d Andrew Carnegie followed with another thousand, but the enterprise
was barely under way when Clemens wrote a characteristic letter, in
which he declared that while he would have welcomed the help offered,
being weary of debt, his family did not wish him to accept and so long
as he was able to take care of them through his own efforts.

Meantime he was back into literary harness; a notebook entry for October
24, 1896, says:

"Wrote the fist chapter of the book to-day-'Around the World'."

He worked at it uninterruptedly, for in work; there was respite, though
his note-books show something of his mental torture, also his spiritual
heresies. His series of mistakes and misfortunes, ending with the death
of Susy, had tended to solidify his attitude of criticism toward things
in general and the human race in particular.

"Man is the only animal that blushes, or that needs to," was one of
his maxims of this period, and in another place he sets down the myriad
diseases which human flesh is heir to and his contempt for a creature
subject to such afflictions and for a Providence that could invent them.
Even Mrs. Clemens felt the general sorrow of the race. "Poor, poor human
nature," she wrote once during that long, gloomy winter.

Many of Mark Twain's notes refer to Susy. In one he says:

"I did not hear her glorious voice at its supremest--that was in
Hartford a month or two before the end."

Notes of heavy regret most of them are, and self-reproach and the
hopelessness of it all. In one place he records her accomplishment of
speech, adding:

"And I felt like saying 'you marvelous child,' but never said it; to my
sorrow I remember it now. But I come of an undemonstrative race."

He wrote to Twichell:

But I have this consolation: that dull as I was I always knew enough
to be proud when she commended me or my work--as proud as if Livy
had done it herself--& I took it as the accolade from the hand of
genius. I see now--as Livy always saw--that she had greatness in
her, & that she herself was dimly conscious of it.

And now she is dead--& I can never tell her.

And closing a letter to Howells:

Good-by. Will healing ever come, or life have value again?

And shall we see Susy? Without doubt! without a shadow of doubt if
it can furnish opportunity to break our hearts again.

On November 26th, Thanksgiving, occurs this note:

"We did not celebrate it. Seven years ago Susy gav