One more detail, Uncle Tonk never outgrew his boyhood love of the circus.
Two of his three trips
out of Murray, writes Hutton, were to attend the circus in Wallace.  She
adds:

"Uncle 'Tonk's' grips were quite an event, in which all the town people
took an active interest.
"One man would lend him a pair of trousers, another a coat and vest, and
still another a silk
'tile,' a relic of former gentility, and Uncle 'Tonk' rigged out in his
borrowed plumage would mount the stage coach beside the driver, bound for
the circus" (p. 189).

Alas, Tonk got drunk on these trips -- as Hutton put it gently, his
"besetting sin would get the better of him" (p. 190).

Maybe Huck/Tom held on to his love of the circus, too?

Ron

P.S. Murray's big annual summer town party is still an event thrown in
honor of a respected, gold-rush-era prostitute, Molly B'Dam.  Gotta love
north Idaho!

----------
> From: Ron Roizen <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Tom Blankenship
> Date: Monday, October 11, 1999 4:20 PM
>
> Jon -- Hold Everything!  Tom B. was a "respected justice of the peace in
> Montana," did you say?  Murray, the town May Hutton placed Uncle Tonk in,
> isn't all that far from the Montana border.  Hutton says Tonk was born on
> February 10, 1842 at Fort Madison, Iowa but moved to Hannibal where he
> "grew to manhood" (p. 190).  Got a birthdate and birth place for Tom
> Blankeship by any chance?
>
> Breathless in north Idaho...
>
> Ron
>
> ----------
> > From: Jon Stephen Miller <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Tom Blankenship
> > Date: Monday, October 11, 1999 3:55 PM
> >
> > Ron's right--Tom Blankenship was a childhood friend of Twain's.  In
1906
> > he recalled TB as the model for Huck.  From _Mark Twain A to Z_ (1995):
> >
> > [TB's] father, Woodson Blankenship, resembled Pap Finn in being a town
> > drunk [in Hannibal], but was quite different in having a wife, Mahala,
> and
> > eight children, all of whom were born in Missouri.  The Blankenships
were
> > desperately poor, undisciplined and disreputable.  Tom Blankenship
> > consequently grew up badly fed, unschooled, unwashed and unsupervised.
> > (37)
> >
> > Different stories describe Tom's adult life: in 1889 and 1899 he was
> > reported dead, but in 1902 Tom's sister Elizabeth told Twain he was a
> > "respected justice of the peace in Montana." (37)
> >
> > Jon
> >
> >
> > ----------------------
> > Jon Stephen Miller
> > Assistant Editor
> > Walt Whitman Quarterly Review
> > Department of English
> > The University of Iowa
> > Iowa City, Iowa  52242-1492
> > [log in to unmask]
> > 1.319.335.0592