What do you think?
Rate this book
Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 2: 1867-1868
Here is young Sam Clemens in the world, getting famous, making love in 155 magnificently edited letters that trace his remarkable self-transformation from a footloose, irreverent West Coast journalist to a popular lecturer and author of "The Jumping Frog, " soon to be a national and international celebrity. And on the move he was from San Francisco to New York, to St. Louis, and then to Paris, Naples, Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Yalta, and the Holy Land; back to New York and on to Washington; back to San Francisco and Virginia City; and on to lecturing in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. Resplendent with wit, love of life, ambition, and literary craft, this new volume in the wonderful Bancroft Library edition of "Mark Twain's Letters" will delight and inform both scholars and general readers.This volume has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mark Twain Foundation, Jane Newhall, and The Friends of The Bancroft Library."
954 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 3, 1990
13 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Mark Twain
8,164Ìýbooks18.2kÌýfollowersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ database.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 20, 2012
I loved this volume of the Twain letters --- probably because this set contains the beginning and growth of his relationship with his wife Olivia and with all the characters and settings of late nineteenth-century Elmira, New York. The volume begins shortly before his Quaker City trip to the Mediterranean which culminated in the publication of Innocents Abroad and ends with the writing of Tom Sawyer.
May 1, 1867 -- Sam Clemens writes to his family in St. Louis about his preparations for his speaking engagement at Cooper Union, an event that established him in New York City --- the beginning of his rise to becoming the most famous man of his time.
June 7, 1867 --- Sam writes to his family about his preparations for his trip to Europe aboard the Quaker City. The trip will further his path to fame --- and introduce him to Charlie Langdon of Elmira, New York --- and that will change his life forever.
June 7, 1867 (again) --- "I haven't got anything to write, else I would write it. I have just written myself clear out in letters to the Alta, and It think they are the stupidest letters that were ever written from New York . . . . As for the Frog book, I don't believe that will pay worth a cent. I published it siply to advertise myself -- not with the hope of making anything out of it." Of course, The Celebrated Jumping Frog was excellent advertising for the young writer.
Sept. 1, 1867 --- Twain catalogs the letters he has written from the Quarker City:
He average four long letters a week during the Mediterranean trip in the blistering heat. He wrote 53 letter to the Alta in California, six to the New York New York Tribune, and at least two to the New York Herald. More than 60 three-to-four-thousand word letters! Letters that completed the job of making Mark Twain famous and redefined travel literature. Albert Bigelow Paine, who arranged this volume, said "Also his literary powers had awakened at last. His work was no longer trivial, crude, and showy; it was full of dignity, beauty, and power; his humor was finer, worthier. The difference in quality between the Quaker City letters and those written from the Sandwich Islands only a year before can scarecely be measured."
Oct. 24, 1867 --- A personal letter about his visit to Spain. Spain is not included in Innocents Abroad, but this letter could have certainly qualified for inclusion.
Jan. 8, 1868 --- Clemens was staying in New York with Dan Slote, his Quaker City roommate. Charley Landgdon, another travel mate was in town, too. On New Year's Day, he ran into Langdon: "Charlie Langodon's sister was there (beautiful girl) . . . ." This is the first mention of Olivia Langdon, his future wife.
Jan. 9, 1868 --- MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, -- That infernal lecture is over, thank Heaven! It came near being a villainous failure. It was not advertised at all. the manager was taken sick yesterday, and the man who was sent to tell me, never got to me till afternoon today. There was the dickens to pay. It was too late to do anything -- too late to stop the lecture. I scared up a door-keeper, and was ready at the proper time, and by pure good luck a tolerably good house assembled and I was saved! I hardly knew what I was going to talk about, but it went off in splended style. I was to have preached again Saturdya night, but I won't -- I Can't get along without a manager.
I have been in New York ever since Christmas, you know, and now I shall have to work like sin to catch up my correpondence.
