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