Dear fellow listers As an Australian, I'm very interested in the story of imposter that Twain outlines briefly in "Following the Equator": < ...My curiosity faded away. However, when I found that I was going to Australia it revived. And naturally: for if the people should say that I was a dull, poor thing compared to what I was before I died, it would have a bad effect on business. Well, to my surprise the Sydney journalists had never heard of that impostor! I pressed them, but they were firm--they had never heard of him, and didn't believe in him.> To the best of my knowledge, there are only three other references to this story extant. These include: 1. Twain's letter to the "Adelaide Observer", 15 October 1881 [reproduced as Authoritative Contradiction in the "New York Times", 8 Dec 1881] 2. A private letter from J. Henry Harper to Edward Sandford Martin on 20 May 1895 (Paul A. Doyle, "Mark Twain Journal", Henry Harper's Telling of a Mark Twain Anecdote, Vol XV, Summer, 1970, p.13). 3. A brief comment by Albert Bigelow Paine in Twain's biography: [On the day that President Garfield was shot Mrs. Clemens received from their friend Reginald Cholmondeley a letter of condolence on the death of her husband in Australia; startling enough, though in reality rather comforting than otherwise, for the reason that the "Mark Twain" who had died in Australia was a very persistent impostor. Clemens wrote Cholmondeley: "Being dead I might be excused from writing letters, but I am not that kind of a corpse. May I never be so dead as to neglect the hail of a friend from a far land." Out of this incident grew a feature of an anecdote related in "Following the Equator" the joke played by the man from Bendigo.] I've read and enjoyed Barb Schmidt's webpage devoted to Twain lookalikes, but I am now curious if there are any other clues to the Australian imposter who, according to the above, operated successfully in Australia in the 1870s? Ron ron hohenhaus brisbane, australia [log in to unmask]