I've got another candidate -- one that wouldn't be known to the general
public, but might be familiar to Wesley and other members of this weirdly
specialized group.

I'm thinking of the opening pages of "Which Was it?" -- that strange,
angry, unfinished guilt-laden novel Twain was blazing through in Maine in
the summer of 1902, just before the sudden onset of Livy's final illness.
The following descriptions occur over the course of some three book pages,
interspersed with expository matter that introduces Twain's cast of
characters:
____________________

Indiantown was a village of twelve or fifteen hundred inhabitants. It was
away out of the world, and sleepy and peaceful, and had no newspaper, and
was comfortable and content. Its climate was a pleasant one; sometimes
there was a winter, but this did not happen every year. It was a
corn-growing country, and from the village-edges the great fields stretched
mile upon mile to the north and to the south up the valley and down it,
each with its family house in a big yard; the cluster of slave cabins a
hundred yards behind it; around and beyond the cabins, the orchards and
gardens and melon patches. Indiantown's Christianity was of the usual
Southern breeds -- Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist -- and each sect had a
church which was commodious but not architectural. There was a court house;
also, a jail; for this was the county seat. [ . . . ]

Indian River ran by the town. It was not a great stream, but it was clear
and clean and bright, and its banks were beautiful in summer with
overhanging willows and with curving meadow-vacancies cushioned with grass
and sprinkled as with fire-coals when the prairie-pink was in bloom. The
stage road ran along the river, and one of these meadow-stretches occurred
at the northern edge of the village. In the middle of it was the mill, on
the bank; close to it, on the south side, was the dwelling of the salaried
mill-hand -- that German, Jake Bleeker; close to the mill on its northern
side was the house of its owner, the venerable Andrew Independence
Harrison, with garden and orchard behind it. [ . . . ]

The Fairfax house, which was a spacious old-fashioned mansion, stood fifty
or sixty yards back from the river road, and was nearly hidden from sight
among shade-trees. Behind it its fields stretched a mile to the hills, and
in their midst was the hamlet of white-washed log cabins called the
"nigger-quarter." The mansion was a short mile northward from the mill;
between was the country blacksmith shop, on the river bank. It stood under
the vast spread of an ancient live-oak, and was the intelligence-centre of
the northward-lying farming region. It did the horse-shoeing and
wagon-mending for fifteen or twenty farms, and under the tree in summer and
in the shop in winter was usually to be found a company of waiting gossips.


To return to the Fairfax house. On entering, one passed a couple of rooms
on the right hand side of the hall; then came a third, on the same side, --
the Squire's work-room -- and it is with this one that we have to do, now
that we are ready to begin. There is a grand wood fire flaming there in a
spacious fireplace, for it is cold weather and a blustering day. The date
is Saturday, November the third.

Two men sat in that room.
____________________

. . . and so on. Probably not what you had in mind, now that I think of it
(no sleeping man on a porch, for one thing) but it is interesting to see
Twain playing again with that same cinematic dollying-in approach.

*_________________________________*

*Peter Salwen /* salwen.com
114 W 86, NYC 10024 | 917-620-5371


*_________________________________*

*Peter Salwen /* salwen.com
*114 W 86, NYC 10024 | 917-620-5371*


On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 6:07 PM, Wesley Britton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Thanks, Richard. However,  this isn't the passage I'm hunting. It doesn't
> have the bird's eye view that narrows in focus to a town to a street to a
> house.
>
> I'm starting to think my memory has gone bad and the description comes from
> a different book completely.    Huck, maybe?
>
> Tells you how long it's been since I read these books--
>
>
> Dr. Wesley Britton
> Author, Beta-Earth Chronicles
> www.drwesleybritton.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Friday, August 26, 2016 2:33 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Life on the Mississippi passage
>
> Duh. Wrong link. Here, please attempt this one...
>
> http://www.richardhenzel.com/Steamboat_A-Comin.mp3
>
> sorry for the confusion.
>
> Richard
>