To Mary Mason Fairbanks
12 December 1868 • Norwich, N.Y.
(MS: CSmH, UCCL 02730)

‸{Priveight.}‸

Norwich, Dec. 12.

Dear Mother:—

It is noon, & snowing. I am here, the guest of Judge Mason—& happy. Mrs. Mason is g so good, & so kind, so thoughtful, so untiring in her genuine hospitality, & lets me be just as troublesome as I want to, that I just love her, & it seems as if she were you—or your double. She lets me smoke in the house, & bring in snow on my boots, & sleep late, & eat at unseasonable hours, & leaves my valise wide open & un on the floor & my soiled linen scattered about it just exactly as I leave it & as it ought to be to make life truly happy. I tell you I like that. It is being at home, you know. They are going to let me stay till Monday. And I shall enjoy every moment of the time. Don’t you wish you were here? But we have two pleasant young ladies, & so we don’t need you & haven’t got any use for you, mother mine.1

And I have pestered Mrs. Langdon through Livy, till she has surrendered & says I may call on the 17th & stay one day & night. Hip—hip—hurrah! Livy is growing stronger & better. I She will soon be a perfect Hercules in a small way. Last Monday she walked up to the Spauldings & back, in a driving snow-storm. What do you think of that? If she embarks in any more desperate enterprises like that, there is going to be war in our family.2 I don’t want to lose her now. Don’t you be worried about us (though your awful croak about looking from Pisgah upon the Promised Land yet failing at last to enter it3 [was, ]perfectly reasonable & made me feel properly uncomfortable.) She isn’t demonstrative, a bit, (who ever supposed she would be?) but she sticks like a good girl, & answers every letter just as soon as she has read it—& lectures me like smoke, too. But I like it. And I never do or think or say anything now that isn’t right, (except being slow about answering the letters of good indulgent mothers,) & so if I am not to be a Christian at last, it will take many & many a month of discouragement to prove it to me.

I am to lecture in Fort Plain, N. Y., on the 19th, & in Detroit the 22d. I wonder if I dare to stop in Cleveland an hour or two. Have to go down town. Good-bye.

Lovingly,

Mark.

[in margin:] Lectured last night—full house—gave satisfaction.

Mrs. A. W. Fairbanks, | Care “Herald” | Cleveland | Ohio. [postmarked:] : norwich n.y[.] dec 14

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Judge William N. Mason (1820–93)—Mrs. Fairbanks’s cousin—and his wife, Sarah Cary Mason (1821–1912), were Clemens’s hosts. Judge Mason began practicing law in Norwich in 1841, and was elected a justice in 1850, holding that position for some twenty years. The Masons had two unmarried sons, aged sixteen and twenty-three. The “young ladies” have not been identified (Smith, 330; “James Mason Family,” 1–2; “William Mason Family,” 1–2).

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2 The Spauldings lived only a few doors from the Langdons on Main Street (Boyd and Boyd, 142, 197).

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3 Deuteronomy 34:1–4.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (CSmH, call no. HM 14257).

Previous publication: L2, 326–327; MTMF, 54–55.

Provenance:see Huntington Library, p. 512.

Emendations and textual notes:

was, • [deletion implied]