Edited by Dixon Wecter

EXCEPT for Lincoln, no nineteenth-century American is more familiar to the world than Mark Twain. His physical traits — the shock of russet hair frosted by time to pure white, the hawk nose and piercing eye, the white clothes and the Missouri drawl which dominated lecture platforms and after-dinner tables — were as unforgettable as the savor of his personality, its drollery and corrosive wit. All his best books are in a manner autobiography. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are Sam Clemens’s boyhood; Life on the Mississippi his pilot, days; Roughing It his fling at mining, which led to his luckier strike in literature; The Innocents Abroad, and A Tramp Abroad the rambles in space of an incorrigible American, and A Connecticut Yankee, in time.

Mark Twain the suitor and lover is an unknown by the light of his literary works, since he has curiously little to say about the relation of the sexes, beyond the calf love of Tom Sawyer and Becky, the oblique study of miscegenation in Pudd’tihead Wilson, and a few Rabelaisian trifles never intended for the public. How, explicitly, did Samuel Clemens woo for a year and a half and wed — when he was thirty-five and she twenty-five — the only girl with whom he was ever deeply and incurably in love? Recalling forty years later, after her death, how he had first seen her face in a miniature carried by her brother on the Quaker City cruise, he told a friend, “From that day to this she has never been out of my mind.”

The soul side that a man “shows a woman when he loves her” — to quote from the Browning whose poetry Mark and Livy so often read together — is best disclosed by the letters which follow. A few of them were quoted some years ago by Clara Clemens in her charming memoir My Father Mark Twain; by her consent the remainder are now made available for publication.¹

“The wild humorist from the Pacific slope” had been sent by a Sacramento newspaper in 1867 on what was in effect the first modern pleasure cruise, to Europe and the Holy Land. Among this company he found a boon companion in Charles Langdon, a boy of eighteen, whose father, Jervis Langdon, was a self-made coal magnate of Elmira, New York. Another shipboard friend was Mary Mason Fairbanks, posting travel letters to her husband’s Cleveland Herald: although only seven years Sam Clemens’s senior, she became “Mother” Fairbanks to him, who “sewed my buttons on, kept my clothing in presentable trim, fed me on Egyptian jam (when I behaved) . . . and cured me of several bad habits,” as he wrote his family. She undertook the “civilizing” process which Sam Clemens, son of frontier and mining camp, felt to be the predestined role of good and refined women — respecting matters like slang, profanity, tobacco, and liquor — which his future wife was soon solicited to continue. Mrs. Fairbanks also became the confidante of his impending courtship, together with Charley Langdon, brother of the girl in question.

Olivia Langdon was a charming, sweet-faced, conventionally reared and overserious girl whose delicate health — after a fall on the ice, at the age of sixteen, resulted in two bedridden years which were ended by the ministrations of an osteopath with a streak of faith-healing — increased the protectiveness which her father and all the family had built around her. The whirlwind suit which the fiery-haired humorist began to pay her, following the return of the Quaker City, astonished and at first disconcerted the Langdons. They found his company diverting, but knowing nothing of his antecedents beyond his tales of pilothouse and mining camp, and his repute as a “phunny phellow,” wondered whether he was a suitable mate for their only daughter. Nevertheless, Clemens was nothing if not persistent. On December 27, 1867, he first saw the original of the romantic face in the miniature; they met at the St. Nicholas Hotel in New York, where the Langdons were stopping; their first date was an expedition to Steinway Hall to hear Dickens read from David Copperfield. On New Year’s Day, 1868, Clemens called upon her in the custom proper to that day, at the home of her friends, the Berrys, and (somewhat less conventionally) prolonged the call from noon till midnight.

A business trip to California delayed Mark Twain’s suit of Livy Langdon, but upon his return in the late summer of 1868 he managed to coax an invitation to Elmira from her brother.

