Rochester, N.Y., Feb. 28.
I haven’t anything to write, Livy, but then I love you so much that I must find some sort of escape for it or perish. It is an old story to keep telling you I love you, Livy, but then I do love you, Livy, & I must say it, & so you must put up with it my darling. But you are a patient little martyr to everybody, & you can bear it.
For the first time, I had to dismiss an audience last night without lecturing. It was a fearful storm, & the people could not get out. Not more than a hundred were present. Perhaps I ought to have gone on & lectured, but then the gentlemen of the Grand Army of the Republic had treated me so well (& besides there was a much-prized old California friend or so among them,)1 that I hated to see them lose money throu—& so I said I would foot the expense-bills & dismiss the house—but they wouldn’t permit me to pay anything, or depart without my regular salary—& I rebelled against that. So we compromised—that is, I am dis talked to the audience a minute or two about the weather & got them to laughing, & so dismissed them in a good humor & invited them to come back Wednesday night & hear “the rest of the discourse”—an invitation which nearly [ of ] all of them accepted, for they took their tickets back, as they went out, instead of their money. So you see I am to be in Lockport Wednesday night—& on Friday, if all goes well, I shall be in Hartford, & my labors at an end. I am now on my way to Geneseo—had to leave Lockport this afternoon in order to make it. [ Those are fine fellows in Lockport, but they stole a march on me. I entertained about fifteen ]
{That is the way to scratch it out, my precious little Solemnity, when you find you have written what you didn’t mean to write. Don’t you see how neat it is—& how impenetrable? Kiss me, Livy—please.}2
Bless you, [darling. {That ] was only a thought—or maybe a feeling, or an emotion—anyway, it [ involuntarily ] swept through heart & brain, making its way warm as it went, & I thought I would set it down—for blessings on you, my Livy, like a motions to adjourn, are “always in order.”} Why there is material there for a very magnificent conundrum— which Charlie can’t guess, unless he is familiar with the laws that [govern ] parliamentary bodies. For instance: Why is Livy’s room like a motion to adjourn? Answer—Because it is always in [order. ]
Don’t get mad, Livy—I am shut up in a strange hotel for the night, & I must keep up my spirits. And I can’t keep up my spirits in any better way than by teasing you, [Livy. So ] you see you are very, very [useful to me. Useful ] to me. Useful to me. Imperatively necessary to me—that is the phrase. Necessary to my thought, when I lie down at night & the mystery of the darkness palls the world; necessary to [ me my ] dreams, when they are of the pure & the beautiful; necessary to my moments of doubting the promises of God, as showing a hope & a blessing realized; necessary to my day, to add gladness to the blank meaningless brightness of the sun; necessary to my hands, to cheer their labor—to my feet, to calm their restlessness—to my brain, to point it to a worthy goal for its ambitions—& necessary, forever & ever necessary, to my heart, for God knows it would break without you!
I wrote quite a long letters home & to Mrs. Fairbanks last night & this morning. I told Mrs. F. I would be in Elmira on the 17th, but I said nothing about the re-union, because when I come to count it up on my fingers, my time seems pretty short, if I am going to California. And I do assure you, Livy, that I couldn’t spare you to the re-unionists many moments at a time if I only had a few days to stay—you can depend upon that, my love. You must just have the re-union while I am in California, Livy. Never mind “Hamlet.”4
Livy, I have a commission for you to execute. I wish you ‸to‸ cut out every article of mine you see in print, from this time forward, always—& put them away—don’t paste them into a book, but just put them away where we can use them some day. You can cut the Horace Greeley article out of Mr Langdon’s Railway Guide—you remember I showed it to you in there.5 Now will you do all this for me, Livy darling?
Hattie must not plague you about your [arm. Ain’t ] you ashamed of yourself, anyhow, Hattie, for pestering your cousin Livy in this way when she is in company?6 You are always doing something like that—& you do it just do it out of pure cussedness, too. I won’t have Livy teased abused by anybody but me, young woman. Now go & [ tell your grandmother on me & get me in trouble—more cus -- ] 7
But this wont do—the subscriber I must go to bed. And will, in a moment—but I must kiss you first, Livy. And this kiss that I set adrift above the wastes of snow that lie between us, [ Livy, ] is freighted with honor, & reverence, & a tender, yearning love that shall never die.
Good-night, my Livy.
Forever Yours
Sam
Miss Olivia L. Langdon
Present.
Suavity of Charlie.
[docketed by OLL:] 8[42 45th ]|[counsel | councel |cons counsel ]Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Clemens’s “impenetrable” cancellation. Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library
(CU-MARK).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L3, 126–129; LLMT, 357, brief paraphrase; MTMF, 81, brief quotation.
Provenance:see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
Emendations and textual notes:
of • [‘f’ partly formed]
Those ... fifteen • [false ascenders/descenders; see the illustration, p. 128, n. 2]
darling. {That • darling.—|{That
involuntarily • [false ascenders/descenders]
govern • govermn
order. [line space] “A • order. “A
Livy. So • Livy.—|So
useful to me. Useful • useful to me.—|Useful
me my • mey
arm. Ain’t • arm.—|Ain’t
tell . . . cus -- • [cancellation tightly looped to hinder decipherment; deletion of dashes implied; see the illustration below]
Livy, • [very heavily canceled]
42 45th • 425th
counsel | councel | cons counsel • counsel | councel | consunsel [The order in which Olivia wrote these words is not evident from their placement.]
