If you begin at the first page and count the first ten letters after every widely spaced apostrophe, and then read them backwards, you will discover that among those ten letters a word is spelled (the words may be less than ten letters long). By the end of the book you will have discovered Twain's secret message to the world (do not assume it will be in English). OK, now that we've distracted the nitwits and Shakespearean scholars on this list, I can tell you what is really going on. At a first glance at the first page of the text to chapter 9, it would seem that contractions were spaced widely before the apostrophe and that possessives are spaced normally. But if you look at other pages, this pattern clearly does not hold. But if you look at enough other examples you will begin to notice that the lines of type containing a widely spaced apostrophe also have widely spaced words in the entire line, and that lines containing normally spaced apostrophes have normally spaced words. As one experienced in setting type by hand, I can tell you that when setting type, not every line spaces out perfectly, and in order to justify a line of type (to make it more attractive, more readable, and so it won't work loose during printing or plate-making) the type-setter must go back through every line and either "tighten" the spacing by substituting narrower spaces between words, or space out the words using em or en quads (the spacers normally used between words) or "brasses" or "coppers" (the much thinner spacers used for fine-tuning between words and even letters). This is usually done as you set each line, but when an entire page is finished, there are usually a line or two that need a little attention. A line set too tightly tends to bow up toward the middle and this can create problems like excessive type wear, bad inking, uneven make-ready, etc. A line set too loose can cause the same problems, and most often results in individual letters working up and getting damaged, or working up and being pulled out during plate-making (the folio at page 155 of HF is a good example of a numeral that worked up, was damaged, then lost, and then replaced). What happened in LonM seems clear enough: Whoever set type mistakenly inserted space before the apostrophes in lines that needed spacing out. I casually checked some pages in Twain's APC and other Osgood books of that period, and did not find other examples. If you closely studied the pattern of such type-setting in LonM you might find that it only occurs in certain gatherings (the separately type-set and printed sequences of pages, that, when sewn together, comprise the book). You could then write a lengthly article about "compositor a and the spacing of apostrophes in the first octavo edition of Samuel L. Clemens' LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI" and get it published in PBSA alongside those long boring articles on the compositors of Shakespeare's quarto and folio editions. I've certainly given you a big headstart and plenty of time, since most the folks who write those articles are busy right now counting letters backwards and trying to make them into words. Kevin Mac Donnell Austin TX