I agree that Budd's hypothesis is a sound one. But it's hardly air-tight. For one thing, the photo is not a "bust": that term has a quite specific meaning in art (including photography), and a waist-up shot isn't a bust shot. Second, the idea that somehow Mark Twain "had to" pose for this photo because the bust maker had to have a shot of his shoulders is a bit peculiar. There are lots and lots of busts of 19th century people; there are no other bare-chested photos that I know of. As for whether or not Twain looks uncomfortable in the shot, well, that's speculation--fine, I think, but the kind of thing that has been castigated soundly on the Twain list over the past couple of days. Though not now, evidently because it fits the castigators' views. And there's still an unexplained element to this very peculiar photo. What we've seen on the Twain list over the past couple of days are examples of precisely the kind of thing historicists have been pointing out over the past decade or so. "The truth" is to a great extent a cultural construction. The term "evidence" has been used here as if it had some kind of absolute definition and validity. But the rules of evidence are conventional, and they change. What we've seen here lately is that almost all of us are quite ready to push forward SOME interpretations as "evidence" and at the same time deny, overtly or indirectly, any validity to other interpretations that we don't like or that make us uncomfortable. The history of criticism is full of this sort of thing, and it's a bit depressing (though not surprising) to find people on the Twain list still trying to slam the door on any speculation other than what they're committed to or comfortable with. Face it folks: Sam Clemens can't care less. He's dead and smiling down (or grimacing up) at us. The Twain of the Twain list is a construction, and we've been having fun constructing him, haven't we? And, before that "M.F.A." person jumps on to rant about the term "historicist," I should point out that "presentism," subject of her previous rant, is a perfectly legitimate English word which (according to the Shorter OED) goes back at least to the late 19th century. So it's a word contemporary with Mark Twain, and somebody ought to be able to use it without being castigated herein! Mouseketeer