Sunday Afternoon,Ⓔexplanatory note
At Home, 472 Delaware Avenue,
Buffalo Feb. 6. 1870
My First, & Oldest & Dearest Friend,
My heart goes out to you just the same as ever. Your letter has stirred me to the bottom. The fountains of my great deep are broken upⒺexplanatory note & I have rained reminiscences for four & twenty hours. The old life has swept before me like a panorama; the old days have trooped by in their old glory, again; the old faces have looked out of the mists of the past; old footsteps have sounded in my listening ears; old hands have clasped mine, old voices have greeted me, & the songs I loved ages & ages ago have come wailing down the centuries! Heavens what eternities have swung their hoary cycles about us since those days were new!—What Since we tore down Dick Hardy ’s stable; since you had the measles & I went to your house purposely to catch them; since Henry Beebe kept that envied slaughter-house, & Joe Craig sold him cats to kill in it; since old General Gaines used to say, “Whoop! Bow your neck & spread!”; since Jimmy Finn was town drunkard & we stole his dinner while he slept in the vat & fed it to the hogs in order to keep them still till we could mount them & have a ride; since Clint Levering was drowned; since we [begin page 21] taught that one-legged nigger, Higgins, to offend Bill League ’s dignity by hailing him in public with his exasperating “Hello, League!”—since we used to undress & play Robin Hood wi in our shirt-tails, with lath swords, in the woods on Holliday’s HillⒺexplanatory note on those long summer days; since we used to go in swimming above the still-house branchⒺexplanatory note—& at mighty intervals wandered on vagrant o fishing excursions clear up to “the Bay,”Ⓔexplanatory note & wondered what was curtained away in the great world beyond that remote point; since I jumped overboard from the ferry boat in the middle of the river that stormy day to get my hat, & swam two or three miles after it (& got it,) while all the town collected on the wharf & for an hour or so looked out across the angry waste of “white-caps” toward where people said Sam. Clemens was last seen before he went down; since we got up a mutiny rebellion against Miss Newcomb , under Ed. Stevens ’ leadership, (to force her to let us all go over to Miss Torry ’s side of the schoolroom,) & gallantly “sassed” Laura Hawkins when she came out the third time to call us in, & then afterward marched in in threatening & bloodthirsty array,—& meekly yielded, & took each his little thrashing, & & resumed his old seat entirely “reconstructed”; since we used to indulge in that very peculiar performance on that old bench outside the schoolhouse to drive good old Bill Brown crazy while he was eating his dinner; since we used to remain at school at noon & go hungry, in order to persecute Bill Brown in all possible ways—poor old Bill, who could be driven to such extremity of vindictiveness as to call us “You infernal fools!” & chase us round & round the schoolhouse— & yet who never had the heart to hurt us when he caught us, & who always loved us & always took our part when the big boys wanted to thrash us; since we used to lay in wait for Bill Pitts at the pump & whale him; (I saw him two or three years ago, & I was awful polite to his six feet two, & mentioned no reminiscences); since we used to be in Dave Garth ’s class in Sunday school & on week-days stole his leaf tobacco to run our miniature tobacco presses with; since Owsley shot Smar ; since Ben Hawkins shot off his finger; since we accidentally burned up that poor fellow in the calabooseⒺexplanatory note; since we used to shoot spool cannons;, & cannons made of keys, while that envied & hated Henry Beebe drowned out our poor little pop-guns with his booming brazen little artillery on wheels; since Laura Hawkins was my sweetheart—————
[begin page 22] Hold! That rouses me out of my dream, & brings me violently back unto this day & this generation. For behold I have at this moment the only sweetheart I ever loved, & bless her old heart she is lying asleep upstairs in a bed that I sleep in every night, & for four whole days she has been Mrs. Samuel L. Clemens!
I am thirty-four & she is twenty-four; I am young & very handsome (I make the statement with the fullest confidence, for I got it from her), & she is much the most beautiful girl I ever saw (I said that before she was anything to me, & so it is worthy of all belief) & she is the best girl, & the sweetest, & the gentlest, & the daintiest, & the most modest & unpretentious, & the wisest in all things she should be wise in, & the most ignorant in all matters it would not grace her to know, & she is sensible & quick, & loving & faithful, forgiving, full of charity—& her beautiful life is ordered by a religion that is all kindliness & unselfishness. Before the gentle majesty of her purity all evil things & evil ways & evil deeds stand abashed,—then surrender. Wherefore, without effort, or struggle, or spoken exorcism, all the old vices & shameful habits that have possessed me these many many years, are falling away, one by one, & departing into the darkness.
Bill, I know whereof I speak. I am too old & have moved about too much, & rubbed against too many people not to know human beings as well as we used to know “boils” from “breaks.”Ⓔexplanatory note
She is the very most perfect gem of womankind that ever I saw in my life—& I will stand by that remark till I die.
William, old boy, surprised us a little, the other night. We all arrived here in a night train (my little wife & I were going to board), & under pretense of taking us to the private boarding-house that had been selected for me while I was absent lecturing in New England, my new father-in-law & some old friends drove us in sleighs to the daintiest, darlingest, loveliest little palace in America—& when I said “Oh, this won’t do—people who can afford to live in this sort of style won’t take boarders,” that same blessed father-in-law let out the secret that this was all our property—a present from himself. House & furniture cost $40,000 in cash, (including stable, horse & carriage), & is a most exquisite little palace (I saw no apartment in Europe so lovely as our little drawing-room.)
[begin page 23] Come along, you & MollieⒺexplanatory note, just whenever you can, & pay us a visit, (giving us a little notice beforehand,) & if we don’t make you comfortable nobody in the world can.
[And now my princess has come down for dinner (bless me, isn’t it cosy, nobody but just us two, & three servants to wait on us & respectfully call us “Mr.” & “Mrs. Clemens” instead of “Sam.” & “Livy!”) It took me many a year to work up to where I can put on style, but now I’ll do it. My book gives me an income like a small lord, & my paper is not a good profitable concern.
Dinner’s ready. Good bye & g God bless you, old friend, & keep your heart fresh & your memory green for the old days that will never come again.
Yrs always
Sam. Clemens.