Caroline B. Le Row (1844â1914), a teacher in the Brooklyn public schools, wrote Mark Twain in December 1886 that she lived âin a state of chronic and impotent rage at the process going on every hour of every day in nearly every schoolâancient and modern swill ladled by the gallon into the pint cups of children's brains and crammed down with the handle.â1 To prove the point, Le Row enclosed a manuscript listing silly mistakes and malapropisms high school English students across the country had made in their recitations and examinations, including such hilarious blunders as these: Aborigines, a system of mountains.Ammonia, the food of the gods.Auriferous, pertaining to an orifice.Demogogue, a vessel containing beer and other liquids.Equestrian, one who asks questions.Eucharist, one who plays euchre.Franchise, anything belonging to the French.Republican, a sinner mentioned in the Bible.She was very quick at repertoire.He prayed for the waters to subsidize.A verb is something to eat.The Middle Ages come in between antiquity and posterity.Chaucer was the father of English pottery.2Le Row expressed the hope that the âcompilation might be somehow made a two-edged sword of the spirit for educational reformâ of the rote instruction common in the public schools3 and she asked Twain whether he thought âit ought to be published or not.â4On his part, Twain was so enamored with the âdarling literary curiosityâ5 that he persuaded Le Row to change its title from âTeaching the Young Ideaâ to âEnglish as She is Taught.â More to the point, he offered to write an advance review of it for Century that she might then reprint as an introduction to the published edition. She was stunned by his generosity. âYour surprising and magnificent offer,â she replied, âhas overwhelmed me with gratitude.â6 Twain quoted over half of the 4274 words in his notice directly from Le Row's English as She is Taught. On February 10, 1887, three weeks before its publication, he read the review at the Stationersâ Board of Trade Dinner in New York. He facetiously blamed the stationers âfor selling the nonsensical school books from which parrot rules [of grammar] are drummed into childrenâ and underscored âhow much teaching has really been done and how much is worthless cramming.â7 The journalist Eleanor Kirk averred that the speech not only included âseveral side-splitting quotationsâ but âhad the effect of stirring up considerable discussion in reference to the cramming process of our public schools.â8 Le Row immediately congratulated Twain on his success and reported she had been told that âyou were never so funny in your life! . . . You have fired a blast which will reverberate through a whole century (âbeating all hollowâ Emerson's famous shot âheard round the worldâ) and I intend to keep up the firing all along the line.â9Twain read the essay twice more in public prior to its publication in the April 1887 number of the Century. At the Longfellow Memorial Fund meeting at the Boston Museum the afternoon of March 31, Charles Eliot Norton, professor of art history at Harvard, introduced Twain to the capacity crowd and invited him to offer a sip of his âprecious, patent champagne-mandragora,â whereupon Twain âsauntered up to the little desk behind the footlightsâ and read selections from his review âshowing some of the curious errors, with underlying truths in them made by school children.â10 The Boston Globe stated that he spoke âjust as an old smoker would smoke a good cigar, dwelling long and lovingly on the aromatic parts, giving out the nicotine of mirth in great puffs.â11 According to the New York Tribune, Twain was âenthusiastically receivedâ and âas usual irresistibly funny,â12 especially when he read from his article that Oliver Wendell Holmes was âa most profligate and humorous writer.â On the stage Holmes âwas seen swaying and shaking with convulsions of merriment.â13 To judge from all accounts of these performances, Twain stuck to his script, adlibbing only once at the Longfellow benefit. âThe first conscientious Congress met in Philadelphia,â he read from his review before adding, âand perhaps the last.â14 Though âhumorous in tone,â the Boston Post added, Twain's recitation raised âserious considerations regarding the value of much that is called education in these times.â15 He spoke that evening before a capacity audience in the Common Pleas Courtroom at the New Haven City Hall and the New Haven Journal and Courier dubbed the event âAn Evening with Clemens and His Hodgepodge of Fun.â16Twain's essay appeared on newsstands the next dayâApril Fool's Dayâwhereupon excerpts from it were widely syndicated in the U.S. and the U.K.17 Twain read the entire article aloud a final time before the cadets in the mess hall at West Point on April 30. Escorted by William M. Postlethwaite, chaplain and professor of history and law, Twain aroused âroars of laughter,â particularly when he read the line âThere were donkeys in the Theological Seminary.â The Army and Navy Journal claimed that the line âwas so indescribably funnyâ that the cadets âcontinued to laugh and applaud for fully five minutes.