Another visit in September showed that prolonging his sojourn was still a Twain specialty, with aid of an accident such as befell the man who came to dinner. In old age Mark told this incident with some inaccuracies; one legend says he bribed the coachman to contrive it. The most reliable account, with al! its comic exaggeration, appears in an unpublished letter, now in the Huntington Library, which he wrote Mrs. Fairbanks shortly after the event: “After I had been a night and a day at Mr. Lang don’s, Charley and I got into the wagon at 8 P.M. to leave for New York, and just as we sat down on the aftermost seat the horse suddenly started, the seat, broke loose, and we went over backwards, Charley falling in all sorts of ways and I lighting exactly on my head in the gutter and breaking my neck in eleven different places. . . . The seat followed Charley out and split his head wide open, so that you could look through it just as if you were looking through a gorge in a mountain. There wasn’t anything to intercept the view — which was curious, because his brains hadn’t been knocked out.

. . . But seriously, it came very near being a fatal mishap to both of us. ...”

Livy’s nursing was his heaven-sent opportunity, but his proposal just before leaving met with a rather frightened refusal. In all, she rejected him three times within as many months, meanwhile giving him permission to write to her as his “sister,” and promising to remember him in her prayers. Never a conventional Christian believer, he invited her, probably with full sincerity, to convert him. With this gambit he drew from her a steady stream of answers to his soul-searching letters. This heathen lured the earnest little missionary, equipped with tracts and Beecher’s sermons, deeper and deeper into the forest, his designs being connubial rather than cannibal. (By an irony beyond the scope of these early letters, he ended by converting her to many of his own doubts.)

In late November, 1868, in the midst of a lecture tour whose glowing press notices went not without effect upon the Langdons, the humorist suddenly reappeared at Elmira one morning with the words, “The calf has returned; may the prodigal have some breakfast?” At this time he won her shy acceptance, and her parents’ consent, to a secret trial engagement. Victorian subterfuges were adopted. When Clemens was in Elmira, Hattie Lewis, Livy’s cousin, accompanied the pair on their walks and rides together, fostering the impression that she was the object of the celebrated young lecturer’s suit. And the scaled letters intended for Livy’s eyes alone always arrived in an outer envelope addressed to her brother Charley, usually with a word of banter.

The first letter here was written as the jubilant suitor followed his lecture itinerary along the Great Lakes towns, a month after his acceptance.

TECUMSEH, [MICH] Dec. 27, [1868]
I got your letter at Charlotte, my dear, dear Livy, and 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 tomorrow, which is much sooner than I expected.
Yes, Livy, I do like to have you give me synopses of Mr. Beecher’s sermons — and you need not suppose that I read them over once and then lay them aside for good, for I do not. I read them over and over again and try to profit by them. I got the printed sermon also, and have read that several times. 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.” “Piety is the right performance of a common duty, as well as the experience of a special moral emotion.” 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 sense which tells me that what I do I am doing for love of the Savior. I can be a Christian — I shall be a Christian — but when I feel as I feel today, it seems a far journey away. . . . I am glad you marked the sermon, Livy—why didn’t you put in the margin what you and your father and 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—and I shan’t care to have an opinion of my own in the matter, notwithstanding your quiet sarcasm upon yourself, but I 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 — and so — well, I don’t drink anything, now, dear, and so your darling noble old heart has been troubling itself all for nothing! But please don’t let my motive distress you, Livy. You know the child must crawl before it walks — and I must do right for love of you while I am in the infancy of Christianity; and 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 importance, for it is no sacrifice, because I have not now, and never had, any love for any kind of liquors, and not even a passable liking for any but champagne and ale, and only for these at intervals. I ought to be ever so grateful to you, Livy, for your brave confidence in me, and 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! . . .
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, and talk to you and 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 belter 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 and 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. . . .
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 — and I think so yet. Still, I shall always be ready and willing to confess anything and everything to you, Livy, that you could possibly wish to know.
The supper bell has rung. . . .
Good-bye darling — over these leagues of weary distance I cast a loving kiss.
SAML L.C.

[P.S.] It is too bad, Livy, that I have to write so much in pencil.

