To Olivia L. Langdon
24 January 1869 • Cleveland, Ohio
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00241)

Cleveland, Jan. 24.

My Dearest Livy—

It has come at last—the Sparta letter.1 And like all ‸most‸ hidden terrors, I find myself com reassured, ‸as soon as I it is uncurtained,‸ & ready to cope with it. I sought eagerly for just one thing—if I could find that, I was safe. I did find it—you still have faith in me ,. That was enough—it is all I ask. While you stand by me, no task ‸that is set me‸ will be too ‸so‸ hard but that my heart & hands & brain will perform it—slowly, maybe, & discouragingly to your sometimes impetuous nature, but surely. By your two later letters I saw that you had faith in [ my me, ] & that you wrote them was evidence that you still love me—but what I yearned for at this particular moment was the evidence that your faith remained at its post when the storm swept over your heart. I believed I should find that evidence, for I did not think that your faith was a ‸the‸ child of a passing fancy, a creature of the sunshine & destined to perish with it. The belief was well grounded, & I am satisfied. I have been, in times past, that which would be hateful in your eyes, provided you simply viewed me from a distance, without knowing my secret heart—but I have lived that life, & it is of the past. ‸I do not live backwards.‸ God does not ask of the returning sinner what he has been, but what he is & what he will be. And this is what you ask of me. If I must show what I am & prove what I shall be, I am content. As far as what I have been is concerned, I am only sorry that I did not tell all ‸of‸ that, in full & relentless detail, to your father & your mother, & to you, Livy—for it would be all the better that you knew it also. I would not seem to have been that which I was not. If I am speaking carelessly or untruly now, I am doing a fearful thing, for before I began this letter I offered up that prayer which has passed my lips many & many a time sin during these latter months: that I might be guarded from even unconsciously or unwittingly saying anything to you which you might misconstrue & be thereby deceived—& that I might not be guilty of any taint or shadow of hypocrisy, however refined, in my dealings with you—that I might be wholly true & frank & open with you, even though it cost me your priceless love, & the life that is now so inestimably valuable to me become in that moment a blank & hated captivity. Wherefore I now speak to you standing in the presence of God. And I say that what I have been I am not now; that I am striving & shall still strive to reach the highest altitude of worth, the highest [ ex Christian ] excellence; that I know of nothing in my past career that I would conceal from your parents, howsoever I might blush to speak the words; & that it is my strong conviction that, married to you, I would never desire to roam again while I lived. The circumstances under which I say these things, make the statements as grave & weighty as if I endorsed them with an oath.

Your father & mother are overlooking one thing, Livy—that I have been a wanderer from necessity, four-fif three-fourths of my time—a wanderer from choice only one-fourth. During these later years my profession (of correspondent,) made wandering a necessity—& all men know that few things that are done from necessity have much fascination about them. Wandering is not a habit with me—for that word implies an enslaved fondness for the thing. And I could most freely take an oath that all fondness for roaming is dead within me. I could take that oath with an undisturbed conscience before any [ maj magistrate ] in the land. Why, a year ago, in Washington, when Mr. Conness, one of our Senators, [ urged ] ‸counseled‸ me to take the post of United States Minister to China, when Mr. Burlingame resigned (the place was chiefly in Mr. C.’s gift,) I said that even if I felt ‸could feel‸ thoroughly fitted for the place, I had at last become able to make a living at home & had no d wished to settle down—& that if I roamed more, it must be in pursuit of my regular calling & to further my advancement in my legitimate calling profession. And then at his I went at 11 at night & pledged our delegations to support me for [Postmaster ] of San Francisco, but gave up that scheme as soon as I found that the place, honorably conducted, was only worth $4,000 a year & was s too confining to allow me much time to write for newspapers. {My office-seeking instincts were born & murdered all in one night, & I hope they will never be resurrected [again ]—a winter spent in Washington is calculated to make a man above mere ordinary office-holding.}2

Wandering is not my habit, nor my proclivity. Does a man, five years a galley-slave, get in a habit of it & yearn to be a galley-slave always? Does a horse in a tread-mill get infatuated with his profession & long to continue in it? Does the sewing-girl, building shirts at sixpence apiece grow fascinated with the habit of it at last & find it impossible to break herself without signing the pledge? And being pushed from pillar to post & compelled so long to roam, against my will, is it reasonable to think that I am really fond of it & wedded to it? I think not.

I am very tired & drowsy, & must lie down. If I could only see you, love, I could satisfy you—satisfy you that I am earnest in my determination th to be everything you would have me be—& that I bring to this resolve the consciousness of that faith & strength & steady purpose which has enabled me to cast off so many slavish habits & utterly lose all taste or desire for them—some of them dating back ten years now.3 Once a Christian, & invested with that strength, what should I fear? I pray you be patient with me a little while, till I see you—& hold fast your faith in me & let your dear love still be mine. The Sparta letter was a blessing to me, not a trouble.

With a loving kiss, dear Livy,

Always.

Samℓ.

Miss Olivia L. Langdon

Present.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 See 20 and 21 Jan 69 to OLL, n. 6.

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2 See L2, 176–77, 178–79. Senator John Conness—a Republican from California and a member of the Senate Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, which reported on presidential nominations to postmasterships—controlled the appointment of the San Francisco postmaster. Conness did not automatically have the same influence over the selection of Anson Burlingame’s successor as minister to China, since he was not a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, which reported on ministerial nominations. But he did interest himself in that appointment, and early in 1868 the post went to a Californian: travel writer J. Ross Browne (Senate 1868, 1, 2; Senate 1887, 156, 194; Congressional Globe 1868, 1:471). Clemens accepted, then declined, Browne’s offer of a “nice sinecure in his Embassy” (L2, 223).

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3 Among these cast-off habits was tobacco chewing. On 2 December 1867 Clemens told Mary Mason Fairbanks that he was “permanently” cured of it (L2, 122). Coupled with his present assertion, the following 1907 report by Isabel V. Lyon, then Clemens’s secretary, places the reform in 1859, sometime before 9 April, when he completed his steamboat apprenticeship and received his pilot’s license: “He was speaking of the power of breaking away from a habit & said that when he was a cub pilot he made up his mind not to chew tobacco any longer. He had the plug in his pocket—& he didn’t throw it away & so burn his bridges behind him—No,—he kept the plug in his pocket until it was in a powder, & he never chewed again. He said probably some outside influence was the cause of his reform” (IVL, 238). In a letter of 13 January 1870 to Olivia Langdon, Clemens identified the outside influence: “I stopped chewing tobacco because it was a mean habit, partly, & partly because my mother desired it” (CU-MARK, in LLMT, 136).

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4 Dr. Henry Sayles (1811–77) and his wife, the former Emma Halsey (1819–99), neighbors of the Langdons’, had four children: Henry (1845–83), Charles (1848–87), Guy (1856–1907), and Olivia’s close friend Emma (1844–1916) (Record of Interments, Lot 13, Section H, Woodlawn Cemetery, Elmira, N.Y., annotated by Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., PH in CU-MARK). It is not known which of the sons Clemens alludes to here.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L3, 73–76; LLMT, 59–61.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.

Emendations and textual notes:

my me • mye

ex Christian • [‘C’ over ‘ex’]

maj magistrate • majgistrate

urged • [false ascenders/descenders]

Postmaster • Post-|master

again. • [deletion implied]