Carrie,
        Your plan of placing the biographical along side the texts seems
like a sound plan. I think you find that the combination of tragic
circumstances, financial instability, and a long stretch of observing
man's inhumanity to man will tend to make any individual a mite on the
cynical side. Even though Twain might have acquired an exterior crust of
cranky orneriness I think he retained a bright vein of hope. For a look at
the last ten years of Twain's light and his cynical side try Ham Hill"s
_God's Fool_.

ACR