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Subject:
From:
Robert M Ellsworth <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 2 Oct 2018 13:38:33 -0500
Content-Type:
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On Oct 1, 2018, at 9:49 AM, Martin Zehr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Just finished Kevin's excellent review- what else is new?- of Kerry
> Driscoll's book on Twain's conflicting attitudes toward the American
> Indian.  A topic well-deserving the attention of a scholar like Dr.
> Driscoll.  Don't know if she mentioned this, but years ago Tom Quirk
> pointed out to me that, in his late work, Extracts from Captain
> Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, the guard at the entrance to Heaven is a
> "Pai-Ute" Indian.   What gives?

And then a bunch of comments follow … none of which, surprising to me in this congeries of Twain scholars, actually reference the source.

Even a cursory reference to an online source of this text reveals the following, including the correct Twain spelling of the tribe name, different from that in quotes above:

'I hopped onto the carpet and held my breath and shut my eyes and wished I was in the booking-office of my own section.  The very next instant a voice I knew sung out in a business kind of a way—

‘ “A harp and a hymn-book, pair of wings and a halo, size 13, for Cap’n Eli Stormfield, of San Francisco!—make him out a clean bill of health, and let him in.”

'I opened my eyes.  Sure enough, it was a Pi Ute Injun I used to know in Tulare County; mighty good fellow—I remembered being at his funeral, which consisted of him being burnt and the other Injuns gauming their faces with his ashes and howling like wildcats.  He was powerful glad to see me, and you may make up your mind I was just as glad to see him, and feel that I was in the right kind of a heaven at last.'

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