Jervis Langdon, a cautious father, asked Sam Clemens for character references before the engagement could be announced. As the latter remembered it years later in his Autobiography, he offered six names from the Pacific Coast, including two clergymen but omitting his very best friends out of scruple that they might lie loyally on his behalf. On his own hook Langdon wrote also to a former Elmira Sunday-school superintendent now clerking in a bank out west. All, it seems, leaned over backwards in their pious criticism, one clergyman and the former Sunday-school teacher adding “to their black testimony the conviction that I would fill a drunkard’s grave,”Mark recalled. Those sessions with newspaper cronies and bon vivants like Artemus Ward at the midnight bars of Virginia City and San Francisco arose from the buried years to threaten Mark’s courtship with blight. In a mood of alarm mingled with unsparing honesty and a characteristic glint of grim humor, Clemens replied for the defense.

CLEVELAND, Dec. 29, [1868]
DEAR MR. LANGDON:-
I wrote to the Metropolitan Hotel for your letter (of Dec. 8,) and it overtook me two or three days ago at Charlotte, Mich. I will not deny that the first paragraph hurt me a little — hurt me a good deal — for when you speak of what I said of the drawing-room, I see that you mistook the harmless overflow of a happy frame of mind for criminal frivolity. This is a little unjust — for although what I said may have been unbecoming, it surely was no worse. The subject of the drawing-room cannot be more serious to you than it is to me. But I accept the rebuke, freely and without offer of defence, and am as sorry I offended as if I had intended offense.
All the rest of your letter is just as it should be. The language is as plain as ever language was in the world, but I like it all the better for that. I don’t like to mince matters myself or have them minced for me. I think I am safely past that tender age when one cannot take his food save that it be masticated for him beforehand — and I would much profer to suffer from the clean incision of an honest lancet than from a sweetened poison. Therefore it is even as you say: I have “loo much good sense” to blame you for that part of the letter. Plain speaking does not hurt one.
I am not hurrying my love — it is my love that is hurrying me — and surely no one is better able to comprehend that than you. I fancy that Mrs. Langdon was the counterpart of her daughter at the age of twenty-three — and so I refer you to the past for explanation and for pardon of my conduct. At your time of life, and being, like you, the object of an assured regard, I shall be able to urge moderation upon younger people, and shall do it relentlessly — but now I feel a larger charity for such. Your heart is big enough to feel all the force of that remark — and so believing, you will not be surprised to find me thus boldly knocking at it. It does not seem to me that I am otherwise than moderate— it cannot seem so from my point of view — and so while I continue as moderate as I am now and have been, I think it is fair to hope that you will not turn away from me your countenance or deny me your friendly toleration, even though it be under a mild protest.
It is my desire as truly as yours, that sufficient time shall elapse to show you, beyond all possible question, what I have been, what I am, and what I am likely to be. Otherwise you could not be satisfied with me, nor I with myself. I think that much of my conduct on the Pacific Coast was not of a character to recommend me to the respectful regard of a high eastern civilization, but it was not considered blameworthy there, perhaps. We go according to our lights. I was just what Charlie would have been, similarly circumstanced, and deprived of home influences. I think all my references can say I never did anything mean, false, or criminal. They can say that the same doors that were open to me seven years ago are open to me yet; that all the friends I made in seven years are still my friends; that wherever I have been I can go again — and enter in the light of day and hold my head up; that I never deceived or defrauded anybody, and don’t owe a cent . And they can say that I attended to my business with due diligence, and made my own living, and never asked anybody to help me do it, either. All the rest they can say about me will be bad. I can tell the whole story myself, without mincing it, and will if they refuse.
