New Boston, Friday.
Livy darling, it is bitter cold weather. We got up at half past 5 this morning, took breakfast & cleared out just as the dawn was breaking. It was a magnificent morning; the woods were white with frost, & our hands wouldn’t keep warm—nor ourselves either. I supposed there was a flag-stone pavement all the way to Boston, but I find there is nothing but wagon roads.
We shall take the train & be in Boston at 7 this evening.1 Wish we had accepted Howells’s invitation.2
Good by[e] my darling
Sam ℓ.
[addressed by OLC, in ink:] Mrs S. L. Clemens | Farmington Avenue | Hartford | ct. [postmarked:] quinebaug . conn. Nov 13
Explanatory Notes
it became evident that our pedestrianism was about
over, from the fact that Mark was exceedingly lame, but most
conclusively from the fact that he had not slept at all, owing to
the tea he drank at supper. However we got away from the tavern at 6½—a
bitter cold morning—and made the 6 miles to North Ashford rather slowly,
and there surrendered. There was no use in keeping it up. (Twichell, 1:16) In North Ashford, about thirty-five miles from Hartford,
they stopped at another tavern. Twichell chatted with the proprietor, C.
M. Brooks, a fellow Yale graduate and formerly “a New York
lawyer stranded by strange circumstances on those forlorn
hills”: Mark went to bed to try for a nap. I told our host
who he was, and who we were, and then he
wanted to have us go in and see his lately paralyzed wife which we
did for about 5 m, but then retreated, the lady being quite unable
to converse and looking “gashly”. But we were
very sorry for both of them. . . . At 12 o’clock we started from N. Ashford
for New Boston to take the cars, Mr. Brooks driving us in a narrow
seated buggy behind the slowest horse I ever saw. It was a very cold
tedious ride of 10 m. and we suffered the acutest hardship of the
whole trip in taking it. Mr. Brooks wouldn’t accept a
cent of pay for his part of the service done us, and would take but
$3.00 for the man who owned the horse. (Twichell,
1:16–18)
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L6, 279–280; LLMT, 192–93.
Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
