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Livy darling, Mr. Wilson is a fraud & a liar. It is a satisfaction to know that he has got hemorrages.

Well, now I think the proofs are pretty good. They make you look too old & too care worn—that is all the fault I find. You are not that old; so the look is only temporary. We will drive it away when I get home, & you shall be young again, my darling. The more I look at them the better I like them.

Sunday Morning.—

No, I cannot have either of them. They reproach me so. They say “You have given these features this drawn look, & put the tired look into these eyes, with your desertion & absence.” That is what they say, distinctly; & I feel the justness of the reproach.

My breakfast is arriving.

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Noon.

Sir Sagramore le Desirous (Pond), has just been in, & has received a few new dates from New York. They will be furnished you from New York (I gave strong orders the other day), but to make everything sure we, also[,] will telegraph them to you from here tonight.

We’ve had an immense time here with these three big audiences in this noble Central Music Hall. But for the fearful storms, we would have turned people away from the doors. It is a beautiful place, & you should have seen that alert & radiant mass of well-dressed humanity, rising tier on tier clear to the slope of the ceiling. Last night was the greatest triumph we have ever made. I played my new bill, containing The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, (told (cut it down & told it in 13 minutes—quickest time on record) & Tom & Huck setting Jim free from prison—25 minutes—but it just went with a long roll of artillery-laughter all down the line, interspersed with Congreve rockets & bomb shell exsplosionsⒶemendation, from the first word to the last—& then, after a thrice-repeated crash of encores, I came back & talked a ten-minute yarn (Gov. Gardiner)—on the stage 35 minutes, you see, & no harm done—encored again after the encore, & came back & bowed. And mind I tell the old Jumping Frog swept the place like a conflagration. Nothing in this world can beat that yarn when one is feeling good & has the right audience in front of him.

We’ve got a new plan, & it works. Cable goes on at the very stroke of the hour, & talks 15 minutes to an assembling house, telling them not to be concerned about him & he won’t be troubled. And so, with all the encores, we have in no instance been on the stage a minute over 2 hours. The good effect is clear beyond estimation. (And privately, another thing—only half the house hear C.’s first piece—so there isn’t too much of C any more—whereas heretofore there has been a thundering sight too much of him.)

I love you, darling.

Saml