Just when we thought it was safe to sneak a glance at a posting in this Forum we get yet another Vaudeville song & dance routine from Mr. Slotta, who violated the rules of this forum by choosing not to disclose his substantial financial commercial interest in his posting about two items being offered at auction. Whether his motivations were merely unethical or criminal only Mr. Slotta knows. Sometimes the best defense is not a strong offense. When caught with pants down around the ankles, most Vaudevillians slinked off stage, or a merciful hook appeared from a curtain, but Mr. Slotta keeps up a furious tap-dance --not a pretty picture-- and the kind of "chaser" performance that threatens to empty the house. I'm no more interested in his diversions and his excuses for non-disclosure than I am in essays on the same topic by Ken Lay, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Jeff Skilling, Bob Woodward, et al. And I'm equally certain that subscribers to this Forum are not waiting anxiously for a pontifical lecture on business ethics from me. And oh how I am haunted --yes, haunted I say, by the thought of Wes Britton cringing in some cold corner. Mr. Slotta's non-disclosure was no trivial oversight of little or no consequence. The potential profit was quite large. At the time he acquired one of the items in question, he held himself out to be an expert and offered the owner $5,000 for it, and the owner, clearly not an expert and not pretending to be one, accepted his offer. Mr. Slotta bragged to me at the time about his stealthy intervention and victory over Nick Karanovich, who was negotiating its purchase at the time, and whom Mr. Slotta memorably disparaged. He later tried to sell the item on ebay with a starting bid of more than $100,000, and after it garnered no bids, again tried to sell it on ebay, with a lower starting bid, and it again failed to attract any bids. He then consigned it to Sotheby's and it carried a rather "optimistic" estimate of $40,000 to $60,000, and it finally fetched just $30,000 (plus a 20% buyer's premium). This was no trivial non-disclosure, and postings about violations of the rules of a listserv, while surely tedious, are not inappropriate. On a Twain-related note (which we need more of...), we should all note the passing on Dec 20, of the grandson of Twain's close friend William Dean Howells, retired Harvard Professor William White Howells, at age 97. He was a delightful fellow to talk with, and as he spoke and gestured, it was easy to see his grandfather's reflection --the face, the voice, the gestures, even his posture. W W Howells was an anthropologist and was well-known for his study in the 1960s of the measurements of human skulls from all over the world, providing the first solid evidence that all mankind was one species (the measurements within a group varied more than the measurements between groups). Such a study may sound silly now, but this was before DNA could be compared, and race was being widely and hotly debated. He was a humanist like his grandfather and his grandfather's good friend, and those of us lucky enough to have known him lament his passing. The books and papers of W D Howells are (with a few exceptions) at Harvard, including most of the letters from Twain to WDH. Kevin Mac Donnell Austin TX