The following is from the Braille transcriber who asked about the spacing
in
the contractions she was working with in the 1883 text of Life on the
Mississippi.   (The copy she is using is a facsimile of the Osgood
publication,
printed on the University Press in Cambridge. I mistakenly referred to it
as the
Cambridge Press leading a few commentators to believe it was an English
edition.)
Dennis Kelly

I don't know whether people notice these things. I do think that they
possibly do, and then read right over whatever it is. I do think this arrangement
is more noticeable in braille than it is in print. In print, it is innocuous,
to be sure, and, I have learned, of no academic significance.

 What to do in braille? In the tradition of the faithful scribe, one is
obliged to reproduce the print, without comment or alteration. Yet here is a
situation in which the print itself intrudes on the reading experience. When this
happens, we normally insert a note of explanation, itself a further, but
unavoidable intrusion.

 But the way is clear. As I remind my transcribing students, our readersare
only blind, not stupid. We'll transcribe this as printed, without comment.

 Thanks for all your help.