And I have to get up that book, too. Cut my letters out of the Alta's and send them to me in an envelop. Some, here, that are not mailed yet, I shall have to copy, I suppose
I have got a thousand things to do, and not doing any of them. I feel perfectly savage.
ELMIRA, N.Y. Aug. 26, 1868 --- His first visit to Elira, New York.
ELMIRA, N.Y. Aug. 25, 1868 --- "This is the pleasantest family I ever knew."
CLEVELAND, Nov. 20, 1868 --- "I go to Elmira tonight." By now, Clemens courtship of Olivia Langdon was in full swing. The family liked him and was impressed by his success, but thought the "Wester" rouffian might not be a good match for the delicate and cultured Livvy.
LOCKPORT, N.Y. Feb. 27, 1868 --- "I am particularly anxious to place myself in a position where I can carry on my married life in good shape on my own hook, because I have paddled my own canoe so long that I could not be satisfied now to let anybody help me --- and my proposed father-in-law is naturally so liberal that it would be just like him to want to give us a start in life. BUt I don't want it that way. I can start myself. I don't want any help. I can run this institution without any outside assitance, and I shall have a wife who will stand by me like a soldier through thick and thin, and never complain. She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer in Christendom. I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion imperatively demands a two-hundred dollar diaond one, and told her it was typical of her future lot -- namely, that she would have to flourish on substantials rather than luxuries. (But you see I know the girl -- she don't care anything about luxuries.) She is a splendid girl. She spend no money but her usual year's allowance, and she spends nearly every cent of that on other people. She will be a good sensible little wife, without any airs about her. I don't make intercession for her beforehand and ask you to love her, for there isn't any use in that -- you couldn't help it if you were to try.
"I warn you that whoever comes withint eh fatal influence o fher beautiful nature is her willing slave for evermore. I take my affidavit on that statement. Her father and mother and brother ebrace and pet her constantly, precisely as if she were a sweetheart, instead of a blood relation. She has unlimited power over her father, and yet she never uses it except to make him hlep peole who stand in need of help....
"But if a get fairly started on the sbuejct of my bride, I never shall get through -- and so I will quit right here. I went to Elmira a little over a week ago, and staid four days and then ahd to go to New York on business."
In June, Clemens is in Elmira and Livvy is reading the final proofs of his new book. She would continue to serve as an editor of his work throughout their marriage. According to Bigelow "Olivia Langdon had a keen and refined literary instinct."
BUFFALO, Nov. 12, 1870 --- Clemens has his new son announced his own birth:
"To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, in Hartford, Conn.:
"DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT,--I came into the world on the 7th inst., and consequently am about five days old, now. I have had wrecthed health even since I made my appearance. Frist one thing and then antoher has kept me under the weather, and as a general thing I have been chilly and uncomfortable.
"I am not corpulent, nor am I robust in any way. At birth I only wieght 4 1/2 pounds with my clothes on -- and the clothes were the chief feature of the weight, too. I am oblived to confess. But I am doing finely, all things considered. I was at a standstill for 3 days and ahlf, but during the last 24 hours I have gained nearly an ounce, avoirdupos.
"They all say I look very old and venerable -- and I am aware, myself, that I never smile. Life seems a serious thing, what I have seen of it -- and my observation teaches me that it is ade up mainly of hiccups, unnecessary washings, and colic. But no doubt you, who are old, have long since grown accustomed and reconciled to what seems to me such a disagreeable novelty.
"My father said, this morning, when my face was in respose and thoughtful, that I looked precisely as young Edward Twichell of Hartford used to look some is months ago -- chin, mouth, forehad, expression -- everything.
"My little mother is very bright and cherry, and I guess she is pretty happy, but I dino't know what about. She laughs a great deal, notwithstanding she is sick abed. And she eats a great deal, though she says that is because the nurse desires it. And when she has had all the nurse desires her to have, she asks for more. She is getting along very well indeed.
