My search stemmed from the conversation in class on Thursday
          regarding Ann Batten Cristall and the fact that she was a
          Blake protegé.  During class, the name Dumas came to mind.
          That's Alexandre Dumas of <I>The Three Musketeers</I>' fame
          --right???  I wanted to find out about the author and
          what he had written.  I also wanted to find out who may have
          influenced his writting.  Since I wasn't sure what century
          Dumas may have written, I first searched FRANKLIN.  I did an
          AUTHOR search on the DUMAS, ALEXANDRE.  I found the
          following about his date of birth/death:<center>
                         Dumas, Alexandre, 1824-1895</center>

          Although ESTC only contains items published between 1473 and
          1800, I still persued the database to look for connections
          based on the title of some of Dumas's works.  For example,
          <I>Camille, or, The Fate of the Coquette</I> [1856 --adapted
          from the French of Alexandre Dumas as performed at American
          theatres] struck my fancy as an interesting place to start
          my search.<p>

          **an aside**<p>

          I had already searched on <I>The Three Musketeers</I> to no avail.
          (???)<p>

          *************<p>

          I searched FIN IW DUMAS and got --None in ESTC.<p>
          I searched FIN PN DUMAS and got --2 records.  One listed an
          Alexandre, Dumas and his date of birth/death as 1726?-1802.
          ???<p>
          The other records listed a Mathieu Dumas.  Clearly, it was
          the first record that I wanted --or was it?  FRANKLIN listed
          a Dumas, Alexandre in the 19th c. and ESTC listed a Dumas,
          Alexandre in the 18th c.  Now I am a little confused.
          REMEMBER, I don't know anything about this author --like
          when he was born, died, etc., but I continued.<p>

          The first record contained a reference of a discourse by
          Alexandre Dumas that was printed by Samuel Neilson [1792].
          I searched PN Samuel Neilson and got 2 records.
          A search on FIN IW Samuel Neilson [1761-1803] produced 15
          records and showed that he published a report of the second
          trial of the proprietors of the Northern Star.  I then
          searched Northern Star and a number of other references that
          led me away from connections to Dumas.<P>

          Any connections that I thought I was making, I couldn't be
          sure if they were grounded or just my imaginary, yet
          reasonable assumptions.<p>

          What this exercise did was make me even more curious.  Who
          is Dumas, Alexandre?