report the sequel of the matter; but it
is likely that his imagination had discounted its tortures. Sometimes
his letters were pure nonsense. Once he sent a sheet, on one side of
which was written:

BAY HOUSE,
March s, 1910.
Received of S. L. C.
Two Dollars and Forty Cents
in return for my promise to believe everything he says
hereafter.
HELEN S. ALLEN.

and on the reverse:

FOR SALE

The proprietor of the hereinbefore mentioned Promise desires to part
with it on account of ill health and obliged to go away somewheres
so as to let it reciprocate, and will take any reasonable amount for
it above 2 percent of its face because experienced parties think it
will not keep but only a little while in this kind of weather & is a
kind of proppity that don't give a cuss for cold storage nohow.

Clearly, however serious Mark Twain regarded his physical condition, he
did not allow it to make him gloomy. He wrote that matters were going
everywhere to his satisfaction; that Clara was happy; that his
household and business affairs no longer troubled him; that his personal
surroundings were of the pleasantest sort. Sometimes he wrote of what he
was reading, and once spoke particularly of Prof. William Lyon Phelps's
Literary Essays, which he said he had been unable to lay down until he
had finished the book.--[To Phelps himself he wrote: "I thank you ever
so much for the book, which I find charming--so charming, indeed, that
I read it through in a single night, & did not regret the lost night's
sleep. I am glad if I deserve what you have said about me; & even if I
don't I am proud & well contented, since you think I deserve it."]

So his days seemed full of comfort. But in March I noticed that he
generally dictated his letters, and once when he sent some small
photographs I thought he looked thinner and older. Still he kept up his
merriment. In one letter he said:

While the matter is in my mind I will remark that if you ever send
me another letter which is not paged at the top I will write you
with my own hand, so that I may use with utter freedom & without
embarrassment the kind of words which alone can describe such a
criminal, to wit, - - - -; you will have to put into words those
dashes because propriety will not allow me to do it myself in m