Elmira, June 27
Dear old Joe—
Your letter came today—thanks for it, & thanks for the generous thanks you filled it with, & which I do not deserve in the least, but accept & enjoy just as happily & gratefully as if I [did. It] was much the joyousest trip I ever had, Joe—not a heartache in it, not a twinge of conscience. I often come to myself out of a reverie & detect an undertone of thought that had been thinking itself without volition of mine: ‸viz:‸ If we had only had ten days of those walks & talks instead of four!1
I sent those 2 articles to Howells & have completed our trip in 2 more since I came here. I like the last two ever so much; but I have written to Howells & suggested the destruction of the 2 I read to you. In my closing chapter I have got in your story of the 2 dying soldiers & the coffin; if that doesn’t travel the rounds, then this is an unappreciative world. I got in the cabbage palms in due & solemn state; & the white houses; & Alfred; & the soup & chicken of St George’s & that young girl there; & Moore’s chair which we didn’t see; & the absent tramps; & a blast at our health officer, & upwards of several other things. I like those 2 chapters.
You grieve us to death with your news about Dean Sage. I am conscious of a stubborn inward refusal to accept of this impending dispensation—a sort of resentment about it that is afraid to formulate itself. There are so many we could spare!—& that he should be singled [out! This] is wicked, no doubt, but it is at least honest. And justifiable.
We all of this household send love & God bless you’s to [your] & yours.
Ys Ever
Mark.
[squeezed in:]
Exitu-Israel has just come—many thanks, Joe—I’ll give you an opinion. Been reading a lot of French rot here & am glad to get this.2
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
On 25 June Twichell had written (CU-MARK): The gift book was Sabine Baring-Gould’s In Exitu Israel: An Historical Novel. Clara
Clemens Gabrilowitsch donated it to the Mark Twain Library, in Redding,
Connecticut, after Clemens’s death (Baring-Gould 1870; Gribben 1980, 1:46). Dean
Sage lived until 23 June 1902, when he died suddenly of a stroke at age sixty-one. His
younger brother William (1844–1924) was, like him, a member of the family lumber
firm, H. W. Sage and Company.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MicroPUL, reel 1.
Provenance:
Twichell’s papers were passed on to his children. Although CtY received some items in 1951 from Joseph H. Twichell and Mrs. Charles Ives, his son and daughter, the main collection was donated in 1967 by Charles P. Twichell, his grandson.
Emendations and textual notes:
did. It • ~.— | ~
out! This • ~!— | ~
your • [sic]
