Dear Forum, I dug around in my email but couldn't find the original email. A few months ago I remember there being a discussion about Thoreau or Emerson and I mistakenly made a comment about Twain paying for a cabin for one of them. I remember not being sure who it was and probably should have held my tongue until I had a source to support my comment. In either case, I came across the source while researching a completely unrelated matter (isn't it weird how things come full circle some times?). It was not Thoreau or Emerson, but Mr. Whitman. "Twain contributed funds to help buy a horse and buggy for Whitman in 1885 and to pay for his cottage in Camden in 1888, saying, supposedly, 'What we want to do is to make that splendid old soul comfortable.'" Source: http://www.salwen.com/mtwhtman.html I'm pretty sure the original place I read this was in Gribben's * Reconstruction*, but since I don't own a copy (nor does the nearest library, I have to Inter-library Loan it every time I want it) I offer this source as a possibility. Perhaps it will help whoever was looking for a Twainian link to transcendentalists? And, to the person who called me out on not having a source to support my claim, I do apologize and have learned that lesson. :) Michael