â18 When Postlethwait stood and bowed, Twain turned and assured him ânothing personalâ was meant.19Meanwhile, the Century editors had sent Le Row proof of Twain's essay in mid-February. She thought it âcapital,â20 though she also revised it slightly, removing âwhat she thought reflected unpleasantlyâ on teachers.21 Notoriously prickly about any unauthorized changes to his manuscripts prior to their publication, Twain acquiesced to Le Row's emendations because, as she explained, âIt will never do for teachers to be held responsible for the existing atrocious state of things. As well blame the sailors for shipwreck who faithfully follow the orders of their captain. âWhere the offense is let the great axe fall.â It is the âBoardsâ (woodenheads, oftentimes), the âTrustees,â the âCommitteesâ who lay out the work.â Twain dutifully accepted Le Row's correction. The published essay contains this sentence: âIf a laugh is fair here, not the struggling child, but the unintelligent teacherâor rather the unintelligent Boards, Committees, and Trusteesâare the proper target for it.â22 In addition, Twain forwarded the $250 (approximately three-months of a teacher's salary or some $7250 in modern dollars) that he was paid for the essay to Le Row, and she appreciated the present. âI do not accept the check as my right or due in any sense,â she wrote him, âbut as a most generous gift from you which I fully appreciate and for which I most sincerely thank you.â23 Twain's gesture was widely publicized, one editorialist declaring that should âhe run for School Commissioner in Brooklyn . . . he would have all the teachers working at the polls for him.â24 Le Row's pamphlet was finally published by Cassell and Company of New York in mid-April 1887 and by London by T. Fisher Unwin of London in late May. By August 1 it had sold over five thousand copies and earned Le Row almost three hundred dollars in royalties.25The implications and importance of Twain's sociolinguistic study (though he would not have hung such a technical term on it) occasioned a fierce debate among reviewers. Many of them focused on the question whether it was a satirical comment on the failures of American public education or merely a weird comic spoofâthat is, whether or not Twain wrote it with a deliberate âmoral purpose.â On the one hand, some critics acknowledged its humor but focused on its underlying message. In the April 1887 number of the Century, the same issue in which his essay first appeared, the author of the âTopics of the Timesâ column opined that while it was âamusingâ the âthoughtful readerâ should also be dismayed: âUndoubtedly many of these children have been poorly taught and poorly taught in the same way, but the trouble lies back of indifferent teachers and even back of indifferent or ambitious school boards. It rests upon us all as a peopleâ for failing to demand more accountability for their mediocre education.26 The Saint Paul Globe echoed the thought: âNo thoughtful reader can read Mr. Clemensâ humorous article without being impressed with a feeling of dismay at the lack of thoroughness in our system of public instruction. . . . The results of this cramming educational process are humorously presented by Mr. Clemens, and yet through all his inimitable humor can be seen a faithful and sorrowful portraiture of the defects of our educational system.â27 Likewise, the Saint Paul Pioneer Press cautioned that the howlers Twain cited âought not only amuse the publicâ but âpoint a moral.â28 The Philadelphia Inquirer agreed that the âmass of absurditiesâ Le Row had gathered were âundoubtedly genuineâ and that Twain's inferenceââthat pupils in the public schools are too often loaded with ârulesâ which they are never taught to applyâis a legitimate one.â29 The Wilmington News emphasized the âdismal side to the fun in the reflection that these parrot-like and senseless appeals to memoryâ are the result of the âcramâ method of public instruction.30 The New Orleans Times-Democrat reiterated that âdespite its laughter-provoking quality,â the evidence Le Row and Twain marshalled âof the ignorance, stupidity, and incompetence of public school scholarsâ was âabsolutely pathetic in its grotesqueness and constitutes a pitiable showing of the inadequacy of the public school system.â31 Three major newspapers in Lincoln, Nebraska, even ârespectfully but firmlyâ insisted that the members of the local school board read Twain's article because he âvery effectively illustrates what is the matter with the alleged teaching of English grammar in our own schools.â32Several reviewers in Great Britain were also attuned to Twain's purpose. For example, as the Salisbury and Winchester Journal declared, âIt is well enough to laugh at these funny mistakes of the struggling scholar; but it is more profitable to inquire how they came to be made.