On Paine's influence on Twain: it goes back much before the 1870s.  Here
is an excellent summation from Sherwood Cumming's _Mark Twain and Science_:

  It is nearly impossible to exaggerate the impact of _The Age of Reason_
on the mind of Samuel Clemens.  Of the books that shaped his
philosophies, it is the one whose echoes are the most durable and
substantial in his succeeding thought.  He read it when he was twenty-one
or twenty-two, and apparently not again until he was in his seventies;
yet its pristine meanings--and even phraseology--were lodged in the
foundations of his memory.  The book converted him."  (20-21)

Charles

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Charles L. Crow                         |  [log in to unmask]
Department of English                   |  voice mail:  (419) 372-7556
Bowling Green State University          |  fax: (419) 372-0333
Bowling Green, Ohio 43403
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