wonderful! the wise watch you keep over Jean, and the influence you
have over her; it's so lovely of you, and I tied here and can't take
care of her myself. (And she goes on with these undeserved praises
till Clara is expiring with shame.)

To Twichell:

I am to see Livy a moment every afternoon until she has another bad
night; and I stand in dread, for with all my practice I realize that
in a sudden emergency I am but a poor, clumsy liar, whereas a fine
alert and capable emergency liar is the only sort that is worth
anything in a sick-chamber.

Now, Joe, just see what reputation can do. All Clara's life she has
told Livy the truth and now the reward comes; Clara lies to her
three and a half hours every day, and Livy takes it all at par,
whereas even when I tell her a truth it isn't worth much without
corroboration....

Soon my brief visit is due. I've just been up listening at Livy's
door.

5 P.M. A great disappointment. I was sitting outside Livy's door
waiting. Clara came out a minute ago and said L ivy is not so well,
and the nurse can't let me see her to-day.

That pathetic drama was to continue in some degree for many a long
month. All that winter and spring Mrs. Clemens kept but a frail hold on
life. Clemens wrote little, and refused invitations everywhere he could.
He spent his time largely in waiting for the two-minute period each day
when he could stand at the bed-foot and say a few words to the invalid,
and he confined his writing mainly to the comforting, affectionate
messages which he was allowed to push under her door. He was always
waiting there long before the moment he was permitted to enter. Her
illness and her helplessness made manifest what Howells has fittingly
characterized as his "beautiful and tender loyalty to her, which was the
most moving quality of his most faithful soul."

CCXXVII. THE SECOND RIVERDALE WINTER

Most of Mark Twain's stories have been dramatized at one time or
another, and with more or less success. He had two plays going that
winter, one of them the little "Death Disk," which--in story form
had appeared a year before in Harper's Magazine. It was put on at the
Carnegie Lyceum with considerable effect, but it was not of sufficient
importance to warrant a long continuance.

Another play of that year was a dramatization of Huckleberry Finn, by
Lee Arthur. This was played with a good deal of