Tonight's episode of QUANTUM LEAP on USA
network entitled "Good Night, Dear Heart :
November 9, 1957" [original air-date 3/7/90,
written by Paul Brown] had an interesting
Mark Twain tie-in.  Sam "leaped" into a
country coroner in a small town in
Massachusetts and landed in the middle of a
murder investigation.  When he went to the
apartment of the deceased beautiful blonde,
he found a copy of THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES
OF MARK TWAIN, ed. by Charles Neider on a
table.  After solving the murder (she was
killed by a blow from a spike-heeled shoe by
her former lesbian lover [I'm not making this
up]), Sam opens the book at the victim's
grave and explains Twain wrote the following
lines for the inscription on his own
daughter's gravestone:
     Warm summer sun
       Shine kindly here,
     Warm southern wind
       Blow gently here
     Green sod above
       Lie light, lie light
     Good night, dear heart,
       Good night, good night.

     I don't think the inscription is in
SHORT STORIES but I haven't checked.  And of
course, Twain didn't write the inscription on
Susy's headstone although he did have a word
altered.  The word "southern" was "northern"
in the original since in the poet's native
Australia the warm wind is from the north.
Twain had Robert Richardson's name cut
underneath the inscription when he learned
that the quote had been attributed to
himself.
     Good fun to see Twain popping up on
television, even if mis-quoted or mis-
attributed.                   KJB