I wish to add to the references I gave Mrs. Langdon, the following: Hon. J. Neely Johnson, Carson City, Nevada. He was Governor of California some ten years ago, and is now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nevada, if my memory serves me. He has known me about seven years — he and his wife — we were next door neighbors — and his house is always my home, now-a-days when I am in Carson, and has been for a year or two past. Then there is the present Governor of Nevada, H. G. Blaisdel — he has known me four or five years — don’t know whether he has known any good of me or not. He is a thoroughly pure and upright man, and a most excellent. And I give you, also, Joseph T. Goodman (reared in Elmira, I believe,) proprietor and chief editor of the Dally Enterprise, Virginia City, Nevada, and C. A. V. Putnam, his Newseditor — the first of whom has known me six years (I was his City editor 3 years without losing a day,) and the latter five years, and neither of whom would say a damaging word against me for love or money or hesitate to throttle anybody else who ventured to do it — and so you will perceive at once that they are not the most promising sources to refer you to for information. Those two fellows are just the salt of the earth, in my estimation. Now, however, being appealed to seriously, in so grave a matter as this, it is very possible — even likely — that they would override their ancient friendship for me, and speak the whole truth. I shall not write to them — or to any of these references, of course — and so their testimony will be unbiased. Then there is A. J. Marsh, who is a Phonographic Reporter, in San Francisco, my close friend for five or six years — he and his wife and family are utterly without reproach, and would be in any community. And Frank Gross. . . . And R. B. Swain and family, San Francisco. Mr. Swain is Superintendent of the U.S. mint, and is also one of the “merchant princes ” there. He is the Schuyler Colfax of the Pacific Coast — being regarded by high and low, rich and poor, Tom, Dick, and Harry, as a man against whose pure reputation nothing can be said. He don’t know much about me, himself maybe, though we were pretty intimate latterly, but he ought to know a good deal through his Secretary Frank B. Harte² (editor of the Overland Monthly and the finest writer out there) for we have been very intimate for several years. This morning I received from Mr. Swain a letter which has been following me some time. I think a great deal of him else I wouldn’t write to him. You have no antipathy to thoroughly good men, and so I beg that you will give his picture a place on the mantelpiece.
As to what I am going to be, hencetorth, it is a thing which must be proven and established. I am upon the right path — I shall succeed, I hope. Men as lost, as I, have found a Savior, and why not I? I have hope — an earnest hope — a long-lived hope.
I wrote you and Mrs. Langdon a letter from Lansing, which will offend again, I fear — and yet, no harm was meant, no undue levity, no disrespect, no lack of reverence. The intent was blameless — and it is the intent, and not the act that should be judged, after all. Even men who take life are judged by this rule only.
They say the desire is so general, here, to have this public distressed again by a repetition of my lecture, that Mr. Fairbanks offers me $150 to repeat it the third week in January, and Mrs. Fairbanks offers to let me repeat it for the benefit of the Orphan’s Home at a dollar a head and pay me nothing for it. I have accepted the latter proposition. I have received a second invitation from the Association I lectured for in Pittsburgh to come there and talk again. They have gotten up some little feeling there because of an unjust and angry criticism upon the lecture (it appeared in the Dispatch,) and I think maybe that is the cause of these calls. I shall try to go, though really I am not disposed to quarrel with the Dispatch’s opinion or make myself sad about it, either. I always liked to express my opinions freely in print, and I suppose the Dispatch people have a taste that runs in a similar direction.³ . . .
I believe I have nothing further to say, except to ask pardon for past offenses against yourself, they having been heedless, and not deliberate; and that you will —
(Mrs. Fairbanks has just come in and she says: “For shame! cut that letter short-do you want to wear out what endurance the poor man has left after his siege of illness?” This is a woman, Sir, whose commands are not to be trifled with — and so I desist.)
With reverent love and respect
I am
Sincerely
SAML. L. CLEMENS

According to Clemens’s recollections, the upshot came later when they stood face to face. After reviewing these letters, his prospective father-in-law gravely asked, “Haven’t you a friend in the world?” Clemens replied, “Apparently not.” And then the shrewd old coal operator said, “I’ll be your friend, myself. Take the girl. I know you better than they do.”

