Merle Johnson (who was also a bookseller, oh my) edited MORE MAXIMS and
wrote in a copy that I own that the quotes were genuine and that he had
personally handled the original autograph mss of these maxims, but he
offered no further clues. I suspect Johnson acquired a Twain notebook that
he broke up and sold off a piece at a time, sometimes singly, and sometimes
gluing them into books he sold. The evidence for this: I've handled a dozen
fragments of Twain ms with Merle Johnson provenances that all appear to have
a common source (paper type, width, etc) pointing toward a small memoranda
notebook similar in size and format  to Twain's little1905 notebook. These
are fragments where Twain scribbled a note to himself about an appointment,
a maxim, jotted down a hastily worded idea, and often drew lines between
each entry. And all have provenances leading back to Merle Johnson. But be
aware that a lot of Twain ms fragments originate with the 1911 sale of
Twain's library in which unrelated clipped fragments of ms were often laid
into the books to help their sale. And there are plenty of fragments whose
provenance cannot be traced at all.

If that were the end of it, I'd say trust the source of the quotes in MORE
MAXIMS, but Johnson is not always reliable. He was "involved" to various
degrees in numerous private printings of Twain's works, including QUEEN
VICTORIA'S JUBILEE (1910). He often concealed his involvement in such
printings, at the time and even years later, and in the case of QVJ he
actually tried to create the impression that it was printed earlier than
1910 (I have a letter showing he published it in Dec 1909 or Jan 1910) --cf
his curious conflicting entries in his 1910 and 1935 bibs, and  the late
editions of his AMERICAN FIRST EDITIONS. Johnson also printed MAMMOTH COD in
two forms between 1916 and 1920 and there is strong evidence that it is not
Twain's work. Some early members of the MT Society of America openly accused
Johnson of being a forger of Twain autographs (I have that correspondence),
but that same person also made some unfounded accusations toward Cyril
Clemens. I've seen enough Twain forgeries to fill a car trunk, but not a
single one I can trace to Johnson. I have seen, however, an old Twain
forgery that also had a forgery of Merle Johnson's signature, so it is
possible that somebody saw that forgery or another like it and recognized
the Twain siganture as a forgery but thought the Johnson signature was
genuine, and concluded Johnson was the forger. Finally, despite all of the
fragments with Johnson provenances that I've seen, I have never seen an
original ms of one of maxims in MORE MAXIMS. Nor am I aware of any of those
maxims that appear elsewhere in Twain's writings, but I've never researched
this. I find these last two facts to be worth noting, but not an indictment
or cause for alarm.

My own conclusion is that the quotes in MORE MAXIMS are likely genuine, but
possibly edited by Johnson, and should be used with caution. Johnson's
hanky-panky with the printing dates of his private printings certainly
raises other questions, but does not challenge the autograph sources for
MORE MAXIMS. It seems likely that the charge of forgery against Johnson is
spurious. But his connection with MAMMOTH COD would be reason to question
his competence. And it would go a long way toward making the case for MORE
MAXIMS if some of those quotes could be found in ms form or in Twain's other
writings. Maybe this posting will lead in that direction...

Kevin Mac Donnell
Austin TX