I took it for granted that Hank was obsessed with History, Science, Time,
and was armed with a photographic memory. Those qualities defined my
father, so it wasn’t a stretch. Yet, even as a child, I laughed at the
absurdity of the idea.

Since it is fiction, I suspended disbelief long ago. But I find that
particular work, despite its stretches, more likely than the alternative
realities of our own times. Truth is stranger than fiction.

On Mon, Aug 1, 2022 at 8:53 AM Carl Chimi <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I can only say that even as a kid I never believed that anyone could
> remember such a thing so specifically.  And react to it with such precision
> in a time when the whole idea of clocks was so relatively primitive.  But I
> can’t remember.  Did Hank have a watch and an almanac (with historical
> eclipse information in it) with him?
>
> Carl
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Aug 1, 2022, at 8:43 AM, Daniel P. B. Smith <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> >
> > In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the narrator says "But
> all of a sudden I stumbled on the very thing, just by luck. I knew that the
> only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century
> occurred on the 21st of June, A.D. 528, O.S., and began at 3 minutes after
> 12 noon.”
> >
> > When I read the book as a kid, I just took this at face value; and of
> course Mark Twain didn’t have any problems using unlikely coincidences in
> his other books.
> >
> > But since then I’ve always wondered: are we really supposed to believe
> this? Or was Mark Twain poking deadpan fun at unbelievable coincidences in
> literature?
>
-- 

*Alan Kitty, DGExecutive Director*

*Mark Twain Education Society*
[log in to unmask]
www.marktwaineducation.org