My apologies to Deidre Holmes for misspelling her name. I have done some scholarly work on J.M. Synge, author of _Deirdre of the Sorrows_ and other plays and I tend to see what I'm used to seeing. You did NOT used the phrase "old codgers"; I did, in a perhaps ill-aimed effort to avoid sounding paternalistic when dispensing advice from a distance. Though you may not have succeeded in getting everyone to "like" Huck, it seems to me that you certainly got everyone acquainted with him and thinking about him - and maybe you should be satisfied with that this time out. I'd be very interested to read those journal responses. I suspect that your analysis of the other factors - external to the novel - producing resistance is correct. And so your note describes rather well the complexity of classroom teaching and some of the factors - cultural and practical - that help determine reader responses. I've shared it with a colleague who supervises our English student teachers. One of the frus- trating, mysterious, and fascinating things about teaching is that you may not have heard, and may never hear, from the one (or two? or three?) students who liked, even identified with Huck but, sensing the prevailing mood in the class, chose not to express his/her/their view(s). And, of course, you'll probably never hear, either, from the students who vociferously expressed their displeasure but who will change their minds six months, a year, ten years from now. The important thing is to drop the stone into the pond; how the ripples stir the reeds is not in our power to know. Gus Sponberg Valparaiso University