On 04/27/2013 09:56 AM, Barbara Schmidt wrote:
> The use of the solar eclipse to prove a claim to supernatural power
> was not a new concept when Twain wrote CY.  In the Iowa/California
> edition of the WORKS OF MARK TWAIN, edited by Bernard Stein, (p. 553)
> Stein points the reader to THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF CHRISTOPHER
> COLUMBUS, Book 16, chapter 3 by Washington Irving.  (Columbus
> exploited an eclipse to get natives to procure supplies for him.)
> Clemens owned a set of these books in the 1880s.

   Yes, in fact, Twain makes a joke about it in the text, showing that
he (and Hank) knew this:

   "You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nick of
time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, played an eclipse
as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could
play it myself, now, and it wouldn’t be any plagiarism, either, because
I should get it in nearly a thousand years ahead of those parties."

   (Connecticut Yankee, Chapter 5)

-- 
  Alan Eliasen
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