a colorless historiette in French. It nearly
killed the fifteen or twenty people who understood it.

I told a yarn, Ancona sang half a dozen songs, Barnes did his
darling imitations, Handing Davis sang the hanging of Danny Deever,
which was of course good, but he followed it with that mast
fascinating (for what reason I don't know) of all Kipling's poems,
"On the Road to Mandalay," sang it tenderly, & it searched me deeper
& charmed me more than the Deever.

Young Gerrit Smith played some ravishing dance-music, & we all
danced about an hour. There couldn't be a pleasanter night than
that one was. Some of those people complained of fatigue, but I
don't seem to know what the sense of fatigue is.

In his reprieve he was like some wild thing that had regained liberty.

He refers to Susy's recent illness and to Mrs. Clemens's own poor state
of health.

Dear, dear Susy! My strength reproaches me when I think of her and
you.

It is an unspeakable pity that you should be without any one to go
about with the girls, & it troubles me, & grieves me, & makes me
curse & swear; but you see, dear heart, I've got to stick right
where I am till I find out whether we are rich or whether the
poorest person we are acquainted with in anybody's kitchen is better
off than we are.. I stand on the land-end of a springboard, with
the family clustered on the other end; if I take my foot----

He realized his hopes to her as a vessel trying to make port; once he
wrote:

The ship is in sight now....

When the anchor is down then I shall say:

"Farewell--a long farewell--to business! I will never touch it
again!"

I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it; I will
swim in ink! 'Joan of Arc'--but all this is premature; the anchor
is not down yet.

Sometimes he sent her impulsive cables calculating to sustain hope. Mrs.
Clemens, writing to her sister in January, said:

Mr. Clemens now for ten days has been hourly expecting to send me
word that Paige had signed the (new) contract, but as yet no
despatch comes.... On the 5th of this month I received a
cable, "Expect good news in ten days." On the 15th I receive a
cable, "Look out for good news." On the 19th a cable, "Nearing
success."

It appealed to her sense of humor even in these dark days. She added:

They make me laugh, for they