To my surprise, absolutely none of the candidates proposed so far are the
passage I'm hunting. They don't have the Ariel view that narrows down,
narrows down even tighter, and finally focuses on one man.

I'm beginning to wonder if my memory has sprung a huge leak.   But I vividly
remember such a passage used in an old textbook called the Bedford Reader.
Back when we taught freshman English using modes, the excerpt was an example
in the "Description" section.   I vividly remember Dr. Hughes discussing the
Twain passage as it was a perfect lesson plan for beginning teachers who had
no lesson plans in our files yet.

 I obviously can't swear the excerpt came from LOM, judging from my
inability to find it there.   I doubt it is in Huck as the description
wouldn't really fit his voice. While the first chapter of Pudd'nhead Wilson
is wonderfully descriptive, the narrator moves from street to street, but
not using the pattern I'm talking about.

Sigh. I never thought in a million years this hunt would be for such an
elusive description.   Or confound this august company.


Dr. Wesley Britton
Author, Beta-Earth Chronicles
www.drwesleybritton.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Salwen
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2016 11:05 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Life on the Mississippi passage

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
>