"My aunt Susie Crane has been here some ten days or two weeks, but goes home today, and Granny Fairbanks of Cleveland arrives to take her place." [Mrs. Fairbanks, of the Quarker City Excursion.]
"Very lovingly,
LANGDON CLEMENS.
"P.S. Father said I had better writer beacuse you would be more interested in me, just now, that in the rest of the family." [Sadly, Langdon died on June 2, 1872. He was always sickly and had never learned to walk.]
Clemens' great friend the Rev. Joseph Hopkins Twichell had come to Elmira to asist the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher in performing the Clemens-Langdon wedding.
Clemens had persuaded his mother and his widowed sister to move to Fredonia, not far from Buffalo.
The Clemens family spent 20 summers at Quarry Farm, on a hill overlooking the Chemung Valley and the Chemung River which winds through Elmira, New York.
ELMIRA, June 11, 1874 -- "The baby is here and is the great American Giantess -- weighing 7 3/4 pounds. We had to wiat a good long time for her [second daughter Clara], but she was full copmensation when she did come.
"The Modoc [first daughter Susy] was delighted with it, and gave it her odll at once. There is nothing selfish about the Modoc. She is fascinated with the new baby. The Modoc rips and tears around out doors, most of the time, and consquently is as hard as a pine knot and as brown as an Indian. She is bosom friend to all the ducks, chickens, turkeys and guinea hens on the place. Yesterday as she marched along the winding path that leads up the hill through the red clover beds to the summer-house, there was a long procession of these fowls strining contendly afte rher, led by a stately rooster who can look over the Modoc's head. The devotion of these vassals has been purchased with the daily largess of Indian meal, and so the Modoc, attended by her bodyguard, moves in state wherever she goes.
"Susie Crane has built the loveliest study for me, you ever saw. It is octagonal, with a peaked roof, each octagon filled a spacious window, and it sits perche din complete isolation on top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. It is a cosy nest, with just room in it for a sofa and a table and three or four chairs -- and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightning flashes above the hill beyond, and the rain beats upon the roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it! It stands 500 fee above the valley and 2 1/2 miles from it."
QUARRY FARM, NEAR ELMIRA, N.Y., Sept. 4, 1874 --- "We have psent hte past four months up here on top of a breezy hill, six hundred feet high, some few miles from Elmira, N.Y., and overlooking that town; (Elmira is my wife's birthplace and that of Susie and the new baby). This little summer house on the hill-top (named Quarry Farm because there's a quarry on it,) belongs to my wife's sister, Mrs. Crane.
"A photographer came up the other day and wanted to make some views, and I shall send you the result per this mail.
"My study is a snug little octagonal den, with a coal-grate, 6 big windows, one little one, and wide doorway (the latter opening upon the distant town.) On hot days I spread the study wide ope, anchor my papers down with brickbats and write in the idst of the hurriacanes, clothed in the same thin linen we make shirts of. The study is nearly on the peak of the hill; it is right in front of the little perpendicular wall of rock left where they used to quarry stones. On the peak of the hill is an order arbor roofed with bark and covered with the vine you call the "American Creeper" -- its green is almost blodded with red. The Study is 30 years below the old arbor and 200 yards above the dwelling-house-it is remote from all noises....
"Now isn't the whole thing pleasantly situated?
"In the picture of me in the study you glimpse (through the left-hand window) the little rock bluff that rises behind the pond, and the bases of the little trees on top of it. The small square window is over the fireplace; the chimney divides to make room for it. Withouth the stereoscope it looks like a framed picture. All the study windows have VEnetian blinds; they long ago went out of fashion in America but they have not been replaced with anything half as good yet.
"The study is built on top of a tumbled rock-heap that has morning-glories clibing about it and a stone stairway leading down through and dividing it."
"To Mrs. Clemens on her Thritieth Birthday:
HARTFORD, Noveber 27, 1875. [Mr. and Mrs. Clemens
birthdays are 3 days (and 10 years) apart.]
"Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great success in life and won you, and thrity years have passed since Providence made preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Every day we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that we can never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a regret that we were every joined. You are deared to me. my child, than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were deare then than you were a year before--you have grown more and more dear from the first of those anniversaires, and I do not doubt that this precoius progression will continue on to the end.
"Let us look forward to the coming anniversaires, with their age and their gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.
So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that brings ou the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!
"Always Yours
S.L.C."
May 1, 1867 -- Sam Clemens writes to his family in St. Louis about his preparations for his speaking engagement at Cooper Union, an event that established him in New York City --- the beginning of his rise to becoming the most famous man of his time.
June 7, 1867 --- Sam writes to his family about his preparations for his trip to Europe aboard the Quaker City. The trip will further his path to fame --- and introduce him to Charlie Langdon of Elmira, New York --- and that will change his life forever.
June 7, 1867 (again) --- "I haven't got anything to write, else I would write it. I have just written myself clear out in letters to the Alta, and It think they are the stupidest letters that were ever written from New York . . . . As for the Frog book, I don't believe that will pay worth a cent. I published it siply to advertise myself -- not with the hope of making anything out of it." Of course, The Celebrated Jumping Frog was excellent advertising for the young writer.
Sept. 1, 1867 --- Twain catalogs the letters he has written from the Quarker City:
He average four long letters a week during the Mediterranean trip in the blistering heat. He wrote 53 letter to the Alta in California, six to the New York New York Tribune, and at least two to the New York Herald. More than 60 three-to-four-thousand word letters! Letters that completed the job of making Mark Twain famous and redefined travel literature. Albert Bigelow Paine, who arranged this volume, said "Also his literary powers had awakened at last. His work was no longer trivial, crude, and showy; it was full of dignity, beauty, and power; his humor was finer, worthier. The difference in quality between the Quaker City letters and those written from the Sandwich Islands only a year before can scarecely be measured."
Oct. 24, 1867 --- A personal letter about his visit to Spain. Spain is not included in Innocents Abroad, but this letter could have certainly qualified for inclusion.
Jan. 8, 1868 --- Clemens was staying in New York with Dan Slote, his Quaker City roommate. Charley Landgdon, another travel mate was in town, too. On New Year's Day, he ran into Langdon: "Charlie Langodon's sister was there (beautiful girl) . . . ." This is the first mention of Olivia Langdon, his future wife.
Jan. 9, 1868 --- MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, -- That infernal lecture is over, thank Heaven! It came near being a villainous failure. It was not advertised at all. the manager was taken sick yesterday, and the man who was sent to tell me, never got to me till afternoon today. There was the dickens to pay. It was too late to do anything -- too late to stop the lecture. I scared up a door-keeper, and was ready at the proper time, and by pure good luck a tolerably good house assembled and I was saved! I hardly knew what I was going to talk about, but it went off in splended style. I was to have preached again Saturdya night, but I won't -- I Can't get along without a manager.
I have been in New York ever since Christmas, you know, and now I shall have to work like sin to catch up my correpondence.
And I have to get up that book, too. Cut my letters out of the Alta's and send them to me in an envelop. Some, here, that are not mailed yet, I shall have to copy, I suppose
I have got a thousand things to do, and not doing any of them. I feel perfectly savage.
ELMIRA, N.Y. Aug. 26, 1868 --- His first visit to Elira, New York.
ELMIRA, N.Y. Aug. 25, 1868 --- "This is the pleasantest family I ever knew."
CLEVELAND, Nov. 20, 1868 --- "I go to Elmira tonight." By now, Clemens courtship of Olivia Langdon was in full swing. The family liked him and was impressed by his success, but thought the "Wester" rouffian might not be a good match for the delicate and cultured Livvy.
