I'm with you, Steve!

When we're talking about Twain we're speaking of someone born
well-before the Civil War, from a slave-holding state, in a small
town...   That his humanity - hmmm, like Lincoln's - could overcome the
fundamental bigotry of his time and place, with all of its attendant
horrors, is, to me, extraordinary.

Does that make him a 21st century man? No - and I do not hold him to the
so-called niceties of our own social and political fabric. But that he
wrote, so effectively, about a boy coming to understand that a slave is
a sentient person and not property, is remarkable for his day, and long
after.

Off my soapbox,
Sara