[Probably DECATUR, ILL.] Jan. 6, 1869
MY DEAREST LIVY:-
. . . Make some more pictures of our own wedded happiness, Livy — with the bay window (which you shall have) and the grate in the living-room— (which you shall have, likewise,) and flowers, and pictures and books (which we will read together,) — pictures of our future home — a home whose patron saint shall be love — a home with a tranquil “home atmosphere” about it — such a home as “our hearts and our God shall approve.” And Livy, don’t say at the bottom of it, “How absurd, perhaps wrong, I am to write of these things which are so uncertain.” Don’t, Livy, it spoils everything — and sounds so chilly. . . .
When I get starved and find that I have a little wife that knows nothing about cooking, and — Oh, my prophetic soul! you know anything about cookery! I would as soon think of your knowing the science of sawing wood! We shall have some peculiarly and particularly awful dinners, I make no manner of doubt, but I guess we can eat them, and other people who don’t like them need not favor us with their company. That is a fair and proper way to look at it, I think.
You are such a darling faithful little correspondent, Livy. I can depend on you all the time, and I do enjoy your letters so much. And every time I come to the last page and find a blank area on it I want to take you in my arms and kiss you and wheedle you into sitting down and filling it up — and right away my conscience pricks me for wanting to make you go to work again when you have already patiently and faithfully wrought more than I deserve, and until your hand is cramped and tired, no doubt, and your body weary of its one position. . . .
I am all impatience to see the picture — and I do hope it will be a good one, this time. I want it to be more than a painted iron plate — I want it to be yourself, Livy — I want the eyes to tell me what is passing in the heart, and the hair and the vesture and the attitude to bring to me the vivid presentment of the grace that now is only vaguely glimpsed to me in dreams of you at night when I and the world sleep.
I shudder to think what time it may be! All the sounds are such late sounds! But though you were here to scold me, darling, I would not put this pen down till I had written I love you, Livy!
Good-bye — Lovingly now and forever and forever SAME. L. C.

P.S. Can’t stop to correct the letter, Livy.

EL PASO, ILL., Jan. 12, [1869]
MY DEAREST Livy: —
. . . Why bless your darling heart I do love to hear you scold!—and rather than have you stop, Livy. I will be distressed when you do it. It does make an impression, Livy — it makes a deep impression, it does indeed — it makes me just as happy as I can be. Now I know you won’t stop scolding, since it makes me happy, you precious little philosopher. And besides, whenever it is “something that really troubles you,” I will try honestly to listen and behave better, even if I do seem to talk so jestingly about it. — But to tell the truth, I love you so well that I am capable of misbehaving, just for the pleasure of hearing you scold. I used to surreptitiously provoke Charlie into uttering outrageous speeches simply that I might see you look astounded and hear you say “O Charlie!” Forgive me, darling.
I remember the cribbage right well, and how I used to swindle you into the notion that I had sixteen in my hand when I hadn’t a point, you innocent! And I remember how I used to prevent your putting in your pegs at the beginning of the game —and did it. merely because it gave me a chance to touch your hand — and for no other reason in the world. I always thought the cribbage was profitable, because I could sit there and look into your eyes all the time — it was much better than reading any other book, Livy! I wish I coidd have a chapter now. But when we are serene and happy old married folk, we will sit together and con other books all the long pleasant evenings, and let the great world toil and struggle and nurse its pet ambitions and glorify its poor vanities beyond the boundaries of our royalty — we will let it lighten and thunder, and blow its gusty wrath about our windows and our doors, but never cross our sacred threshold. Only Love and Peace shall inhabit there, with you and I, their willing vassals. And I will read:—

