Seriousness mixed with humor

When writing a story or novel, it is important to vary the type of tone that the author uses. When Mark Twain is talking about Emmeline and the feud, he uses seriousness mixed with humor. This is important because it keeps the readers attention. If the tone of the entire passage had been serious, with no breaks, the reader would be very bored. It is never good to be too serious. However, the flip side is also true. You cannot spend an entire passage, or an entire book for that matter, just focusing on humor. You will lose the audience very quickly, because it would get boring. Regardless of it's humorous nature, endless humor begins to get dull. Also, it's not a realistic portrayal of life. All of life is not humorous, and all of life is not serious. It's a mixture of both. Even at serious times, humor pokes through, and even at the funniest of times, seriousness can make it's way into a conversation. For the sake of the book, the author and the reader, a book must have an equal balance of humor mixed with seriousness in order to make it an enjoyable read.