LOCKPORT, N.Y. Feb. 27, 1868 --- "I am particularly anxious to place myself in a position where I can carry on my married life in good shape on my own hook, because I have paddled my own canoe so long that I could not be satisfied now to let anybody help me --- and my proposed father-in-law is naturally so liberal that it would be just like him to want to give us a start in life. BUt I don't want it that way. I can start myself. I don't want any help. I can run this institution without any outside assitance, and I shall have a wife who will stand by me like a soldier through thick and thin, and never complain. She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer in Christendom. I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion imperatively demands a two-hundred dollar diaond one, and told her it was typical of her future lot -- namely, that she would have to flourish on substantials rather than luxuries. (But you see I know the girl -- she don't care anything about luxuries.) She is a splendid girl. She spend no money but her usual year's allowance, and she spends nearly every cent of that on other people. She will be a good sensible little wife, without any airs about her. I don't make intercession for her beforehand and ask you to love her, for there isn't any use in that -- you couldn't help it if you were to try.
"I warn you that whoever comes withint eh fatal influence o fher beautiful nature is her willing slave for evermore. I take my affidavit on that statement. Her father and mother and brother ebrace and pet her constantly, precisely as if she were a sweetheart, instead of a blood relation. She has unlimited power over her father, and yet she never uses it except to make him hlep peole who stand in need of help....
"But if a get fairly started on the sbuejct of my bride, I never shall get through -- and so I will quit right here. I went to Elmira a little over a week ago, and staid four days and then ahd to go to New York on business."
In June, Clemens is in Elmira and Livvy is reading the final proofs of his new book. She would continue to serve as an editor of his work throughout their marriage. According to Bigelow "Olivia Langdon had a keen and refined literary instinct."
BUFFALO, Nov. 12, 1870 --- Clemens has his new son announced his own birth:
"To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, in Hartford, Conn.:
"DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT,--I came into the world on the 7th inst., and consequently am about five days old, now. I have had wrecthed health even since I made my appearance. Frist one thing and then antoher has kept me under the weather, and as a general thing I have been chilly and uncomfortable.
"I am not corpulent, nor am I robust in any way. At birth I only wieght 4 1/2 pounds with my clothes on -- and the clothes were the chief feature of the weight, too. I am oblived to confess. But I am doing finely, all things considered. I was at a standstill for 3 days and ahlf, but during the last 24 hours I have gained nearly an ounce, avoirdupos.
"They all say I look very old and venerable -- and I am aware, myself, that I never smile. Life seems a serious thing, what I have seen of it -- and my observation teaches me that it is ade up mainly of hiccups, unnecessary washings, and colic. But no doubt you, who are old, have long since grown accustomed and reconciled to what seems to me such a disagreeable novelty.
"My father said, this morning, when my face was in respose and thoughtful, that I looked precisely as young Edward Twichell of Hartford used to look some is months ago -- chin, mouth, forehad, expression -- everything.
"My little mother is very bright and cherry, and I guess she is pretty happy, but I dino't know what about. She laughs a great deal, notwithstanding she is sick abed. And she eats a great deal, though she says that is because the nurse desires it. And when she has had all the nurse desires her to have, she asks for more. She is getting along very well indeed.
"My aunt Susie Crane has been here some ten days or two weeks, but goes home today, and Granny Fairbanks of Cleveland arrives to take her place." [Mrs. Fairbanks, of the Quarker City Excursion.]
"Very lovingly,
LANGDON CLEMENS.
"P.S. Father said I had better writer beacuse you would be more interested in me, just now, that in the rest of the family." [Sadly, Langdon died on June 2, 1872. He was always sickly and had never learned to walk.]
Clemens' great friend the Rev. Joseph Hopkins Twichell had come to Elmira to asist the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher in performing the Clemens-Langdon wedding.
Clemens had persuaded his mother and his widowed sister to move to Fredonia, not far from Buffalo.
The Clemens family spent 20 summers at Quarry Farm, on a hill overlooking the Chemung Valley and the Chemung River which winds through Elmira, New York.
