18? October 1874 • Hartford, Conn. ( MTB , 1:526, UCCL 01143)
The atmosphere is very hazy, and it makes the autumn tints even more soft and beautiful than usual. Mr. Twichell came for Mr. Clemens to go walking with him; they returned at dinner-time, heavily laden with autumn leaves.
Twichell came up here with me to luncheon after services, & I went back home with him & Ⓐemendation took Susy along in her little carriage. We have just got home again, middle of afternoon, & Livy has gone to rest & left the west balcony to me. There is a shining & most marvelous miracle of cloud-effects mirrored in the brook; a picture which began with perfection, & has momently surpassed it ever since, until at last it is almost unendurably beautiful.1explanatory note
There is a cloud-picture in the stream now whose hues are as manifold as those in an opal & as delicate as the tintings of a sea-shell. But now a muskrat is swimming through it & obliterating it with the turmoil of wavelets he casts abroad from his shoulders.
The customary Sunday assemblage of strangers is gathered together in the grounds discussing the house.
Albert Bigelow Paine did not identify the addressee of this letter when he printed these excerpts ( MTB , 1:526). It was probably intended for the members of the Langdon family in Elmira, the recipients of a similar joint letter of 24? September 1874. The evidence for the date is derived from Twichell’s journal: his activities in the fall rule out any Sunday before 11 or after 25 October. The most likely date is 18 October, but a week earlier and a week later are both possible (Twichell, 1:1, 2, 7, 9, 12).
MTB , 1:526.
L6 , 259; Paine 1912, 249.