n this simple and modest fashion:

I beg your pardon for being a bore to one I so deeply love and
admire, to whom I owe days and days of forgetfulness of self and
troubles, and the intensest of all joys-hero-worship! People don't
always realize what a happiness that is! God bless you for every
beautiful thought you poured into my tired heart, and for every
smile on a weary way. CARMEN SYLVA.

This was the occasion mentioned by Howells when Mrs. Clemens made tea
for them in the parlor for the last time. Her social life may be said to
have ended that afternoon. Next morning the break came. Clemens, in his
notebook for that day, writes:

Tuesday, August 12, 1902. At 7 A.M. Livy taken violently ill. Telephoned
and Dr. Lambert was here in 1/2 hour. She could not breathe-was likely
to stifle. Also she had severe palpitation. She believed she was dying.
I also believed it.

Nurses were summoned, and Mrs. Crane and others came from Elmira. Clara
Clemens took charge of the household and matters generally, and the
patient was secluded and guarded from every disturbing influence.
Clemens slipped about with warnings of silence. A visitor found notices
in Mark Twain's writing pinned to the trees near Mrs. Clemens's window
warning the birds not to sing too loudly.

The patient rallied, but she remained very much debilitated. On
September 3d the note-book says:

Always Mr. Rogers keeps his yacht Kanawha in commission & ready to
fly here and take us to Riverdale on telegraphic notice.

But Mrs. Clemens was unable to return by sea. When it was decided at
last, in October, that she could be removed to Riverdale, Clemens and
Howells went to Boston and engaged an invalid car to make the journey
from York Harbor to Riverdale without change. Howells tells us that
Clemens gave his strictest personal attention to the arrangement of
these details, and that they absorbed him.

There was no particular of the business which he did not scrutinize
and master.... With the inertness that grows upon an aging
man he had been used to delegate more and more things, but of that
thing I perceived that he would not delegate the least detail.

They made the journey on the 16th, in nine and a half hours. With the
exception of the natural weariness due to such a trip, the invalid was
apparently no worse on their arrival. The stout English butler carried
her to her room. It would be many mo