the slave-holding class. The master's wife's baby was taken for black and grew up with the attitudes and intonations of the slave.

　　The point was difficult to miss:nurture(养育), not nature, was the key to social status. The features of the black man that provided the stuff of prejudice-manner of speech, for example-were, to Twain, indicative of nothing other than the conditioning that slavery forced on its victims.

　　Twain's racial tone was not perfect. One is left uneasy, for example, by the lengthy passage in his autobiography(自传)about how much he loved what were called "nigger shows" in his youth-mostly with white men performing in black-face-and his delight in getting his mother to laugh at them. Yet there is no reason to think Twain saw the shows as representing reality. His frequent attacks on slavery and prejudice suggest his keen awareness that they did not.

　　Was Twain a racist?Asking the question in the 21st century is as wise as asking the same of Lincoln. If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the "wisdom" of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error. Lincoln, who believed the black man the inferior of the white, fought and won a war to free him. And Twain, raised in a slave state, briefly a soldier, and inventor of Jim, may have done more to anger the nation over racial injustice and awaken its collective conscience than any other novelist in the past century.

1. How do Twain's novels on slavery differ from Stowe's?

A. Twain was more willing to deal with racism.

B. Twain's attack on racism was much less open.

C. Twain's themes seemed to agree with plots.

D. Twain was openly concerned with racism.

2. Recent criticism of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn arose partly from its　　　.

A. target readers at the bottom B. anti-slavery attitude

C. rather impolite language D. frequent use of "nigger"

3. What best proves Twain's anti-slavery stand according to the author?

A. Jim's search for his family was described in detail.

B. The slave's voice was first heard in American novels.

C. Jim grew up into a man and a father in the white culture.

D. Twain suspected that the slaves were less intelligent.