and worship Tennyson, and you will translate Aurora Leigh and be gentle and patient with me and do all you can to help me understand what the mischief it is all about. And we will follow the solemn drumbeat of Milton’s stately sentences; and the glittering pageantry of Macaulay’s, and the shuddering phantoms that come and go in the grim march of Poe’s unearthly verses; and bye and bye drift dreamily into fairy-land with the magician laureate and hear “the horns of elfland faintly blowing.” And out of the Book of Life you shall cull the wisdom that shall make our lives an anthem void of discord and our deeds a living worship of the God that gave them. . . .
The time will drag, drag, drag, until I see you again — but I am thankful that your letters come so often. I wish they came every day. They so fill me with pleasure that I have not the heart to harbor an unkind sentiment toward any creature after I have read one of them.
I want to write more, but I suppose I ought to lie down a while. Please give my love to the good household. Good-bye, and happy dreams to you, Livy, darling, — and a loving kiss, and all thanks for yours.
Always and devotedly
SAML. L. C.

Note to Charlie:
You didn’t answer my last dozen, Charlie. Why is this thus?
SAM.

[CHICAGO] Sunday, Jan. 16, 1869
MY DEAREST LIVY:-
I am uncomfortably lame this morning. I slipped on the ice and fell, yesterday, in Iowa City, just as I was stepping into an omnibus. I landed with all my weight on my left hip, and so the joint is rather stiff and sore this morning.
I have just been doing that thing which is some times so hard to do — making an apology. Yesterday morning, at the hotel in Iowa City, the landlord called me at 9 o’clock, and it made me so mad I stormed at him with some little violence. I tried for an hour to go to sleep again and couldn’t — I wanted that sleep particularly, because I wanted to write a certain thing that would require a clear head and choice language. Finally I thought a cup of coffee might help the matter, and was going to ring for it — no bell. I was mad again. When I did get the landlord up there at last, by slamming the door till I annoyed everybody on my floor, I showed temper again — and he didn’t. See the advantage it gave him. His mild replies shamed me into silence, but I was still too obstinate, too proud, to ask his pardon. But last night, in the cars, the more I thought of it the more I repented and the more ashamed I was; and so resolved to make the repentance good by apologizing — which I have done, in the most ample and unmincing form, by letter, this morning. I feel satisfied and jolly, now.
“Sicisiors” don’t spell scissors, you funny little orthographist. But I don’t care how you spell, Livy darling — your words are always dear to me, no matter how they are spelt. And if I fancied you were taking pains, or putting yourself to trouble to spell them right, I shouldn’t like it at all. If your spelling is never criticised till I criticise it, it will never be criticised at all. . . .
It was just like Mr. Langdon in his most facetious mood, to say he would kill me if I wasn’t good to you — and it was just like you, you dear true girl, to say you’d never tell — for I believe you would go bravely on, suffering in secret from ill-treatment, till your great heart broke. But we shall circumvent Mr. Langdon, utterly — he never will have the satisfaction of killing me— because you and I will live together always in closest love and harmony, and I shall be always good to you, Livy dear — always. And whenever he needs a model married couple to copy after, he will only have to come and spend a few weeks at our home and we will educate him. He will see me honor you above all women, and he will also see us love each other to the utmost of human capability. So he can just put up his tomahawk and wash off his war-paint. He won’t have to kill me — will he, Livy? . . .
Have you got a good picture, yet, Livy? — because I want it so badly. Good-bye. Reverently and lovingly I kiss your forehead and your lips, my darling Livy, and wish you rest, and peace, and happy dreams.
For all time, devotedly,
SAML. L. C.

