Fellow Twainians will be grieved to hear of the passing of the universally
 beloved and infuential Twain scholar Hamlin Hill. Ham was felled by a
 pulmonary embolism on Tuesday morning.

 It is beyond my skills to provide an obituary that would fully present his
 scholarly contributions to Twain studies, or convey to those who did not
 know him the generosity, gentle humor, modesty, and humanity that defined
 him. A brief summary follows, and I hope that those who knew Ham for more
 than the twenty years I can claim, will share their own memories and
 impressions with this list.

 Ham got his BA from the University of Houston (1953), his MA from the
 University of Texas (1954), and his PhD from the University of Chicago
 (1959), and taught at several universities, most notably the University of
 New Mexico and Texas A & M. His publications are too numerous to fully
 list here, but I can mention a few: With Walter Blair, he co-wrote THE ART
OF
 HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1962) and AMERICA'S HUMOR (1978). His MARK TWAIN AND
 ELISHA BLISS (1964) became a model for such studies. He edited the first
 volume in the Berkeley edition of Mark Twain, MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS TO HIS
 PUBLISHERS (1967), and he was one of the prime-movers in establishing that
 monumental edition of Twain's works. His MARK TWAIN, GOD'S FOOL (1973)
 inspires vigorous debate to this day and changed the direction of modern
 Twain studies. The most obvious tribute to his influence is that hardly
 any  worthwhile study of Twain published in the last twenty years does not
 contain a direct reference to Hamlin Hill's work.

 Writing in his preface to Tom Tenney's MARK TWAIN, A REFERENCE GUIDE
 (1977), Ham wrote "Highbrowed critics and harmless scholars have produced
every
 conceivable `reading' of his works, from imaginative interpretations to
 definitive texts. They have explicated a single word and they have used
 Mark Twain to make grand syntheses of American thought and character. They
have
 created, blindly followed, and then vigorously attacked the trends in Mark
 Twain scholarship --trends which themselves have been both provocative and
 ultimately stultifying. The very quantity of academic research and
 publication about Mark Twain does much to bring into question the notion
 of an Establishment which, like eunuchs, protects its one-man harem from
 unauthorized violation. If such an arrangement does exist, it is the
 largest  collection of eunuchs since Sollermun kept what Jim calls in
HUCKLEBERRY
 FINN his `bo'd'n-house' .... What can be said without the need of prophecy
 is that the flood will continue. However, the next generation defines Mark
 Twain, it will find him as irresistible as earlier generations have;
 perhaps... it can find not only more to say but also some important things
 which have not been said before. Scholarship should build upon its earlier
 insights, refining rather than merely repeating them."

 When Ham sold me his library some years ago and "retired" he said he was
 going to spend his time collecting kachina dolls and fishing for trout. Of
 course, Ham's retirement turned out to be as busy as most of our active
 careers. But now, let us all hope that the kachinas have brought rain in
 the  mountains, that the rivers are running, and the trout are biting.

 Kevin Mac Donnell