Letter to William Bowen
At Home, 472 Delaware Avenue,
Buffalo Feb. 6. 1870
My First, & Oldest & Dearest Friend,
My heart goes out to you just the same as ever. Your letter has stirred me to the bottom. [The fountains of my great deep are broken up] & I have rained reminiscences for four & twenty hours. The old life has swept before me like a panorama; the old days have trooped by in their old glory, again; the old faces have looked out of the mists of the past; old footsteps have sounded in my listening ears; old hands have clasped mine, old voices have greeted me, & the songs I loved ages & ages ago have come wailing down the centuries! Heavens what eternities have swung their hoary cycles about us since those days were new!—What Since we tore down Dick Hardy’s stable; since you had the measles & I went to your house purposely to catch them; since Henry Beebe kept that envied slaughter-house, & Joe Craig sold him cats to kill in it; since old General Gaines used to say, “Whoop! Bow your neck & spread!”; since Jimmy Finn was town drunkard & we stole his dinner while he slept in the vat & fed it to the hogs in order to keep them still till we could mount them & have a ride; since Clint Levering was drowned; since we [begin page 21] taught that one-legged nigger, Higgins, to offend Bill League’s dignity by hailing him in public with his exasperating “Hello, League!”—since we used to undress & play Robin Hood wi in our shirt-tails, with lath swords, in the woods on [Holliday’s Hill] on those long summer days; since we used to go in swimming above the [still-house branch]—& at mighty intervals wandered on vagrant o fishing excursions clear up to [“the Bay,”] & wondered what was curtained away in the great world beyond that remote point; since I jumped overboard from the ferry boat in the middle of the river that stormy day to get my hat, & swam two or three miles after it (& got it,) while all the town collected on the wharf & for an hour or so looked out across the angry waste of “white-caps” toward where people said Sam. Clemens was last seen before he went down; since we got up a mutiny rebellion against Miss Newcomb, under Ed. Stevens’ leadership, (to force her to let us all go over to Miss Torry’s side of the schoolroom,) & gallantly “sassed” Laura Hawkins when she came out the third time to call us in, & then afterward marched in ‸in‸ threatening & bloodthirsty array,—& meekly yielded, & took each his little thrashing, & & resumed his old seat entirely “reconstructed”; since we used to indulge in that very peculiar performance on that old bench outside the schoolhouse to drive good old Bill Brown crazy while he was eating his dinner; since we used to remain at school at noon & go hungry, in order to persecute Bill Brown in all possible ways—poor old Bill, who could be driven to such extremity of vindictiveness as to call us “You infernal fools!” & chase us round & round the schoolhouse— & yet who never had the heart to hurt us when he caught us, & who always loved us & always took our part when the big boys wanted to thrash us; since we used to lay in wait for Bill Pitts at the pump & whale him; (I saw him two or three years ago, & I was awful polite to his six feet two, & mentioned no reminiscences); since we used to be in Dave Garth’s class in Sunday school & on week-days stole his leaf tobacco to run our miniature tobacco presses with; since Owsley shot Smar; since Ben Hawkins shot off his finger; since we accidentally burned up [that poor fellow in the calaboose]; since we used to shoot spool cannons;, & cannons made of keys, while that envied & hated Henry Beebe drowned out our poor little pop-guns with his booming brazen little artillery on wheels; since Laura Hawkins was my sweetheart—————
[begin page 22] Hold! That rouses me out of my dream, & brings me violently back unto this day & this generation. For behold I have at this moment the only sweetheart I ever loved, & bless her old heart she is lying asleep upstairs in a bed that I sleep in every night, & for four whole days she has been Mrs. Samuel L. Clemens!
I am thirty-four & she is twenty-four; I am young & very handsome (I make the statement with the fullest confidence, for I got it from her), & she is much the most beautiful girl I ever saw (I said that before she was anything to me, & so it is worthy of all belief) & she is the best girl, & the sweetest, & the gentlest, & the daintiest, & the most modest & unpretentious, & the wisest in all things she should be wise in, & the most ignorant in all matters it would not grace her to know, & she is sensible & quick, & loving & faithful, forgiving, full of charity—& her beautiful life is ordered by a religion that is all kindliness & unselfishness. Before the gentle majesty of her purity all evil things & evil ways & evil deeds stand abashed,—then surrender. Wherefore, without effort, or struggle, or spoken exorcism, all the old vices & shameful habits that have possessed me these many many years, are falling away, one by one, & departing into the darkness.
Bill, I know whereof I speak. I am too old & have moved about too much, & rubbed against too many people not to know human beings [as well as we used to know “boils” from “breaks.”]
She is the very most perfect gem of womankind that ever I saw in my life—& I will stand by that remark till I die.
William, old boy, her father surprised us a little, the other night. We all arrived here in a night train (my little wife & I were going to board), & under pretense of taking us to the private boarding-house that had been selected for me while I was absent lecturing in New England, my new father-in-law & some old friends drove us in sleighs to the daintiest, darlingest, loveliest little palace in America—& when I said “Oh, this won’t do—people who can afford to live in this sort of style won’t take boarders,” that same blessed father-in-law let out the secret that this was all our property—a present from himself. House & furniture cost $40,000 in cash, (including stable, horse & carriage), & is a most exquisite little palace (I saw no apartment in Europe so lovely as our little drawing-room.)
[begin page 23] Come along, you & [Mollie], just whenever you can, & pay us a visit, (giving us a little notice beforehand,) & if we don’t make you comfortable nobody in the world can.
[And now ‸my‸ princess has come down for dinner (bless me, isn’t it cosy, nobody but just us two, & three servants to wait on us & respectfully call us “Mr.” & “Mrs. Clemens” instead of “Sam.” & “Livy!”) It took me many a year to work up to where I can put on style, but now I’ll do it. My book gives me an income like a small lord, & my paper is not a good profitable concern.
Dinner’s ready. Good bye & g God bless you, old friend, & keep your heart fresh & your memory green for the old days that will never come again.
Yrs always
Sam. Clemens.
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