Fair Banks June 1st/76
My Dear Samuel
Can’t you and Livy come over to our house this fine morning, and bring the children? It is very funny to me, how much you have all been in my mind of late—how I have wanted your companionship—have really longed for you, and yet some mysterious grip (slow fires I think) has held my hand from writing. I believe I brought home with me your disorder, for through these many weeks I have had not mind or force enough to indite a letter. I tried to take up my pen after reading the June Atlantic, to tell you how you pleased me. Do you realize how you have improved? How time and study and conscience have developed the fineness of your nature? I just sit back in my complacence & mentally pat you on the head——not that your well-doing is for me or my approval but because I knew it would be as it is, and I am pleased with my own sagacity. Your late article has some most delicate, metaphysical touches and I never was so sure of your having a live conscience, as since you have proclaimed its death.
Have you seen by the papers that our own genial, kind-hearted Mr. Benedict is dead? The papers have not told you of the double affliction of the family in the insanity (apparently hopeless) of the son-in-law Mr. Crowell. The death of the Senior partner & the illness of the Junior throw the entire Herald business into Mr. Fairbanks’ hands. He has long looked forward to the time when he should have supreme control there, but the strange, sad providence that has by which he is likely to realize his plans is as sudden as it is painful. Of course Charlie, who has just come to his majority finds his place waiting for him in the editorial room. He is night-editor, and has the charge of the telegraph & the making up of the paper. It would surprise you I know, for it does me, to discover the boy’s aptness & ability. He is a born editor. Surely some things come by intuition. How is it that a boy who shirked and shunned school-duties and text-books graduates from a newspaper, as an easy & graceful writer and an oracle of syntax & orthography?
Mr. Fairbanks present purpose is, so soon as the Benedict estate is adjusted & he becomes possessor in chief, to put a bright, sharp man at the head of the editorial corps and he himself to be the Commodore of the whole ship. In these times, it is putting new burdens on shoulders which are no longer young, but you know something of the Fairbanks will which is sure to find the way.
I am so enlisted for him & Charlie that I feel as if I had gone into business myself. Indeed I have promised to help, for Charlie has brought to his new place an ambition to give variety to the paper.
I have run on with personal affairs as one may to the elder son of the house. If I have bored you, then you are not so loyal a son as I am a mother, but I often wish you lived so near that we could talk over affairs together. There are a few people in the world (very few) with whom I like to speak freely. It rests me and it strengthens me.
I see by the papers that Mark Twain will be at the Centennial the 15th. Do you come from thence to Elmira and when will you come to Cleveland? Mollie is away for a week. If she were here she would join me in urging your early coming. If there is one thing more than another that stirs her it is the mention of a Clemens. I think she loves you to-day with the same intensity that she did in the years gone by when you held her and her kitten in your arms. The honest worship of child or woman is precious.
Now send me a letter real soon. Don’t break things to do it, nor banish Livy to her bed-room. What are the latest bon-mots of Susie & Clara? I have loving thoughts of you all—
Mother Fairbanks
