Question

Consider the final sentence of the speech. What is the result of the character building Twain recommends? Who is the real target for his satire?

"Build your character thoughtfully and painstakingly upon these precepts, and by and by, when you have got it built, you will be surprised and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resembles everybody else’s."

Answer 1

Result: you end up indistinguishable from everyone else — a neat, sharp copy of the common character, not an original person. The “surprised and gratified” tone is ironic: the supposed reward for careful character-building is uniformity.

Real target: the cultural insistence on conformity — the preachings, social rules, and moral platitudes (and the people who peddle them) that produce identical citizens. Twain is satirizing those received “precepts” and the society that values sameness, not any one sincere individual.