On Mar 13, 2008, at 9:25 AM, Jim Leonard wrote:

> The quotation itself apparently is taken from the movie The Adventures
> of Mark Twain, and the speaker is "Mark Twain" as character in that
> movie.  Here's the dialogue as I captured it from a website on the

The quotation from "Life on the Mississippi" I was thinking of is in 
Chapter VIII.  It is.....

"My boy, you've got to know the shape of the river perfectly.  It is 
all there is left to steer by on a very dark night.  Everything else is 
blotted out and gone.  But mind you, it hasn't the same shape in the 
night that it has in the daytime."

"How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?"

"How do you follow a hall at home in the dark?  Because you know the 
shape of it.  You can't see it."

"Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling 
variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as 
I know the shape of the front hall at home?"

"On my honor, you've got to know them better than any man ever did know 
the shapes of the halls in him own house."

"I wish I was dead!"

Jerry