Just a minor footnote, but Twain was not the first to make fun of feathers
on American military uniforms. James Russell Lowell (who could be
hilariously funny) wrote in his anti-Mexican War poem, THE BIGLOW PAPERS
"taint yore eppyletts and feathers make the thing a grain more right..."
Twain owned a copy of this book, extracted (or had extracted in his name)
some parts of it for his LIBRARY OF HUMOR, and was quite proud that Lowell
liked THE JUMPING FROG. Cf Gribben MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY for more details on
the Twain-Lowell connections.  There was even a fellow in BIGLOW PAPERS
named Timbertoes who was missing some body parts, a possible antecedent to a
similarly plagued Twain character. If I don't stop now I'll have written an
abstract and have to talk about Lowell's influence on Twain in Elmira.

Kevin Mac Donnell
Austin TX