I have been following with interest the discussion about what Twain
sounded like.  Through the kindness of people on this list, I have been
able to hear the Gillette recording, and have recently seen HH doing
Twain.  His speech cadence was MUCH faster and, I thought, differently
inflected than the Gillette recording.  If he used the  same slow
speech patterns as Gillette did, the show would have been much longer,
or not contained nearly as much material.

I have a recollection of Twain describing his own speech as being very
slow ........ is it possibly in "Life on the Mississippi"?  It strikes
me that there was some passage in there about how slow the pilot
teaching him the river found his speech to be, but I could be mistaken
about that.

I also have a recollection of something one of his daughters said of
his speech on the lecture platform.  It seems to me that her comment
was about how much slower and more heavily accented his speech was when
he gave lectures than when he spoke normally.  I apologize for not
looking up either of these examples, and I do intend to do it, but by
the time I get that done, the discussion will have moved on.  I
thought, perhaps, someone out there would know.  The comment by his
daughter may have been in Ron Powers' biography, my first guess .......
or possibly in Clara's book.  At least these are the first two places I
am going to start looking.

I have seen different references to Twain doing audio recordings, and
even dictating one of his later books on a recording machine, but,
sadly, none of those recordings apparently have survived.  It's too
bad, given the success he had as a lecturer, he must have been
something to hear.

Jerry Dean