Quincy, Ill, May 17/82.
Livy darling I am desperately homesick. But I have promised Osgood, & must stick it out; otherwise I would take the train at once & break for home.
I have spent three delightful days in Hannibal, loitering around all day long, examining the old localities & talking with the friends grey-heads who were boys & girls with me 30 & 40 years ago. It has been a moving time. I spent my nights with John & Helen Garth, three miles from town, in their spacious & beautiful house. They were children with me, & afterwards school-mates. Now they have a daughter 19 or 20 years old. D Spent an hour, yesterday, at A. W. Lamb’s, who was not married when I saw him last. He married a young lady whom I knew. And now I have been talking with their grown-up sons & daughters. Lieutenant Hickman, the spruce young han[d]somely-uniformed volunteer of 1846, called on me—a grisly elephantine patriarch of 65, ‸now,‸ his graces all vanished.
That world which I knew in its blossomy youth is old & bowed & melancholy, now; its soft cheeks are leathery & wrinkled, the fire is gone out in its eyes, & the spring from its step. It will be dust & ashes when I come again. I have been clasping hands with the moribund—& usually they said, “It is for the last time.”
Now I am under way again, upon this hideous trip to St Paul, with a heart brimming full of thoughts & images of you & Susie & Bay & the peerless Jean. And so good-night, my love.
Samℓ.
Address, Miss Koto House, Tokio, Japan.
I thank Bay & Susie ever so much for their letters. Jean’s Kitty’s fall was a good deal of an adventure.
[in ink:] Mrs. S. L. Clemens | Hartford | Conn [on the flap:] slc [postmarked:] keokuk ioa. may 18 9am [and] rec’d. hartford conn. may 23 8pm
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MTL, 1:419, postscript omitted; MicroML, reel 4.
Provenance:
See Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
