In the late 19th century, America was going through many changes. The Civil War had just ended, the country was on the verge of the industrial revolution, immigrants were coming to America in large numbers, and the middle class was on the rise. In American literature, the realism movement, in which the importance of action and plot was eclipsed by the importance of character. In American realism, characters are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, and to their past. In realistic novels, such as Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, events are plausible, avoiding the sensational and dramatic overtures of the British novels of the early nineteenth century. Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact. It is worth mentioning that Mark Twain was not only a humorist and gifted story teller, but he was also an intellectual. The wit and elegance in his writings and essays are reminiscent of the great German philosopher, Erasmus, who wrote In Praise of Folly more than 500 years before Twain was born.