Howard,

        Well, overstatement is usually a good way to get a reaction, but
I've been surprised at how little reaction I got!  So thank you, Howard,
for keeping me honest.  No, I don't
really think four drinks make an alcoholic, but the frame does suggest
that Twain may not be trying to take time travel seriously.  Morgan, as
the outside narrator sees him, is dreamy and locked into fantasies of
Arthur's era, clearly making Morgan's self-description as "barren of
sentiment" to be suspect from the beginning.  In an ironic way, Morgan's
attempt to re-make the past in his own image is much like Tennyson's
attempt to re-make the past in the image of Victorian England in _Idylls
of the King_.  If Twain's target is fantasy, then to have Morgan's
fantasy be the opposite of Tennyson's works not only to challenge
Tennyson's vision point by point, but also to challenge the anachronistic
perspective.

        Or do you think we are to suspend disbelief and accept time
travel as a "realistic" component of the plot?

                                        Gregg