Hello to those gagging on New Twain--

Perhaps she can be compared to Miss Slimmens / Mrs. Grundy of "Mark Twain's
Travels With Mr. Brown."

    [Brown] "What did she say? Why there is not a solitary passenger in the
ship but what that double-chinned old pelican has blackguarded. She says
awful things about that pretty girl that sits at the middle of the Purser's
table; and she says that poor crippled, gray-headed old grandmother in the
second cabin is not better than she ought to be; and she says she knew that
innocent old fat girl that's always asleep and has to be shovelled (sic) out
of her room at four-bells for the inspection, and always eats till her eyes
bug out like the bolt-heads on a jail door--knew her long ago up on the San
Joaquin, and knows the clothes she's got on now she's travelled (sic) in
eleven weeks without changing--says her stockings are awful--they're eleven
weeks gone, too--and when she complained of the weather being hot, old
Slimmens said 'Why don't she go and scrape herself and then wash--it would
be equal to taking off two suits of flannel!' And she blackguards the choir.
 . . There you are now.  Maybe you don't believe it; if you don't, you just
come and hear the old sage-hen cackle for yourself.  Good day." (26-27)

But how much of Brown's recall can we have faith in? Slimmens possesses a
perhaps redeeming "coarse humor," Culter lacks.

Gordon Snedecor in Portland, Oregon