Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Joseph H. Twichell
19 July 1880 • Elmira, N.Y.
(Transcript by Albert Bigelow Paine: CU-MARK, UCCL 12758)

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Quarry Farm, July 19.

Dear old Joe:

We have been up here 10 days, now, & I have been on the sick list pretty much all that time, with lumbago. Mrs. Gleason was here a few days ago & told us your sisters were at the Cure, but neither Livy nor I have fairly been in condition to go down there since then. I have spent part of my time in bed; but yesterday evening Livy & I determined to get to the Cure this morning—but there’s another failure: I’m bedridden again—a decided case of rheumatism; I shall not be out again for some days I guess. We have twice sent verbal messages to Olive, begging her to waive [ceremony] & run up here, but she don’t waive worth a cent. It is cold & stormy to-day; but Livy & Sue will go to the Cure as soon as the weather moderates.

Have just finished the Scholar of the 12th Cent. & am delighted with the amusing & pathetic [story.] Suppose Giraldus had been politic; he might have reached the primacy; [then] imagine poor Henry II saddled with the second Beckett! I wish I could read the original; those marvels charm me—such as the spring running with milk, the man breached like a bull, & that soldier’s immaculate conception of a calf. I will remail the pamphlet to you to-day or to-morrow.

I am writing with a stylographic pen. It takes a royal amount of cussing to make the thing go, the first few days or weeks; but by that time the dullest ass gets the hang of the thing, & after that no enrichments of expression are required & said ass finds the stylographic a genuine God’s blessing. I carry one in each breeches pocket, & both loaded. I’d give you one of them if I had you where I could teach you how to use it—not otherwise; for the average ass flings the thing out of the window in disgust, the second day, [believing] it hath no virtue [nor] merit of any sort, whereas the lack lieth in himself, God of his mercy damn him.

I have writ one or two magazine articles & about 100 pages on one of my books, since we left Hartford—been idle the rest of the time.

“1601” is on its travels again; John Hay has been handing it around, in Washington, & took it out & left it in Cleveland, the other day, in the hands of an antiquary who will memorize it & then return it.

(I hear the mellow German tongue out yonder: “Clara, where art thou?” “Here above. We wait for thee, Susie.”

It seems to me our tongue lost a good deal when the gentle thee & thou departed out of it.)

Tom Beecher & [family] are up in the woods at Jim [Beecher’s]; Mrs. Langdon is at Avon Springs; Charley Langdon, with his family, is at [Waukesha], Wisconsin, suffering horribly with dyspepsia. This household is well & flourishing, except me. I think we are growing doubtful about the son & heir. Sometimes we say, [“He] cometh not at all, & is a delusion & a [fraud];” at other times we be dimly hopeful, & say, “Mayhap this is not so; peradventure he cometh by slow freight.”

Well, old man, we all send a power of love to you & Harmony & the kids—& I am

Yours Ever

Mark.