The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain (good book recommendations .TXT) 📕

Is it not possible for you to come? Perhaps the entire change would give you a new and healthier lease of life.

Our children are both well and happy; I wish that you could see them. Susie is very motherly to the little one. Mr. Clemens is hard at work on a new book now. He has a new book of sketches recently out, which he is going to send you in a few days; most of the sketches are old, but some few are new.

Oh Doctor Brown how can you speak of your life as a wasted one? What you have written has alone done an immense amount of good, and I know for I speak from experience that one must get good every time they meet and chat with you. I receive good every time I even think of you. Can a life that produces such an effect on others be a wasted life? I feel that while you live the world is sweeter and better. You ask if Clara is “queer and wistful and commanding,” like your Susie. We think she is more queer, (more quaint) perhaps more commanding, but not nearly so wistful in her ways as “your Susie.”⁠ ⁠… I must leave a place for Mr. C. Do you think about coming to us. Give my love to your sister and your son. Affectionately,

Livy L. Clemens.

Dear Doctor, if you and your son Jock only would run over here! What a welcome we would give you! and besides, you would forget cares and the troubles that come of them. To forget pain is to be painless; to forget care is to be rid of it; to go abroad is to accomplish both. Do try the prescription!

Always with love,

Saml. L. Clemens.

P.S. Livy, you haven’t signed your letter. Don’t forget that. S. L. C.

P.P.S. I hope you will excuse Mr. Clemens’s P.S. to me; it is characteristic for him to put it right on the letter. Livy L. C.

(S. L. C. to Dr. Brown’s Son, Jock.)

Hartford, June 1, 1882.

My Dear Mr. Brown:

I was three thousand miles from home, at breakfast in New Orleans, when the damp morning paper revealed the sorrowful news among the cable dispatches. There was no place in America, however remote, or however rich or poor or high or humble, where words of mourning for your honoured father were not uttered that morning, for his works had made him known and loved all over the land. To Mrs. Clemens and me, the loss is a personal one, and our grief the grief which one feels for one who was peculiarly near and dear. Mrs. Clemens has never ceased to express regret that we came away from England the last time without going to see him, and often we have since projected a voyage across the Atlantic for the sole purpose of taking him by the hand and looking into his kind eyes once more before he should be called to his rest.

We both thank you greatly for the Edinburgh papers which you sent. My wife and I join in affectionate remembrances and greetings to yourself and your aunt, and in the sincere tender of our sympathies. Faithfully yours,

S. L. Clemens.

P.S. Our Susy is still “Megalopis.” He gave her that name.

Can you spare us a photograph of your father? We have none but the one taken in group with ourselves.

It was my fault that she never saw Doctor John in life again. How many crimes I committed against that gentle and patient and forgiving spirit! I always told her that if she died first, the rest of my life would be made up of self-reproaches for the tears I had made her shed. And she always replied that if I should pass from life first, she would never have to reproach herself with having loved me the less devotedly or the less constantly because of those tears. We had this conversation again, and for the thousandth time, when the night of death was closing about her⁠—though we did not suspect that.

In the letter last quoted above, I say, “Mrs. Clemens has never ceased to express regret that we came away from England the last time without going to see him.” I think that that was intended to convey the impression that she was a party concerned in our leaving England without going to see him. It is not so. She urged me, she begged me, she implored me to take her to Edinburgh to see Doctor John⁠—but I was in one of my devil moods, and I would not do it. I would not do it because I should have been obliged to continue the courier in service until we got back to Liverpool. It seemed to me that I had endured him as long as I could. I wanted to get aboard ship and be done with him. How childish it all seems now! And how brutal⁠—that I could not be moved to confer upon my wife a precious and lasting joy because it would cause me a small inconvenience. I have known few meaner men than I am. By good fortune this feature of my nature does not often get to the surface, and so I doubt if any member of my family except my wife ever suspected how much of that feature there was in me. I suppose it never failed to arrive at the surface when there was opportunity, but it was as I have said⁠—the opportunities have been so infrequent that this worst detail of my character has never been known to any but two persons⁠—Mrs. Clemens, who suffered from it, and I, who suffer from the remembrance of the tears it caused her.

Friday, March 23, 1906

Some curious letter superscriptions which have come to Mr. Clemens⁠—Our inefficient postal system under Postmaster-General Key⁠—Reminiscences of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe⁠—Story of Rev. Charlie Stowe’s little boy.

A good