Readings adopted in this edition from a source other than the copy-text are recorded here. The only copy-text readings changed without listing are the typographical features and the forms peculiar to the written page discussed in the textual introduction. Mechanical errors in inscription ocasioned by incomplete revision in the manuscript are noted in the list of alterations in the manuscript.

The list of emendations is in two parts: substantives and accidentals. In each entry, the reading of this edition is given first, its source identified by a symbol in parentheses; it is separated by a dot from the rejected copy-text reading on the right, thus: scalped (A) • disemboweled. The following symbols refer to sources of emendation:

A      First American edition
Cent      Century magazine
I-C      This edition (Iowa-California)

When Mark Twain revised a passage in the manuscript and then canceled it in the typescript, the record of his manuscript revisions in the list of alterations is keyed to this table: superscript numbers in this table refer the reader to the list of alterations and are not part of the copy-text reading.

The list of accidentals includes the form adopted when a compound word is hyphenated at the end of a line in the copy-text. The form chosen has been determined by other occurrences of the word and parallels within this work, and by the appearance of the word in Mark Twain’s other works of the period.

When an accidental needing emendation happens to fall within a longer substantive emendation, both emendations are listed in a single entry in the list of substantive emendations. (See 242.22, for example, where Mark Twain changed “offense unto His nostrils” by deleting the last three words, and where “offense” has been emended to his preferred form “offence.”)

The symbol I-C follows any emendation whose source is not an authoritative text—Cent or A—even if the same correction was made in a subsequent, derivative, edition. A vertical rule (and | and) indicates the end of a line in the manuscript; a slash separates alternative readings (tear/come). Information in square brackets, such as not in, is editorial. In the list of accidentals, a caret (⁁) indicates the absence of a punctuation mark, so that the entry “and, (A) • and⁁” shows that a comma follows “and” in the first American edition, while no punctuation follows “and” in the copy-text.