en if we find it I am afraid it will be months before
we can move Mrs. Clemens. Of course it will. But it comforts us to let
on that we think otherwise, and these pretensions help to keep hope
alive in her.

Good-bye, with love, Amen.
Yours ever
MARK.

News came of the death of Henry M. Stanley, one of Mark Twain's
oldest friends. Clemens once said that he had met Stanley in St.
Louis where he (Clemens) had delivered a lecture which Stanley had
reported. In the following letter he fixes the date of their
meeting as early in 1867, which would be immediately after Mark
Twain's return from California, and just prior to the Quaker City
excursion--a fact which is interesting only because it places the
two men together when each was at the very beginning of a great
career.

*****

To Lady Stanley, in England:

VILLA DI QUARTO, FIRENZE, May 11, '04.

DEAR LADY STANLEY,--I have lost a dear and honored friend--how fast
they fall about me now, in my age! The world has lost a tried and proved
hero. And you--what have you lost? It is beyond estimate--we who know
you, and what he was to you, know that. How far he stretches across my
life! I knew him when his work was all before him five years before the
great day that he wrote his name far-away up on the blue of the sky for
the world to see and applaud and remember; I have known him as friend
and intimate ever since. It is 37 years. I have known no other friend
and intimate so long, except John Hay--a friendship which dates from the
same year and the same half of it, the first half of 1867. I grieve with
you and with your family, dear Lady Stanley, it is all I can do; but
that I do out of my heart. It would be we, instead of I, if Mrs. Clemens
knew, but in all these 20 months that she has lain a prisoner in her bed
we have hidden from her all things that could sadden her. Many a friend
is gone whom she still asks about and still thinks is living.

In deepest sympathy I beg the privilege of signing myself

Your friend,
S. L. CLEMENS.

*****

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

VILLA DI QUARTO, May 11, '04

DEAR JOE,--Yours has this moment arrived--just as I was finishing a note
to po