Carrie, Your plan of placing the biographical along side the texts seems like a sound plan. I think you find that the combination of tragic circumstances, financial instability, and a long stretch of observing man's inhumanity to man will tend to make any individual a mite on the cynical side. Even though Twain might have acquired an exterior crust of cranky orneriness I think he retained a bright vein of hope. For a look at the last ten years of Twain's light and his cynical side try Ham Hill"s _God's Fool_. ACR