DEAR WILL,-- I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff and laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves, examine themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by surroundings --unaffected, that is understood, by the surroundings, but not uninfluenced by them.Here was the near presence of the two supreme events of life: marriage, which is the beginning of life, and death which is the end of it.I found myself seeking chances to shirk into corners where I might think, undisturbed; and the most I got out of my thought, was this: both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.A long procession of people filed through my mind--people whom you and I knew so many years ago--so many centuries ago, it seems like-and these ancient dead marched to the soft marriage music of a band concealed in some remote room of the house;and the contented music and the dreaming shades seemed in right accord with each other, and fitting.Nobody else knew that a procession of the dead was passing though this noisy swarm of the living, but there it was, and to me there was nothing uncanny about it; Rio, they were welcome faces to me.I would have liked to bring up every creature we knew in those days--even the dumb animals--it would be bathing in the fabled Fountain of Youth.
We all feel your deep trouble with you; and we would hope, if we might, but your words deny us that privilege.To die one's self is a thing that must be easy, and of light consequence, but to lose a part of one's self --well, we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that disaster, received that wound which cannot heal.
Sincerely your friend S.L.CLEMENS.
His next is of quite a different nature.Evidently the typesetting conditions had alarmed Orion, and he was undertaking some economies with a view of retrenchment.Orion was always reducing economy to science.Once, at an earlier date, he recorded that he had figured his personal living expenses down to sixty cents a week, but inasmuch as he was then, by his own confession, unable to earn the sixty cents, this particular economy was wasted.Orion was a trial, certainly, and the explosion that follows was not without excuse.
Furthermore, it was not as bad as it sounds.Mark Twain's rages always had an element of humor in them, a fact which no one more than Orion himself would appreciate.He preserved this letter, quietly noting on the envelope, "Letter from Sam, about ma's nurse."Letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:
NOV.29, '88.
Jesus Christ!--It is perilous to write such a man.You can go crazy on less material than anybody that ever lived.What in hell has produced all these maniacal imaginings? You told me you had hired an attendant for ma.Now hire one instantly, and stop this nonsense of wearing Mollie and yourself out trying to do that nursing yourselves.Hire the attendant, and tell me her cost so that I can instruct Webster & Co.to add it every month to what they already send.Don't fool away any more time about this.And don't write me any more damned rot about "storms,"and inability to pay trivial sums of money and--and--hell and damnation!
You see I've read only the first page of your letter; I wouldn't read the rest for a million dollars.
Yr SAM.
P.S.Don't imagine that I have lost my temper, because I swear.Iswear all day, but I do not lose my temper.And don't imagine that I am on my way to the poorhouse, for I am not; or that I am uneasy, for I am not; or that I am uncomfortable or unhappy--for I never am.I don't know what it is to be unhappy or uneasy; and I am not going to try to learn how, at this late day.
SAM.
