. It is Adam’s assigned