The Bianca Soros article titled "Mark Twain's Martin 2 1/2-17" can be located in ACOUSTIC GUITAR, May 1999, No. 77, p. 114. The text of the article has already been transmitted by another Forum member, but I'll add the following comments regarding the actual guitar pictured in the one-page article. It is, indeed, a 2 1/2-17, parlor or beginner's guitar, but was not made in 1835, as stated in the article. The pictured guitar has a slotted headstock and three tuning keys on each side of the headstock, features not common to Martin guitars until the 1870s and later. The Martin Guitar Company's own website notes that, through the 1840s, all Martin guitars were "characterized" by having all six tuning keys on one side of the headstock, a feature adopted from Johann Georg Stauffer, the Viennese violin and guitar maker for whom Christian Friedrich Martin worked prior to moving to New York and setting up shop in 1833. The headstock design with all six tuners on one side is, inci! dentally, very similar to that adopted by Leo Fender for his electric Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars over a century later. Early Martin guitars, and 1835 is very early in Martin guitar history, all had paper labels in the soundhole, unlike the pictured guitar. Twain may have indeed owned a guitar, but he did not purchase the pictured guitar in 1861 and take it west with him- the photographed guitar is of a much later vintage. As for the shipping label referred to in the article, it is conspicuous, to say the least, by its absence. If this so-called signed shipping label has indeed been "authenticated," and is attached to the original Martin "coffin" case, it is certainly strange that neither item made an appearance in conjunction with the guitar. I suspect that this is more information than the average Twainiac has any interest in reading regarding this subject, which generated much interest, and criticism, when the ACOUSTIC GUITAR article was published in 1999. Martin Zehr Kansas City, Missouri