â33 Appalled by the evidence Twain marshalled âof the manner in which young minds are not fed but crammed and choked,â the Saturday Review advised his readers to âstifle the laughterâ and ask âhow long our educators are going to be satisfied with the mechanical kind of teaching which is now in vogue.â34 Ditto the Publishersâ Circular: Fun or no fun, Mark Twain's article again throws light upon the evils of the cramming system now in vogue in English as well as American schools. This cramming is especially noticeable in the study of literature. . . . Many a laugh will ring out over the pages of Mark Twain's latest effusion, but there is another side to the question which should commend itself to the notice of the upbringers and guardians of youth.35The North-Eastern Weekly Gazette similarly noted that while the examination answers âmight waken laughter in the gloomiest pessimistâ they also âconfirm the pessimist's views about the efficacy of teaching. The children who give these answers know literally nothing.â36 Le Row was gratified by âthe rowâ she and Twain âkicked up,â as she wrote Twain in late April. She only hoped âthat the dust raised so far is but the beginning of the trouble. How can I ever thank you for what you have done not only for me personally but in this most holy crusade?â37On the other hand, a variety of reviewers contended that nothing in Twain's âamusingâ or âentertainingâ essay should be taken seriously. The Boston Globe (âa rich source of pure humorâ), Baltimore Sun (ârichest humorâ), London Morning Post (âdelightfulâ), Leeds Mercury (âunpremeditatedly funny answersâ), and Antrim Northern Whig (âfull of quaint drolleryâ) failed even to acknowledge the possibility it served an ulterior purpose.38 Read solely in the context of his reputation as a humorist, that is, Twain's article was merely a humorous essay. Despite Twain's assurance that all the student responses in Le Row's book were genuine, that ânone of them have been tampered with or doctored in any way,â39 a number of commentators questioned their authorship, some even suggesting that Twain had invented all the funny answers and that anyone who thought âEnglish as She is Taughtâ a social critique was the victim of a hoax akin to âA Bloody Massacre Near Carsonâ (1863).Foremost among this clique of critics, ironically, was Twain's friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who had been in the audience when Twain read his essay at the Longfellow benefit in Boston on March 31. Higginson mused in his review of it a month later in Harper's Bazar that Twain was âeminently a humorist who enjoys his own jokes, and surely the crowning enjoyment of his life was when he looked through the newspapers the day after his âEnglish as She is Taughtâ appeared in the Century. From the grave editorâ of the Centuryto the conductor of the smallest country newspaper, every soul fell into the trap and felt bound to point a moral against our long-suffering school system. . . . That these [bits of fun] should be seriously taken for childish blunders shows how easily people get away from the mental habits of their own childhood. This is not naĂŻve and unintentional wit, but is overt, deliberate, experienced; not the delicious childish blundering but something concocted with malice aforethought; not the product of immaturity but of maturity,though the âextremely amusingâ answers Twain ostensibly concocted âmay have here and there imbeddedâ in them âsomething actually said by a child.â40 An anonymous writer in the Pittsburgh Post soon replied to Higginson's assertion that Twain had âinvent[ed] every lineâ in the essay. âI saw this book put together a little at a time by the teacher mentioned, and that every line was taken from actual examination papers. And also that Mark Twain has not changed a line nor added one. What will Mr. Higginson say now?â41Of course, this exchange failed to quell the controversies swirling about the purpose and the authorship of the essay. The Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail conceded that Twain might have indicted rote learning in the public schools but that his âprimary objectâ was âto make men laugh.â42 Other reviewers allowed that the implications of Twain's article were alarming, but only if the dubious accuracy of his citations could be verified. âIf the work be what it purports to beâthe actual mistakes of pupils,â the San Francisco Chronicle editorialized, for example, âit shows more clearly than anything that has ever been printed the vices of the public-school system of instruction,â which âcrams the child-mind with facts which it cannot assimilate any more than a three-monthsâ-old baby can digest a beefsteak.â But âit will take more faith than most people possess to believe that the answersâ in Twain's âamusing articleâ are genuine.43 Twain's article âis amusing,â the Indianapolis Journal elsewhere allowed, âbut would be more so were it not for the impression made on the reader that the âmistakesâ were perpetrated by the humorist himself rather than by the children of the schools.