27 December 1868 • Tecumseh, Mich. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00211)
I got your letter at Charlotte, my dear, dear Livy, & I rather hoped to get one here, but it did not come. However, if one should come, it will be mailed to me at Cleveland. I find I shall be there at noon to-morrow, which is much sooner than I expected. in margin: It is too bad, Livy, that I have to write so much in pencil. 1explanatory note
Yes, Livy, I do like to have you give me synopses of Mr Beecher’s sermons—& you need not suppose that I read them over once & then lay them aside for good, for I do not. I read & them over & over again & try to profit by them.2explanatory note I got the printed sermon also, & have read that several times. , also. Everything convicts me—so does this sermon. “A Christian is a fruit-bearer—a moral man is a vine that does not bear fruit.” That is me, exactly. I do not swear, I do not steal, I do not murder, I do not drink. My “whole life is not.” I am “not all over.”3explanatory note “Piety is the right performance of a common duty, as well as the experience of a special moral emotion.”4explanatory note I now perform all my duties as well as I can, but see what I lack!—I lack the chief ingredient of piety—for I lack (almost always) the “special moral emotion”—that innerⒶemendation sense which tells me that what I do I am doing for love of the Savior. I can be a ChirstianⒶemendation—I shall be a Christian—but when I feel as I feel to-day, it seems a far journey away. I would be discouraged, but for the reflection that one learns a foreign language only by patient study, not by a single lesson; we cannot cross the Continent at a stride, we cannot bridge the sea with a shingle. Therefore, why should I spurn the Savior for a lifetime & then hope to gain pardon save through long toil & striving & supplication? I will not be discouraged. I am glad you marked the sermon, Livy—why didn’t p Ⓐemendation you put in the margin what you & your father & mother said about the prominent passages? Yes, my little dear, I shall be glad to receive the Plymouth Pulpit as often as you will send it—& I shan’t care to have an opinion of my own in the matter, notwithstandingⒶemendation your quiet sarcasm upon yourself, but shall certainly like what you like—in jest or earnest you are right about that. Mark them, Livy.
As to the social drinking, give yourself no more uneasiness about it, O, my loved, my honored, my darling little Mentor!—for it had bothered my conscience so much ever since it seemed to me that day in the drawing-room that you gave your consent to it with a little reluctance, that I have hardly taken a glass of ale or wine since but it seemed to me your kind eyes were upon me with a sort of gentle reproach in them—& so—well, I don’t drink anything, now, dear, & so your darling noble old heart has been troubling itself all to no for nothing! But please don’t let my motive distress you, Livy. You know the child must crawl before it walks—& I must do right for love of you while I am in the infancy of Christianity; & then I can do right for love of the Savior when I shall have gotten my growth. And especially don’t give this instance any p Ⓐemendation importance, for it is no sacrifice, because I have not now, & never had, any love for any kind of liquors, & not even a passing passable liking for an any but champagne & ale, & only for these at intervals. I ought to be ever so grateful to you, Livy, for your brave confidence in me, & for the consideration you show for me in simply suggesting reforms when you could be such an absolute little tyrant if you chose. I do not know of anything I could refuse to do if you wanted it done. I am reasonably afraid that you’ll stop me from smoking, some day, but if ever you do, you will do it with such a happy grace that I shall be swindled into the notion that I didn’t want to smoke any more, anyhow!
I shall try to recollect to enclose the little Manual in this. I studied it carefully, & it convicts me, in some two or three of its clauses.5explanatory note I will talk with you about them when I see you, for it would be hard to explain the whole matter by letter.Ⓐemendation
Livy, I do wish you were here, for it is very lonely in this solemn room on this solemn cloudy Sabbath. If I could only take you to my heart, now, & talk to you & hear your voice, I could want no other company, no other music. This letter of yours isn’t cold, Livy—it couldn’t be, when you say that the better you know me the better you love me. That is pleasant to hear from your lips. I do hope you may not cease to be able to speak those words until you shall have given me all your love & so shall have no more to give. I do love you, Livy! And don’t you worry because you do not love me as well as I love you, Livy. It isn’t strange at all, that you can’t do it—because I am not as lovable as you are—I lack a great deal of being as lovable as you, Livy. It makes me glad to hear of Mr Langdon saying he loves me better the better he knows me—for it seems to me that I could not love him, or Mrs. Langdon or Mrs. Fairbanks more than I do, or reverence them more deeply. It was is such a pity we did not persuade your father & mother to stay longer with us in the drawing-room that day, Livy—it touches me yet when I remember that Mrs. Langdon looked, as she went out at the door, as if she thought she had been intruding. We shall not let either of them ever think such a thing again, Livy.
