I visited Hannibal with my family in 1997, so I'm sure some things have changed since then. I'm an avid pilgrim of writer's homes and locales, so I've seen several of them around the country and some internationally as well. I take the location as it is now as part of my study of its history before and since the author lived there and part of the author's influence (or lack of it) on the spirit of place. The fact that Hannibal takes pride in its Twain connections in the particular ways that it does is, to me, part of reason why it is vital to visit there if you are seriously interested in Twain. The paradoxes found in Hannibal today, as in his own time there, remind me of the paradoxes in the man. Connie Ann Kirk Mansfield University