or Lady Stanley. I believe the last country-house visit we paid in
England was to Stanley's. Lord, how my friends and acquaintances fall
about me now, in my gray-headed days! Vereschagin, Mommsen, Dvorak,
Lenbach, Jokai--all so recently, and now Stanley. I had known Stanley
37 years. Goodness, who is it I haven't known! As a rule the necrologies
find me personally interested--when they treat of old stagers. Generally
when a man dies who is worth cabling, it happens that I have run across
him somewhere, some time or other.

Oh, say! Down by the Laurentian Library there's a marble image that
has been sitting on its pedestal some 450 Years, if my dates are
right--Cosimo I. I've seen the back of it many a time, but not the
front; but yesterday I twisted my head around after we had driven by,
and the profane exclamation burst from my mouth before I could think:
"there's Chauncey Depew!"

I mean to get a photo of it--and use it if it confirms yesterday's
conviction. That's a very nice word from the Catholic Magazine and I am
glad you sent it. I mean to show it to my priest--we are very fond of
him. He is a stealing man, and is also learnedly scientific. He invented
the thing which records the seismatic disturbances, for the peoples of
the earth. And he's an astronomer and has an observatory of his own.

Ah, many's the cry I have, over reflecting that maybe we could have had
Young Harmony for Livy, and didn't have wit enough to think of it.

Speaking of Livy reminds me that your inquiry arrives at a good time
(unberufen) It has been weeks (I don't know how many!) since we could
have said a hopeful word, but this morning Katy came the minute the
day-nurse came on watch and said words of a strange and long-forgotten
sound: "Mr. Clemens, Mrs. Clemens is really and truly better!--anybody
can see it; she sees it herself; and last night at 9 o'clock she said
it."

There--it is heart-warming, it is splendid, it is sublime; let us
enjoy it, let us make the most of it today--and bet not a farthing on
tomorrow. The tomorrows have nothing for us. Too many times they have
breathed the word of promise to our ear and broken it to our hope. We
take no tomorrow's word any more.

You've done a wonder, Joe: you've written a letter that can be sent in
to Livy--that doesn't often happen, when either a friend or a stranger
writes. You did whirl in a P. S. that wouldn't do, but you wrote it on
a margin of a page in such a way that I was able