â44 According to the Topeka Lance, âMark Twain's queer compilation of ridiculous blunders made by school childrenâ was âof such a funny kind that one must seriously doubtâ such a collection had âbeen made and half suspect that it is but another turn of Twain's humor.â45 The Woolwich Gazette quipped that some of the âside-splittingâ quotations in Twain's essay were âso extraordinary that one is almost inclined to doubt the[ir] authenticityâ46 While Twain claimed to cite authentic student answers, the Northern Christian Advocate alleged he only pretended to vouch âfor the genuineness of the contents.â That is, he designed the essay âmerely to provoke laughterâ and âsucceeded.â47 The Michigan Moderator was even more skeptical of Twain's intent: Mark Twain must enjoy to the fullest of his fun-loving capacity the serious way in which some papers take his compilation of absurdities. . . . How he must revel in mirth as he sees the solemn sermons preached on the subject of our public schools. It has always been a little difficult to tell Twain's truths from his lies, but these were so plainly marked in the article referred to that no one should err. But some people had a sermon all written and jumped eagerly to find a text to hitch it to.48The Brooklyn Eagle charged that many of Twain's âsham samplesâ were ânot the errors of childhoodâ but of âself-confident ambition,â that members of the Union League and University club had wagered âon the genuine or sham character of those remarkable samples,â and that Twain would âmake money out of the doubt which prevails, for he makes money out of everything relating to himselfâand keeps it, tooâ49âhis despite the fact that he had signed the $250 check he received for the essay over to Le Row.Still other critics quibbled with Twain's conclusions, blaming not the system of rote learning for the mistakes of children but the failures of the adults administering the exams. According to the Akron Summit County Beacon, Twain's article had merely established âthat there are some dull pupils in the public schools; and the additional fact, possibly, that children are often asked questions which are beyond their age, and therefore that the fool was the questioner and not the child.â50 Not only is the reader âleft in doubt as to who is the real authorâ of Twain's essay, the San Francisco Bulletin avowed, but the very questions the children purportedly answered were as âidioticâ as real questions âfrequently used to drive young and uninstructed children to despair.â51 Similarly, the Portsmouth, England, Hampshire Telegraph observed that the âanswers alleged to have been made by [the] pupilsâ were âsometimes almost as foolishâ as âthe questions of the examinersâ;52 and the St. Johnsbury, Vt., Caledonian warned that âbefore the reader laughs too heartily over the absurdity of some of these answers he would do well to try his hand at answering them or similar questions on the spur of the moment.â53 The Ulster, Northern Ireland, Gazette blamed incompetent teaching for the student gaffes (âthe mistakes of the pupil are often as attributable to the teacher who does not know how to teachâ), the exact opposite conclusion Le Row and Twain hoped readers would reach.54 Ironically, the Lancaster, Pa., Semi-Weekly New Era rallied to the defense of the teachers Twain had ostensibly defamed and blamed their âstupid pupilsâ: âTo say that Mark Twain's article is not eminently readable is untrueâ but âto admit that it is a correct pictureâ is quite as far from the truth. . . . The most painstaking and competent teacher in the world cannot prevent stupid pupils from uttering blundering answers to questions. . . . To hold teachers responsible, therefore, for the amusing, meaningless and ridiculous answers children between the ages of six to twelve years may make concerning subjects they but faintly comprehend is to the full as silly as anything we find in âEnglish as She is Taught,â and ungenerous and unjust as well. . . . That there are defects in the American system of school instructionâif we have what can be called a systemâis undeniable. But that it turns out regularly and continually the kind of grist quoted in Twain's âEnglish as She is Taughtâ is untrue and is besides a slander upon a profession which in the aggregate leads all others in intelligence and conscientious devotion to ill-requited duty.55On an entirely unique note, the New Hartford, Conn., Tribune minimized the significance of Twain's âdelightfully amusing articleâ on the grounds that it contained nothing out of the ordinary: âany intelligent child under, say, fifteen years of age, will occasionally make a quaintly ridiculous error in the use of his mother tongue.â56Oscar Wilde discovered yet another reason to praise Twain's essayânot the laughable answers of students to the silly questions of teachers but the precocious wisdom the children betrayed in their responses. On April 13, 1887, less than two weeks after the April issue of Century with Twain's article in it was issued in the U.S., Wilde asked the editors of the Court and Society Review in London, âShall I do for you an article called the âChild Philosopherâ? It will be on Mark Twain's amazing and amusing record of the answers of American children at a Board School.