Huckleberry Finn: An explanatory note from the author

On the first page of Huckleberry Finn:

EXPLANATORY

IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

THE AUTHOR.

But I’m sure Twain -- who took exquisite care to make sure his characters said exactly what he wanted them to say, in the way he wanted them to say it -- would have approved of a latter-day "Twain expert" substituting the word "slave" into the text 219 times, on the apparent assumption that his characters were trying to say something else and not succeeding.