At 10:11 AM 4/14/97 -0600, Mark Coburn wrote:
..
> No one who has ever bought a product because the label said "Old
>Fashioned" and then bought another  because the label read "New!!"
>should belabor Clemens for his inconsistencies.

 Belabor him, I will not.  Would we not like to put him on the spot, though
 over a drink of his choice?      You're a good friend to stand up for him,
but
I would not belabor him....only conversing.

As he said at the end of "The Mysterious Stranger," ...you are but a thought
-- a vagrant thought , a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering
forlorn among the empty eternities!"   Would he worry about my little
question?

>To me, much of Twain's appeal is that his paradoxes are so much our
>own--e.g., yearning for simplicity and also craving goodies; wanting
>public adoration, yet often seeing people as damned fools.
>
Cheers, for that makes sense!!
The question was,

Can anyone resolve the apparent contradiction between Twain's
"moralistic dudgeon" and his claim that the Moral Sense is to blame
for most human shortcomings?

Barbara Schmidt's page
http://www.tarleton.edu/activities/pages/facultypages/schmidt/Mark_Twain.html
 has some of his references to the Moral Sense.

Mike