Chapters 14-16 Summary

In March of 1906, Twain received a letter from another man who had grown up in Hannibal. Twain did not remember this particular man, but they had grown up among the same schoolmates. This letter causes Twain to reminisce about his various schoolmates and gossip heard about their lives. The gossip may or may not have been true, he says, but it was interesting and that was all that mattered. He also reveals that Huckleberry Finn was modeled after Tom Blankenship, son of the town drunk.

At the beginning of Chapter 15, Twain reminisces about the first girls he loved. When he was about nine or ten years old, he had crushes on a series of older girls at school,. Among the other classmates, he remembers Jimmie McDaniel, who was the first person to hear Twain tell a funny story. It was about...