Whoever insinuated The New Planet was rambling & smutty?  Anyone who wants
accuracy can take a look in Rasmussen's Mark Twain A to Z for a good
synopsis & interpretation of this sketch (once again this book is proving to
be a must have for any serious student of Twain!).

The New Planet was first published in Harper's Weekly Magazine on January
30th, 1909 (volume 53 page 13). It is one page containing just a few
paragraphs (is this rambling?), and has four superlative illustrations (no
smut visible). It is an ideal piece for display.

The piece could be read by (or to) any youngster without any harm. However,
if someone with a dirty mind wanted to view it as a piece of smut, then
certain words could be imagined to be a secret code of sorts. Even then the
smut would have to be classified as opaque (not "oblique"). Stretching is
absolutely essential to make the claim that it is even remotely smutty, but
I guess that is the job of a faithful Freudian interpretation. I guess it is
all in the eye of the beholder.

Actually,  Rasmussen points out the "new" planet is what we now call Pluto,
which has recently had its status as a planet removed and then reinstated.
It was precisely this uncertainty by scientists that prompted Twain to claim
he knew for sure it was a planet.  My favorite part of all of this is
Twain's last sentence, "I hope it is going to be named after me; I should
just love it if I can't have a constellation."

>From now on, those in the know will refer to this oddity of our solar
system
as "Mark Twain's Planet" (formerly known as Pluto).

Bob Slotta