Hartford, Apl. 23.
Dear Mother:
Bang away! I deserve it as well as another.1 I never never forget you until my conscience warns me that I am guilty as to letters—of course then I have got to set about forgetting you in order to have peace & happiness again.
And then to hear you talk! You who keep aggravatingly flitting around right under our noses & yet won’t take a train for 3 or 4 hours & run up here & see your children! You’ve got nothing on your hands—no responsibilities, no cares, nothing to do, & we are brim full! I should think your conscience would give you “rats,” as Paul says.
We have determined to try to sweat it out, here in Hartford, this summer, & not go away at all. That is Livy’s idea, not mine; for I can write ten chapters in Elmira where I can write one here. I work at work here, but I don’t accomplish anything worth speaking [of. Livy] wants to go to Cleveland, but she can’t. To carry the household would be like moving a menagerie; & to leave it behind would be like leaving a menagerie ar behind without a keeper. You mustn’t suppose I am not trying to [work. Bless] you I peg away all the time. I allow myself few privileges; but when one is in the workaday world, there’s a million interruptions & interferences. I can’t succeed except by getting clear out of the world on top of the mountain at Elmira.
I mean to try to go down the Mississippi river in May or June, & in that case shall try to stop a
night in Cleveland en route.2 
Is the Kennard House a good hotel?)
But there’s nothing certain about
it—except that at the last moment Livy will put her foot on it.3
I went to Boston & staid 3 days, at a fearful expense of valuable time, to see the Concord Centennial, but it did not come there—so all that was lost. And I went to the Beecher trial with Jo Twichell, expecting to have a chance to rout out Charley & see what he was doing & how he was coming all along,4 but I ended by doing hardly one of the forty things I went down there to do. Well, I don’t somehow seem to accomplish anything.
But look here—the real question is, When are you coming [here? That] is the point. Please don’t evade it, but speak up. You shall see two of the loveliest grandchildren you ever had in your life. And you shall see Livy in mighty good health, too—& the house the same. Send Charlie & Mollie to us—& then maybe you’ll come!
We send bushels of love—& longings for your presence.
Samℓ.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Mary Paine (Mollie) Fairbanks, now eighteen and evidently away at school, had been reading English Statesmen, prepared by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1875), and English Radical Leaders, prepared
by R. J. Hinton (1875), the first two volumes in a series entitled Brief Biographies of European Public Men, edited by Higginson and
published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons (New York). The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church met in Cleveland on 20 May.
Twichell, a Congregational minister, did not attend (Annual Cyclopaedia 1875, 641).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L6, 454–56; MTMF, 190–92.
Provenance:see Huntington Library in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
of. Livy • of.—|Livy
work. Bless • work.—|Bless
here? That • here?—|That
