I thank John Bird for mentioning my _Sentimental Twain_ as I do, indeed recognize Twain as a thinker. But I've come to take my own thesis with a grain of salt after reading Bruce Michelson's _Mark Twain on the Loose_, which talks about humor as an escape, including an escape from the control and determination required of serious thinking. This is not to say that Twain's humor is not deep, nor to say that he wasn't a thinker, but only to suggest that his humor is often at odds with his thinking, at least as thinking is formally practiced. He tended to think seriously through satire, and to explore creatively--to escape thinking as his peers defined it--through humor. Gregg Camfield