Large octavo. 275 pp., plus (4) pp. ads. Alongside its sequel, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer offers literary heroes who "present a sharp contrast to the Sunday School or rags-to-riches literature which was then the common fare doled out to children...These books let fresh air into the minds of parents who had shut the door on their own childhood, and they will be classics the world over as long as there are boys" (Grolier, p. 111). This is John Greenleaf Whittier's copy with his facsimile signature bookplate on front pastedown. Although contemporaries, the literary paths of the Quaker Abolitionist from New England and Hannibal, Missouri's native son seldom crossed. However, the year following Tom Sawyer's print debut, Twain was invited to speak at Whittier's 70th birthday party, which was hosted by the Atlantic Monthly, and held at the Hotel Brunswick in Boston on 17 December, 1877. For this speech, Twain spun a tale that took place in the mining camps in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where he recounted meeting a "jaded, melancholy man of fifty" who reported that Twain was the "fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours" - the others having been Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, all of whom were in attendance at the party. After providing a somewhat unflattering portrait of the physical bearing of the three, the miner then relates a tale involving of his much-abused attempts at hospitality, incorporating excerpts from each author's oeuvre - culminating in the theft, by Longfellow, of the miner's only pair of boots: "Says I, ‘Hold on, there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with them?’ He says, ‘Going to make tracks with ’em; because: “‘Lives of great men all remind us/We can make our lives sublime;/And, departing, leave behind us/Footprints on the sands of time.’" Many at the time considered this one of Twain's public missteps, though most of the objections arose from the authors' admirers, as Longfellow and Holmes apparently both found the humor in the story, and, the Boston Globe reported that "Mr. Whittier seemed to enjoy it keenly." Spine ends show some wear, front hinge cracked, but holding; overall a very good copy in publisher's blue cloth decorated in gilt and black. (BAL 3369).