Ben Blatt included Twain among the authors he analyzed in Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve (2017). But he only included Twain’s novels in his corpus. The book was about analyzing the characteristics of acclaimed novelists. 

I am not claiming that “of first water” means its Twain, merely that Twain’s invocation of that peculiar colloquialism contemporaneously makes me think we should keep him as a suspect (to borrow your conceit). 

I will converse with some digital humanists who have expertise in this arena, but I fear the sample size problem may be insurmountable. Not only is the piece short, but because it satirizes a particularly event, it has a disproportionate amount of vocabulary (and potentially other stylistic habits) peculiar to Buffalo, cattle trading, etc. which are likely to reflect occasion rather than authorship. 

But I will consult some experts. 

- MS

***************
Matt Seybold
Assistant Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies
Elmira College
Editor, MarkTwainStudies.org
MattSeybold.com

> On Feb 21, 2019, at 10:47 AM, Mac Donnell Rare Books <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> I don't think phrases like "of the first water" can be very useful in identifying a writer'style without comparing them to other writings by Twain in The Buffalo Express. It may have been a phrase popular with writers and contributors to that newspaper, or may have been in vogue at that moment. It seems to me the best test would be to gather up all of the stylometric fortitude one can muster (contractions, syntax, grammar, spelling, word frequencies, word choices, passive and active voices, phrases, etc.) and compare this sketch with the mass of Twain's known writings in the Express, as well as other writings in the paper. There are two obvious and ample control groups: Twain's known writings in the paper, and writings by others in the paper. But there are also two complicating factors: The sketch itself is a small sample, and some of those writings by "others" in the paper may have been edited by Twain. Still, such an approach might yield interesting results.
> 
> This brings me to a question: Has anyone ever performed a comprehensive linguistic study of Twain's writings over his entire career? That is, do we know what his habits were about contractions, voice, syntax, word frequencies, etc., for each decade of his writing career? This would be tedious, but with computer software, less tedious than ever before. Punctuation and other features of various house styles would have to be considered, even filtered out, if possible. Twain was silently edited, but he also resisted proof readers enough to preserve his style for the most part. Twain's stylistic preferences are sometimes on display in books he read and annotated. He thought J R Lowell used too many "that's" in his sentences, and he corrected W D Howells's phrasing, for example. He exercised strong control of his texts during the time he was published by Webster, giving his typists specific and strict instructions about punctuation. Prior to that, not so much.
> 
> Years ago I recall a story about a criminal who was caught when some anonymous letters he wrote to his victim or to authorities were identified as his because of several traits they displayed: He misspelled a couple of words consistently, he tended to make plural contractions and third person contractions but not singular or first person contractions, and he used some odd phrasing. I don't recall the details of the case, and I don't think he was convicted on the basis of this forensic linguistics alone. But I think it was used to obtain a search warrant to get other evidence, and was later used at his trial.
> 
> I suppose what I'm saying is that Twain needs to be treated like a criminal suspect.
> 
> Kevin
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> 
> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "Barbara Schmidt" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: 2/21/2019 8:50:31 AM
> Subject: Re: Rediscovered Twain Sketch?
> 
>> Matt is on target with describing "of the first water" as originating in
>> the gemstone industry.  A check of newspaper archives from the late 1700s
>> -- via newspapers.com (there are a handful of newspapers from that early
>> date originating in Great Britain) -- indicates diamonds being sold and
>> described as "of the first water" -- a reference to clarity of the diamonds.
>> 
>> Barb
>>