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Hi Devlins. Long time no read.

Thus Mr. Clemens:

NOTICE

PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.

EXPLANATORY

IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

THE AUTHOR.

(Of course, Mr. Clemens was pulling everybody's leg, as per usual.)

Great to see you! I might have known I'd find the real scholars on this thread!

Speaking of "Huckleberry Finn," there is a passage in it that I've wondered about sometimes. I know that just about every word out of our dear Mark Twain's mouth was satirizing SOMETHING, but what was he satirizing in this passage? I'm referring to his description of the Grangerfords, the feuding family with whom Huck lived for a time (until most of them got killed off.) Huck describes the Grangerfords as not having a trace of red in their complexion. He makes a big point of this--that the Grangerfords are apparently brown-haired or black-haired people, with pale skin, "not a trace of red in it."

We know that Huck sometimes will miss a point and will very solemnly tell us things as truth, that we know are ridiculous. (Such as his pointers on how to keep bad luck away.) So I think Twain was satirizing some point of view or other, when he had Huck make so much of the fact that the Grangerfords had "not a trace of red" in their complexion. But WHAT point of view?

Have you seen that fairly recent edition which includes about 3 episodes that weren't in the original book? One of them has something to do with Jim and a corpse; I can't remember the other two, must go look that up.