I'm with you, Steve! When we're talking about Twain we're speaking of someone born well-before the Civil War, from a slave-holding state, in a small town... That his humanity - hmmm, like Lincoln's - could overcome the fundamental bigotry of his time and place, with all of its attendant horrors, is, to me, extraordinary. Does that make him a 21st century man? No - and I do not hold him to the so-called niceties of our own social and political fabric. But that he wrote, so effectively, about a boy coming to understand that a slave is a sentient person and not property, is remarkable for his day, and long after. Off my soapbox, Sara