To Olivia L. Clemens
15 October 1871 • Bethlehem, Pa.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00661)

Bethlehem, Sunday

Livy darling, I got here at 4 oclock yesterday afternoon. It is now nearly noon, & still I don’t feel moved to begin studying my lecture1—so the wisdom of coming here so soon, is apparent. It is better that this feeling should be on me today than tomorrow. By tomorrow I shall be rested up & brisk.

This is an old Dutch settlement, & I hear that tongue here as often as ours.2 All the clerks in the stores seem to talk both languages. This is one of the old original Moravian Missionary settlements;3 & the Moravian college is still the feature of the place.4

I [ cl ] entered an assumed name on the hotel register (learned from Redpath that a reception was intended & rooms sumptuous rooms provided for me,) & so, as simple “Samuel Langhorne, New York,” I occupy the shabbiest little den in the house & am left wholly & happily unnoticed.5 It is luxury. I talk to nobody. This morning I have spent a solitary hour in the cemetery, (Theodore ought to have been there,) patiently deciphering weather-worn inscriptions6 stating that under them lie

& so on, to the number of a thousand, perhaps, ‸or so,‸ ancient & modern together. There are a couple of acres.

Every grave is an exact & trim oblong square‸, richly grass-sodded,‸ with a space of a foot between every two,—the tombstone (size of a boy’s slate,) lies on top of the grave.

The shape, size & proportion of each grave, is that of a small mattrass covered with sod. Every grave is alike. Imagine acres of them! Not a monument, not a [vault], not a shaft, no not a bush, or railing, or shrub— nothing but this absolute simplicity, this entire & complete acceptation of Death as a great Leveler—a king before whose tremendous majesty dif [ shav shades] & differences in littlenesses littleness cannot be discerned.—an Alp at whose feet all ant hills are the from whose summit all small things are the same size.7

On one decayed stone was simply:

“Salome,

Nathanael.

The month & the year

What a mighty thing the world was to Salome when she was in it—& what mighty matters, what tremendous matters, were here daily needs & labors, hopes, & fears, cares & annoyances! Why, she must have left ‸seemed to leave‸ the world shrunken & empty behind her when she left it. ‸gasped out her life!‸ And yet see the result—see what it has all come to:—a hundred years of nullity; a hundred years of nothingness—a century of unconsciousness of even the drifting seasons, the idle rain, the rustling leaves. And yet these ashes of for Salome might smile if they only knew!—if they only knew that all those tremendous little cares were not lost & thrown [away]: for behold, after all these hundred years, here they be, upon my own shoulders, just intact in every item, just as they were on hers! And [to-day] they make the world big to me, & me the creature that would leave it shrunk & empty if I burst out of its shell. From me they will go to others, & to others still, down the long highway of the future that leads to the Last Day.

It is a handsome town, this—very substantial—set upon a hill—girdled with a deep valley—& overlooked by dominant hills beyond—& all splendid with autumn-rainbowed forests.

Well, I would like to see my darling & my cubbie. Love & blessings on you both—& health & good cheer—look on the bright side, sweetheart.

Saml.

[in ink:] Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | cor Forest & Hawthorne st | Hartford | Conn [return address:] if not delivered within 10 days, to be returned to [postmarked:] bethlehem pa. oct 16

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 “Reminiscences of Some un-Commonplace Characters I have Chanced to Meet,” written in July. Clemens opened his tour with it in Bethlehem on Monday, 16 October (10 July 71 to Redpath [3rd]; McIlhaney).

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2 Although the earliest explorers of the area were Dutch, as evidenced by some local names, their influence all but ceased when the British took control in 1664. The large number of German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania in the 1700s spoke a dialect known as Pennsylvania German—sometimes called Pennsylvania Dutch, from the German Deutsch—but it was less common in the Bethlehem area than in the surrounding counties (Northampton County Guide, 23, 43).

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3 The Moravians were members of a Christian sect founded in Bohemia in 1457 by followers of John Huss, who had been burned at the stake in 1415. By the eighteenth century, after more than two centuries of persecution, the number of adherents had dwindled to a handful. In 1727 they established the Renewed Moravian Church, also known as the United Brethren, which was active in evangelical and missionary work. In 1735 a small group emigrated to Georgia from Moravia, Bohemia, and Saxony; five years later they moved on to the Lehigh River valley region of Pennsylvania, where they founded Bethlehem, as well as nearby Nazareth.

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4 The Moravian College and Theological Seminary was founded in Nazareth in 1807 and moved to Bethlehem in 1858, where, until 1892, it was located on Church Street. Possibly Clemens was referring to an even older institution, however: the Moravian Seminary and College for Women, the first female boarding school in America, was founded in 1742 and since 1815 had also been located on Church Street (Northampton County Guide, 170, 189, 232, and map inside back cover; Levering, 593 n. 1).

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5 Clemens did not always seek anonymity while touring (8 Jan 70 to OLC [2nd]). He was staying at the Eagle Hotel, since 1823 located on Bethlehem’s Main Street, close to both of the Moravian colleges. His host, who presumably planned the reception, was Henry T. Clauder, publisher since 1868 of the weekly Bethlehem Moravian and representative of the sponsoring society, the Winter Evening Entertainment Committee of the local Y.M.C.A. (Redpath and Fall 1871–72, 1–2; Levering, 634, 712; McIlhaney).

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6 The Old Moravian Burying Ground, in use since 1742, was a short walk from Clemens’s hotel (Northampton County Guide, 146, 173–74, and map inside back cover). Theodore Crane evidently shared Clemens’s interest in such historical sites (Sharlow, 2–3).

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7 “In [the Burying Ground] are laid side by side, bishops of the Moravian church, converted Indians, missionaries, Moravian soldiers of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and private citizens. . . . No stone is raised above the others, conforming with the sects’ tradition that all men are equal in the sight of God” (Northampton County Guide, 173, 52 illustration).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L4, 470–473; MFMT, 50, excerpt; LLMT, 361, brief paraphrase.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

cl • [possibly ‘ sl ’]

JOHN GOttlL | IEB • [capitals simulated, not underscored]

1774 1744 • 177 44

(intervening • [no closing parenthesis]

vault • vaullt

shav shades • shavdes

1871 1671 • 18 671

away • [a] away [torn]

to-day • to-|day