Of course I now think of many things that ought to have been said when I was with you, dear, but couldn’t think of them then. I think I shall have to make out a list, against my next visit. Some of them I did think of—they were confessions—but they seemed of such trifling import that it appeared not worth while to waste priceless time upon them—& I think so yet. Still, I shall always be ready & willing to confess anything & everything to you, Livy, that you could possibly wish to know.
The supper bell has rung. Tomorrow I shall see mother Fairbanks! Hip—hip—hurrahⒶemendation! I am getting all in a fidget, now, as the time approaches. We’ll have a royal jollification to-morrow night. I I’ll kiss little Mollie as a substitute for you, Livy, because she said privately to her mother, in her innocent way, “I do love Mr. Clemens!” And do you appreciate what it is to have a child like that, love you? Do you know her? JustⒶemendation listen. She used to have a green silk dress which she was very proud of, & was always glad when Sunday came, so she could wear it to church. But on one occasion she was to go to church with a little guest of hers, & to the amazement of everybody she steadily refused to wear anything but her every-day dress—& she would give no explanation. But at night, in privacy, she told her mother it was because the other little girl had no fine dress, & she didn’t want to make her feel badly!
She bo didn’t boast of this thing; she simply explained her conduct to her mother. Livy, it was the noblest thing I ever knew a child to do. Who shall say the angels did not visit her bedside that night? I How many men & women are there who have in them so grand a spirit of magnanimity as this little Mollie Fairbanks showed?
Good bye, darling—over these leagues of weary distance I cast a loving kiss.
letter docketed in ink by OLL: 17th
The entire letter was written in pencil.
Olivia might have synopsized Henry Ward Beecher’s sermons from any of several sources, such as the two-volume selection published in early November by Harper and Brothers (advertisement, New York Evening Post, 7 Nov 68, 2; Henry Ward Beecher 1868).
Although the actual “printed sermon” that Olivia sent has been lost, Clemens’s quotations show that it was the first number of the new weekly Plymouth Pulpit, which on 26 September had begun to print each of Beecher’s sermons “in neat pamphlet form,” six days after its delivery, as “reported by Mr. T. J. Ellinwood, who has been the authorized reporter at Plymouth Church for the last ten years” (“Literary,” New York Evening Post, 24 Sept 68, 2; “New Publications,” New York Times, 26 Sept 68, 5). The first issue contained Beecher’s sermon of 20 September—“The Duty of Using One’s Life for Others”—in which he said:
Contrast with this idea, also, the life of moral men who think they are good, and good enough, because they simply avoid evil. A moral man, as distinguished from a Christian man, is one who is negative. A Christian is one who is positive. A Christian is a fruit-bearer. A moral man is a vine that does not bear fruit. . . . A Christian man is one that develops graces into positivity. He acts out of himself and upon others. . . . A moral man, I repeat, is negative. He does not swear, and he does not steal, and he does not murder, and he does not get drunk, and his whole life is not. His law is, “Thou shalt not,” and, “Thou shalt not,” and, “Thou shalt not.” He is not all over, and nothing more! (Henry Ward Beecher 1869, 10)
Clemens quoted from an earlier passage in the same sermon:
Now, he who devotes the active hours of his life to those spheres to which Providence calls men, is really giving himself for others. It is not necessary that a man should go apart from life in order to do the work of piety. Piety is the right performance of a common duty, as well as the experience of a special moral emotion. Too often men think that religion, like music, is something that belongs to a department which is exceptional and quite outside of the ordinary routines of life. We leave religion to go to our work and duty. We forsake work and duty, at appropriate periods and pauses, to go back to religion. But a better conception of religion is, that it is the conduct of a man’s disposition in work by work. (Henry Ward Beecher 1869, 5)
Possibly the Manual of the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N.Y. (New York: Baker and Godwin, 1867). Its eighty-one pages included the “Articles of Faith” and “Covenant with the Church” which prospective church members were expected to embrace. On the other hand, Clemens may have been referring to The Confession of Faith, Covenant, Ecclesiastical Principles, Forms of Admission, Etc., a briefer booklet that Plymouth Church issued periodically—or even to a similar publication from Thomas K. Beecher’s Park Congregational Church in Elmira.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L2 , 353–356; Wecter, 34–35, with omissions.
see Samossoud Collection, pp. 515–16.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.