aughter Susy, whom we lost. It was not intentional--it was a good
while before I found it out, so I am sending you her picture to use
--& to reproduce with photographic exactness the unsurpassable
expression & all. May you find an artist who has lost an idol.

He explains how he had put in a good deal of work, with his secretary, on
the orchestrelle to get the bugle-calls.

We are to do these theatricals this evening with a couple of
neighbors for audience, and then pass the hat.

It is not one of Mark Twain's greatest stories, but its pathos brings the
tears, and no one can read it without indignation toward the custom which
it was intended to oppose. When it was published, a year later, Mrs.
Fiske sent him her grateful acknowledgments, and asked permission to have
it printed for pamphlet circulation m Spain.

A number of more or less notable things happened in this, Mark Twain's
seventieth year. There was some kind of a reunion going on in
California, and he was variously invited to attend. Robert Fulton, of
Nevada, was appointed a committee of one to invite him to Reno for a
great celebration which was to be held there. Clemens replied that he
remembered, as if it were but yesterday, when he had disembarked from the
Overland stage in front of the Ormsby Hotel, in Carson City, and told how
he would like to accept the invitation.

If I were a few years younger I would accept it, and promptly, and I
would go. I would let somebody else do the oration, but as for me I
would talk--just talk. I would renew my youth; and talk--and talk--and
talk--and have the time of my life! I would march the unforgotten and
unforgetable antiques by, and name their names, and give them reverent
hail and farewell as they passed--Goodman, McCarthy, Gillis, Curry,
Baldwin, Winters, Howard, Nye, Stewart, Neely Johnson, Hal Clayton,
North, Root--and my brother, upon whom be peace!--and then the
desperadoes, who made life a joy, and the "slaughter-house," a precious
possession: Sam Brown, Farmer Pete, Bill Mayfield, Six-fingered Jake,
Jack Williams, and the rest of the crimson discipleship, and so on, and
so on. Believe me, I would start a resurrection it would do you more
good to look at than the next one will, if you go on the way you are
going now.

Those were the days!--those old ones. They will come no more; youth will
come no more. They were so full to the brim with the wine of life; there
have been no others like