Dear Somebodies:

Enjoying your thread about language
        -- a little bashful about chiming in since
       I might start swearing
              about the Canary Islands in 1492
        (C. Columbus clutches my arm as a caution).

        After context is set,  I ask your opinion with no time limit on response
               (I'll be online at least another month).
   *********
        See a nice account of Sam playing in Nikola Tesla's
       * lightning * laboratory in
        _Tesla: Man Out of Time_ by Margaret Cheney.
        (-American Scientist- called this book:
        "excellent-- a significant contribution to the recent history of
science."

        To me, this is a rich topic area, but maybe loaded, because
        Tesla was ethnic Serbian-American and not on good terms
        with my grouchy hero, Thomas Edison.

        Mark Twain  was perhaps last seen in 1943
         in Tesla's room --on Nikola's deathbed.
        They talked for an hour, said Tesla.
                            (reference same book -- indexed)

        Was this friendship inter-ethnic?

        In cited book, descriptions about Tesla's boyhood psychology
         are fascinating
        -- would Twain's  be similar in some ways?

        Sincerely,

        Mike Pearson