If I were to comment again on a thread that I had suggested had gone on long enough, would that make me...what? Nonetheless, about Mark Twain and racism. A few years ago I was teaching Huck Finn in Syria. My students were horrified and offended by the passage in Chapter 24 in which Jim is dressed up in King Lear's outfit, painted "all over a dead solid blue," and THEN labeled: "Sick Arab--but harmless when not out of his head." Should they have been offended? Of course. Should I have taught something else from that particular imperial period of the American state? I doubt it. Gary Henrickson North Dakota State College of Science