Hello to those gagging on New Twain-- Perhaps she can be compared to Miss Slimmens / Mrs. Grundy of "Mark Twain's Travels With Mr. Brown." [Brown] "What did she say? Why there is not a solitary passenger in the ship but what that double-chinned old pelican has blackguarded. She says awful things about that pretty girl that sits at the middle of the Purser's table; and she says that poor crippled, gray-headed old grandmother in the second cabin is not better than she ought to be; and she says she knew that innocent old fat girl that's always asleep and has to be shovelled (sic) out of her room at four-bells for the inspection, and always eats till her eyes bug out like the bolt-heads on a jail door--knew her long ago up on the San Joaquin, and knows the clothes she's got on now she's travelled (sic) in eleven weeks without changing--says her stockings are awful--they're eleven weeks gone, too--and when she complained of the weather being hot, old Slimmens said 'Why don't she go and scrape herself and then wash--it would be equal to taking off two suits of flannel!' And she blackguards the choir. . . There you are now. Maybe you don't believe it; if you don't, you just come and hear the old sage-hen cackle for yourself. Good day." (26-27) But how much of Brown's recall can we have faith in? Slimmens possesses a perhaps redeeming "coarse humor," Culter lacks. Gordon Snedecor in Portland, Oregon