Had those cigars and that order not been lost… the world would be a different place today.
I need to make a couple of remarks about my handling of the characters in this novel. All speeches and writings attributed to Samuel Clemens, in particular, are of my own devising. The same does not apply to the political speeches I have put in the mouth of Abraham Lincoln. In them, I have frequently used his own words on the relationship between labour and capital and between employee and employer, sometimes verbatim, sometimes adapting his thought on slaves and owners to apply to workers and owners. I have done this not only for dramatic effect but also to show the plausibility (and what more can one demand of a novelist?) of the views I have ascribed to him in the changed circumstances I have envisioned here.