go the closest calculations for that
indicated Oct. 22--but experience teaches me that their calculations
will miss fire, as usual.

The other day the children were projecting a purchase, Livy and I to
furnish the money--a dollar and a half. Jean discouraged the idea. She
said: "We haven't got any money. Children, if you would think, you would
remember the machine isn't done."

It's billiards to-night. I wish you were here.

With love to you both
S. L. C.

P. S. I got it all wrong. It wasn't the children, it was Marie. She
wanted a box of blacking, for the children's shoes. Jean reproved
her--and said:

"Why, Marie, you mustn't ask for things now. The machine isn't done."

S. L. C.

The letter that follows is to another of his old pilot friends, one
who was also a schoolmate, Will Bowen, of Hannibal. There is today
no means of knowing the occasion upon which this letter was written,
but it does not matter; it is the letter itself that is of chief
value.

*****

To Will Bowen, in Hannibal, Mo.:

HARTFORD, Nov 4, '88.

DEAR WILL,--I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was
starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately
busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff
and laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves,
examine themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by
surroundings--unaffected, that is understood, by the surroundings, but
not uninfluenced by them. Here was the near presence of the two supreme
events of life: marriage, which is the beginning of life, and death
which is the end of it. I found myself seeking chances to shirk into
corners where I might think, undisturbed; and the most I got out of my
thought, was this: both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one
promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it. A long procession of
people filed through my mind--people whom you and I knew so many years
ago--so many centuries ago, it seems like-and these ancient dead marched
to the soft marriage music of a band concealed in some remote room of
the house; and the contented music and the dreaming shades seemed in
right accord with each other, and fitting. Nobody else knew that a
procession of the dead was passing though this n