Brent holds a Ph.D. in American culture from the University of Michigan. In this essay, Brent discusses Twain's use of print shop terminology in "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger."

August Feldner, the narrator of Mark Twain's "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger," works as an apprentice in a print shop. August often describes events, situations, and characters in terms familiar to the printing trade. Thus, throughout the story, he expresses himself through metaphors drawn from printing terminology.

In comparing the personality of Marie Vogel, the step-daughter of the print master, to that of Marget Regen, the niece of the print master, August makes extensive use of metaphors drawn from the printer's trade. He describes Marie Vogel in the following terms:

She was a second edition of her mother—just plain galley-proof, neither revised nor corrected, full of turned letters, wrong fonts, outs and doubles, as we say in the...