r that, but sank into
unconsciousness, and on the evening of Tuesday, August 18th, the flame
went out forever.

To Twichell Clemens wrote of it:

Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege. Her dying
eyes rested upon no thing that was strange to them, but only upon
things which they had known & loved always & which had made her
young years glad; & she had you & Sue & Katie & & John & Ellen.
This was happy fortune--I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her.
If she had died in another house--well, I think I could not have
borne that. To us our house was not unsentient matter--it had a
heart & a soul & eyes to see us with, & approvals & solicitudes &
deep sympathies; it was of us, & we were in its confidence, & lived
in its grace & in the peace of its benediction. We never came home
from an absence that its face did not light up & speak out its
eloquent welcome--& we could not enter it unmoved. And could we
now? oh, now, in spirit we should enter it unshod.

A tugboat with Dr. Rice, Mr. Twichell, and other friends of the family
went down the bay to meet the arriving vessel with Mrs. Clemens and Clara
on board. It was night when the ship arrived, and they did not show
themselves until morning; then at first to Clara. There had been little
need to formulate a message--their presence there was enough--and when a
moment later Clara returned to the stateroom her mother looked into her
face and she also knew. Susy already had been taken to Elmira, and at
half past ten that night Mrs. Clemens and Clara arrived there by the
through train--the same train and in the same coach which they had taken
one year and one month before on their journey westward around the world.

And again Susy was there, not waving her welcome in the glare of the
lights as she had waved her farewell to us thirteen months before, but
lying white and fair in her coffin in the house where she was born.

They buried her with the Langdon relatives and the little brother, and
ordered a headstone with some lines which they had found in Australia:

Warm summer sun shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind blow softly here;
Green sod above lie light, lie light
Good night, dear heart, good night, good night.

--[These lines at first were generally attributed to Clemens himself.
When this was reported to him he ordered the name of the Australian poet,
Robert