TOLEDO, Jan. 20, [1869]
MY DEAREST Livy:—
. . . I am most handsomely housed here, with friends — John B. Carson and family. Pleasant folks, and their home is most elegantly appointed. They are as bright and happy as they can be. He is 35 and she is 31 and looks 25. They have a son 14 years old and a daughter 13. The editors of the newspapers, and some other gentlemen and ladies have been up to call on me since the lecture, and sat till midnight. They thought it funny that I would taste neither champagne nor hot whisky punches with them, but Mrs. Carson said they needn’t mind urging me, as she had provided for me — and she had — a pot of excellent coffee and a lot of cigars. This reminds me of that Chicago newspaper notice. — It was exquisitely lubberly and ill-written all the way through, and made me feel absurd at every other sentence—but then it was written in the kindest spirit, Livy, and the reporter had honestly done his very best, and so we must judge him by his good intent, Livy, and not his performance.
And this naturally reminds me of the California letter you speak of (what you had previously said of it — or them, if there was more than one,) has gone to Sparta, Wis., I guess, and I haven’t received it yet. I don’t mind anything bad those friends have written your father about me, provided it was only true, but I am ashamed of the friend whose friendship was so weak and so unworthy that he shrank from coming out openly and aboveboard and saying all he knew about me, good or bad — for there is nothing generous in his grieving insinuation — it is a covert stab, nothing better. We didn’t want innuendoes — we wanted the truth. And I am honestly sorry he did not come out like a man and tell it. I am glad and proud that you resent the innuendo, my noble Livy. It was just like you. It fills me with courage and with confidence. And I know that howsoever black they may have painted me, you will steadfastly believe that I am not so black now, and never will be, any more. And I know that you are satisfied that whatever honest endeavor can do to make my character what it ought to be, I will faithfully do. The most degraded sinner is accepted and made clean on high when his repentance is sincere — his past life is forgiven and forgotten — and men should not pursue a loss magnanimous course toward those who honestly struggle to retrieve their past lives and become good. But what I do grieve over, Livy, is that those letters have pained you. Oh, when I knew that your kind heart had suffered for two days for what I had done in past years, it cut me more than if all my friends had abused me. Livy I can’t bear to think of you suffering pain — I had rather feel a thousand pangs than that you should suffer one. I am so glad to know that this pain has spent its force and that you are more at peace, now. Do try to banish these things from your mind, Livy, please. You are so ready and so generously willing to do whatever will please me—now this will please me above all things. Think Livy darling, how passionately I love you, how I idolize you, and so how distressed I cannot but feel to know that acts of mine are causing you pain — think how wretched such a reflection as that must make me, and summon back your vanished happiness, Livy. And reflect, in its place, that I will be just as good as ever I can be, and will never cause you sorrow any more. You will do this, won’t you, Livy? Oh, Livy. I dread the Sparta letter — for I know I shall find in it the evidence of your suffering— a letter, too, which I have watched the mails so closely for. And those California letters made your father and mother unhappy. But I knew they would — I knew they must. How wrong and how unfair, it seems, that they should be caused unhappiness for things which I alone should suffer for. I am sorry — I will atone for it, if the leading a blameless life henceforward can atone for it. . . .
Yes, Livy, I guess it is right for you to attend the sociables and do what you can, but I fancy you introducing yourself to a stranger and opening a conversation calculated to make him feel comfortable and at home! You couldn’t do it — and I am wicked enough to say I am glad of it, too. Lot them introduce the strangers to you — that is the proper Way, and the safest. — Some homely woman would be sure to repulse your advances, and I wouldn’t blame her — that is just the style of those homely women. And if you made advances to the men, you know perfectly well they would fall in love with you — and if you don’t, I do — and I couldn’t blame them, either. I can’t keep from falling in love with you — and nobody else. Well, I do love you — I do love you, darling, away beyond all expression. Just kiss me once, Livy, please.
“Letters shall go to you as often as possible, but I cannot lock myself up to them.” Why you blessed little spitfire, you almost got mad, that time, didn’t you! But when you say in the next sentence, “with a kiss, lovingly, Livy,” I want to take you in my arms and bless you and soothe your impatience all away; and tell you that howsoever foolishly I talk, I love and honor you away down in my heart, and that its every pulse-beat is a prayer for you and my every breath a supplication that all your days may be filled with the ineffable peace of God.
Livy, don’t talk about my “crying out against long letters.” Just write them, dear, and I shall be only too glad to read them. You cannot make them too long, and you can’t make them uninteresting, for that is simply impossible. Child, I take an interest in even the blots you make! Make them as long as you can, Livy, please. . . .
Good-bye, with a loving kiss and a blessing — For all time
SAML. L. C.

(To be continued)