I'm surprised I seem to have the honor of being the first person to echo
Hal's thoughts (unless someone else beats me to it before this note goes
online). It goes without saying that we all owe a big debt of gratitude to
Barbara Snedecor, Christy Gray (why do my fingers insist on typing "Christy
Brown"?), and many others at the center for all their work. This was my
fifth conference, and I've always been amazed at the amount of work that
goes into them. The attention to detail is quite astounding.

I got home to California very late last night and am still a little tired
and disoriented. Rather than try to sum up my feeling about the
conference--except to say it was wonderful, perhaps the best yet, I'll
follow Hal's lead by rattling off some random observations ...

--I too was impressed by the Japanese contributions to the conference and
the dedication and energy the Japanese scholars put into their
presentations. I counted ten Japanese paper presenters. Wouldn't it be
something if that many people participated from each of many different
countries!

--I was fortunate to be in Elmira in May, when blooming flowers made the
campus more beautiful than I had ever seen it, but it still looked awfully
beautiful during the conference, which was blessed with cool weather. The
grounds of Quarry Farm also looked more beautiful than ever, thanks, I'm
sure to Tim Morgan. And Hal is right about the view from there!

--Speaking of the weather, the air conditioning in the new dormitory, Meier
Hall, was almost too cold. Imagine that in Elmira! It's a wonderful,
old-school-style building, by the way. Its spacious commons room has a nice
old-fashioned fireplace, by which John Bird read an unpublished (for now)
fairy tale by Mark Twain, and at least one aging scholar (if that's the
correct) word comfortably drifted off to sleep.

--I can't remember a conference with more papers that I wanted to hear. As
virtually every time slot had concurrent sessions, I missed nearly half the
presentations I wanted to attend. I've been lobbying Barbara to add another
day to the conference to reduce the number of scheduling conflicts. Sure,
some people would miss sessions because they couldn't come on Wednesday ...
but would that be any worse than missing them because of scheduling
conflicts? Another suggestion I'd like to throw out is that it would be good
to have a web site where ALL conference papers would be posted. Not
necessarily the scholars' full-length papers, but at least the truncated
versions they present at the conferences.

--I've been to Elmira seven times and was stunned to realize I had never
before been inside Cowles Hall and seen its chapel! Its magnificent woodwork
and stained-glass windows are gorgeous. Its acoustics aren't good for
speakers, but no one visiting the campus should miss a chance to visit the
chapel.

--I'm not sure it's appropriate to single out individual papers for praise
here, as I don't want to hurt the feelings of people I fail to mention. I'll
merely say that keynote speaker Peter Kaminsky's praise of Horst Kruse's
presentation was right on the money and that there were many, many fine
papers at the conference.

I'll end by enthusiastically seconding John Bird's call to everyone to
attend the next conference at Hannibal in 2015. I'm not an officer of the
Mark Twain Circle, so I speak only for myself, but I'd like to see these
conferences unified into a single-series biennial conference with
alternating venues. Why not?

Okay, I will single out another person. Mark Twain Project editor Ben
Griffin's talk in the chapel about Mark Twain's "A Family Sketch" was
wonderful--informative, fascinating, and occasionally hilarious. I heartily
concur with another attendee who suggested that perhaps he should have been
the keynote speaker. Next time? Incidentally, Bob Hirst was no slouch of a
follow-up speaker.

Kent Rasmussen