ELMIRA, June 11, 1874 -- "The baby is here and is the great American Giantess -- weighing 7 3/4 pounds. We had to wiat a good long time for her [second daughter Clara], but she was full copmensation when she did come.
"The Modoc [first daughter Susy] was delighted with it, and gave it her odll at once. There is nothing selfish about the Modoc. She is fascinated with the new baby. The Modoc rips and tears around out doors, most of the time, and consquently is as hard as a pine knot and as brown as an Indian. She is bosom friend to all the ducks, chickens, turkeys and guinea hens on the place. Yesterday as she marched along the winding path that leads up the hill through the red clover beds to the summer-house, there was a long procession of these fowls strining contendly afte rher, led by a stately rooster who can look over the Modoc's head. The devotion of these vassals has been purchased with the daily largess of Indian meal, and so the Modoc, attended by her bodyguard, moves in state wherever she goes.
"Susie Crane has built the loveliest study for me, you ever saw. It is octagonal, with a peaked roof, each octagon filled a spacious window, and it sits perche din complete isolation on top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. It is a cosy nest, with just room in it for a sofa and a table and three or four chairs -- and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightning flashes above the hill beyond, and the rain beats upon the roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it! It stands 500 fee above the valley and 2 1/2 miles from it."
QUARRY FARM, NEAR ELMIRA, N.Y., Sept. 4, 1874 --- "We have psent hte past four months up here on top of a breezy hill, six hundred feet high, some few miles from Elmira, N.Y., and overlooking that town; (Elmira is my wife's birthplace and that of Susie and the new baby). This little summer house on the hill-top (named Quarry Farm because there's a quarry on it,) belongs to my wife's sister, Mrs. Crane.
"A photographer came up the other day and wanted to make some views, and I shall send you the result per this mail.
"My study is a snug little octagonal den, with a coal-grate, 6 big windows, one little one, and wide doorway (the latter opening upon the distant town.) On hot days I spread the study wide ope, anchor my papers down with brickbats and write in the idst of the hurriacanes, clothed in the same thin linen we make shirts of. The study is nearly on the peak of the hill; it is right in front of the little perpendicular wall of rock left where they used to quarry stones. On the peak of the hill is an order arbor roofed with bark and covered with the vine you call the "American Creeper" -- its green is almost blodded with red. The Study is 30 years below the old arbor and 200 yards above the dwelling-house-it is remote from all noises....
"Now isn't the whole thing pleasantly situated?
"In the picture of me in the study you glimpse (through the left-hand window) the little rock bluff that rises behind the pond, and the bases of the little trees on top of it. The small square window is over the fireplace; the chimney divides to make room for it. Withouth the stereoscope it looks like a framed picture. All the study windows have VEnetian blinds; they long ago went out of fashion in America but they have not been replaced with anything half as good yet.
"The study is built on top of a tumbled rock-heap that has morning-glories clibing about it and a stone stairway leading down through and dividing it."
"To Mrs. Clemens on her Thritieth Birthday:
HARTFORD, Noveber 27, 1875. [Mr. and Mrs. Clemens
birthdays are 3 days (and 10 years) apart.]
"Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great success in life and won you, and thrity years have passed since Providence made preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Every day we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that we can never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a regret that we were every joined. You are deared to me. my child, than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were deare then than you were a year before--you have grown more and more dear from the first of those anniversaires, and I do not doubt that this precoius progression will continue on to the end.
"Let us look forward to the coming anniversaires, with their age and their gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.
So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that brings ou the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!
"Always Yours
S.L.C."
December 27, 2018
I have a feeling that every volume of Twain's letters will garner a 5 star rating. So far they contain the very essence of Twain,his inner feelings, thoughts, and humor that give me a true feeling of Americana from that era. Absolutely a necessary companion piece to any of Twain's novels.
June 21, 2012
Great insite into Mark Twain's character, the princibles he lived by And his remarkable friendships!
Read
June 4, 2013Biog T969aLb
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.