How to tell a story

Twain's "How to Tell a Story" is an essay about story telling, though quasi-ronically, it becomes more of an explanation about the art of telling a bad story. Twain makes this fairly easy for the reader to catch on to, partly because both stories he elects to share are equally terrible, with neither carrying any merit or usefulness outside the family campfire. But also based on the ways which Twain uses to describe, or slightly disect each of the three different types of comical stories a body can possibly tell. Humorous, Witty, and Comical enter in as the three sorts of story telling, with Witty and Comical being the european set of standards, which funnily enough are supposedly inferior to the American's Humorous style of story telling. This is obviously another famous example of Twain poking fun at europe (i.e. the king, and the duke), however that is not the only degree of staire working in his essay, as Twain goes on to follow his statements up, with examples of both the witty and the comical story; basing the humor of each strictly on the situation which the story takes place in, and the level of difficulty one must use in pausing... just before the punchline. And in twain's opinion that is the reason why europeans are not funny, and never have been. In return, the superior style of American thinking, in a general comparison between ourselves and... say the french, is the precise reason for which the reader should find this essay humorous. That being of course, the content (or as Twain states "Matter") of which the story is being told.