To Emily A. Severance
24 December 1867 • Washington, D.C.
(MS: Craven, UCCL 02780)

224 F st
Washington, Dec. 24.

My Dear Friend—

Your letter came seven days ago. The news it contained, of Mrs. Fairbanks’ bereavement,1 stunned as well as saddened me—shocked me, & stunned me both—for the first thought that flitted through my brain was that my last foolish letter must have reached Cleveland w at a moment when it ought more properly to have fallen by the wayside & been seen no more. I cannot tell how sorry your sad tidings made me feel. But I can say that they made me stop & thinks of my own mother—& reflection taught me that my half-formed notion of sailing for California without going first to St Louis ‸to see her‸ would plainly be ungrateful, even criminal—for she is old & I might not see her again. I shall visit St Louis before I take shipping again.

Please remember me most kindly to Mrs. Fairbanks. , & th It is needless for me or for any one with only human lips to try to comfort her at a time like this—for words are vain & little worth, save those a true Christian such as she is knows where to seek. “Come unto me all ye that labor & are heavy laden, & I will give you rest—rest.2 No words my lips might frame, could be so freighted with compassion as are these—so fraught with sympathy, so filled with peace. Even to me, sinner that I am, this is the most beautiful sentence that graces any page—the tenderest, the most touching, the softest to the ear. To her, then, standing in the light, it has a world of significance that I can only dimly imagine—not appreciate.

I came near starting west this morning, & [ ‸if‸ ]I had I would have tarried a day or two in Cleveland, no doubt, but I was going with the U.S. Minister to the Sandwich Islands, on business, but found that troublesome delays ‸westward‸ might be anticipated. I have bothered so much with that treaty of his that I begin to feel a personal interest in its ratification.3 I wish I were in the Islands now—or in California. This terrific weather takes all the life out of me. I look forward anxiously to my release from Washington. I could just as well have been at sea in the Pacific for China now as not, & visited home besides, but for making engagements that tie me here for a season.4 I am in a fidget to move. It isn’t a novel sensation, though—I never was any other way. What do you mean by poking your babies at me & telling me about your home happiness?—do you want to make a fellow feel any more mean & discontented than he does feel?5

It is 8 bells (midnight.) Ask Severance to look ‸in‸ at the compʼmidships gangway & see that the cabin lights are all out; report how she heads, & call the larboard watch.

Truly Yr friend,

Sam L. Clemens.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The death of Mrs. Fairbanks’s mother, Emma Harris Mason (b. 1803 or 1804). Her father, Isaac Newton Mason (b. 1800), had died in 1862, in Clinton, Ohio (MTMF, 9; Mary Mason Fairbanks 1898, 352; Cleveland Census 1850, 91; “James Mason Family,” 2).

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2 Matthew 11:28. Clemens’s repetition of the word “rest” gives the quotation a special emphasis that reflects his lifelong response to death, and that he echoed in a letter written less than a week after the death of his daughter Jean: “I am so glad she is out of it & safe—safe!” (SLC to Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch, 29 Dec 1909, TS at CSmH, in MTB, 3:1554).

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3 Edward Moody McCook (1833–1909) arrived in the Hawaiian Islands as the newly appointed United States minister on 22 July 1866, three days after Clemens himself had sailed for San Francisco. McCook served in that post until 1869, when President Grant appointed him governor of Colorado Territory, which he had earlier helped to organize. During the Civil War he achieved a brilliant record in the Union cavalry, earning the brevet of major general, and he served briefly as military governor of Florida before taking his Hawaiian post. In May 1867, the newly proposed trade-reciprocity treaty between the Hawaiian government and the United States (the fourth such attempt since 1848) was signed in San Francisco. On 10 December, Clemens wrote the Alta that he had

talked frequently with General McCook, United States Minister to the Sandwich Islands, since I have been here. As you are aware, his business in Washington is to get the reciprocity treaty between Hawaii and this country through the Senate. It has been slow work, and very troublesome, but a fair degree of progress is being made.... I do not see why they don’t take to it instantly, and with enthusiasm. It has got more statistics and more constitutionality in it than any document in the world. That treaty has grown upon my reverence until, in my eyes, it has become a perfect monument of mathematics and virtue. (SLC 1868 [MT00612])

Clemens had not been favorably disposed toward the treaty when he first mentioned it in May; his change in attitude may reflect Senator Stewart’s as well as McCook’s support for it. Ultimately the treaty was rejected by the Senate in June 1870, on the grounds that it would lose the United States too much revenue from duties on imported sugar. Not until March 1875 did the Senate finally ratify such a treaty, which became effective in September 1876 (L1, 346 n. 8; Senate 1887, 15[2]:792; Senate 1901, 17:465–66, 20:41–43; Kuykendall, 211–12, 225–27, 250–52; SLC 1867 [MT00546]).

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4 Clemens’s only commitments in Washington at this point were his several journalistic ones to the New York Tribune and Herald, the Alta, and the Enterprise, for on 16 December he had announced to his Enterprise readers that “E. A. Pretois, formerly of Virginia and Sacramento, is Senator Stewart’s private secretary, now.” In “My Late Senatorial Secretaryship,” written for the Galaxy about this time, he said that he had held the secretarial position for “two months in security and in great cheerfulness of spirit,” but that when the senator bellowed “Leave the house! Leave it forever and forever, too!” he “regarded that as a sort of covert intimation that my services could be dispensed with, and so I resigned.” In “The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation,” written on 2 December, Clemens claimed he had been clerk of the “Senate Committee on Conchology” for “six days.” Even though he evidently was not an official Senate clerk, he might have served in some capacity during the special session of the Senate which began on 21 November. His stint would have begun on Monday, 25 November, the first business day after his arrival in Washington, and ended at mid-day on Monday, 2 December, when the session adjourned (SLC 1868 [MT00606], 1889, 1868 [MT00656], 1867 [MT00600]). Clemens might have been “at sea in the Pacific for China” at this time had he agreed to apply for the position of United States minister to China, as suggested by Senator Conness (see 6 Feb 68 to JLC and PAM, n. 4).

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5 The Severances, who were married in October 1860, had three young children: Julia, the oldest, and “twin babies in arms,” Allen and Mary Helen (Severance, iii, 53).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland (OClWHi).

Previous publication: L2, 137; Severance, 218–19, with omissions; MTMF, 9, 11–12.

Provenance:Julia Severance Millikin (Emily Severance’s daughter) owned the MS at least as late as 1938, the year she published it. The MS was deposited at OClWHi ca. 17 May 1986.

Emendations and textual notes:

‸if‸ • ‸ if ‸ ‸if‸ [corrected miswriting]