â57 To be sure, Twain had noted in âEnglish as She is Taughtâ how often âwe do slam right into the truthâ in the student answers âwithout even expecting it.â58 In his unsigned review of Twain's review, Wilde elaborated on this point. âMr. Mark Twain's fascinating article,â he maintained, throws an entirely new light on that enfant terrible of a commercial civilisation, the American child, and reminds us that we may all learn wisdom from the mouths of babes and sucklings. For the mistakes by the interesting pupils of the American Board-Schools are not mistakes springing from ignorance of life or dullness of perception; they are, on the contrary, full of the richest suggestion and pregnant with the very highest philosophy.For example, Wilde declared that âthe description of the Plagiarist [âa writer of plays'] is the most brilliant thing that has been said on modern literature for some time.â Wilde expressed the hope âthat when the next bevy of beauties land on our shores from American, they will bring with them one specimen at least of the native school boy. For many of his utterances are obviously mystical and possess that quality of absolute unintelligibility that is the peculiar privilege of the verbally inspired.â He concluded that âTwain deserves our warmest thanks for bringing to light the true American genius. American patriots are tedious, American millionaires go bankrupt, and American beauties don't last, but the schoolboy seems to be eternally delightful.â59Twain returned to his review of English as She is Taught while writing Following the Equator (1897), his final travelogue. In chapter LXI, he quotes extensively from a book entitled Indo-Anglian Literature that, like Le Row's pamphlet a decade earlier, was âwell stockedâ with âbabooâ English âacquired in the schoolsâ of India. âSome of it is very funnyâ,â he noted, âalmost as funny, perhaps, as what you and I produce when we try to write in a language not our own.â He compared excerpts from it with some of the excerpts he had cited from Le Row in âEnglish as She is Taughtâ to âshow that when the American pupil is using but one language, and that one his own, his performance is no whit better than his Indian brother's.â60Twain's essay was reprinted with minor changes no less than four times over the next few yearsâas a slightly revised introduction to a reprint of Le Row's pamphlet issued by the Mutual Book Company of Boston in 1900; an abridged ten-cent âCornhill Bookletâ issued in March 1901 in Boston under the title âEnglish as She is Instructedâ; and introductions to reprints of Le Row's book issued by the Century Company in 1901 and 1905. It was one of Twain's most popular essays and it inspired a host of imitators, though he never reprinted it in a volume of his own collected stories and essays. With the exception of the 1901 reprintings, however, critics ignored these releases and reviewers of the 1901 issues broke little new ground. The Brooklyn Eagle again refused to admit âthat Mark Twain could have edited these gems without adding or altering a wordâ but conceded that his essay was âin reality a ferocious satire on the absurd and foolish presumption of so-called civilization with its barren, mechanical, useless teachingsâ and was so funny it âwould make a horse laugh.â61 Most of reviewers acknowledged the satirical purpose of the article: e.g., the St. Louis Republic (âdrawing deductions as to the correctness of the teaching methods employedâ), New York Tribune (condemns âwhat Mark Twain calls in his introduction to the book âbrickbat cultureââcramming with obscure and wordy rulesâ), Phillipsburg, Kans., Dispatch (âdenounce[s] many of the school methods, such as cramming children's memoryâ), Wilmington Journal (âthe lesson those answers impress is that we are wasting much valuable time in teachingâ), and Baltimore Sun (âa needed protest against the attempt to cram the memories of school children with informationâ).62 The Trenton Times again blamed not the students but âthe school authorities, who believe in cramming pupils.â63 Only the Lancaster, Pa., Inquirer proposed a new scapegoat: âthe textbooks furnished as the teachersâ implements.â In other words, the Inquirer indicted âauthors and publishersâto which two classes the humorous Mark belongs.â64A final note: On January 23, 1897, the Brooklyn Eagle carried an Associated Press wire report that Mark Twain had filed for bankruptcy.65 The following day, Caroline Le Row wrote Twain to thank him again for his âimmense kindnessâ in 1887. âYou not only named my little book,â she remembered, âbut you gave me the money . . . the Century paid you for making it famous. More than all you assured me a literary reputation which has been profitable to me ever since.â She closed by asking for âthe great privilege of returning to youâ the $250 he had given herââyour own money, really.â66 There is no evidence that, despite his straitened circumstances, Twain granted the request.