I have not known these strangers nor their fathers.

I have not heard of the names they mention; the reminiscences to which they call attention have had no part in my experience; all of which means that these strangers have been mistaking me for somebody else.

But at last I have the refreshment, this morning, of a letter from a man who deals in names that were familiar to me in my boyhood.

The writer encloses a newspaper clipping which has been wandering through the press for four or five weeks, and he wants to know if Capt Tonkray, lately deceased, was (as stated in the clipping) the original of "Huckleberry Finn." I have replied that "Huckleberry Finn" was Frank F.As this inquirer evidently knew the Hannibal of the forties, he will easily recall Frank.
Frank's father was at one time Town Drunkard, an exceedingly well-defined and unofficial office of those days.

He succeeded "General" Gaines, and for a time he was sole and only incumbent of the office; but afterward Jimmy Finn proved competency and disputed the place with him, so we had two town drunkards at one time--and it made as much trouble in that village as Christendom experienced in the fourteenth century when there were two Popes at the same time.
In "Huckleberry Finn" I have drawn Frank exactly as he was.