July 15 Thursday — In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Frances Nunnally in Camp Esta-Naula East Sebago, Maine.
I can answer your question definitely, now, Francesca dear, It is heart-disease. Not the best kind, but good enough for the purpose. It is decided that I have what is technically termed a “tobacco” heart. This will move even the wise to laugh at me, for in my vanity I have often bragged that tobacco couldn’t hurt me, Privately & between you & me, I am well aware that I ought to laugh at myself—& would if I were a really honest person.
However the victory over me is not much of a victory after all, for it has taken 63 years to build this disease. I was immune that long, anyway.
No, as I have said, this is not the best form of it. The best form is the one which plucks the life out of you suddenly, or by a lightning-stroke; whereas this one is slow & tedious & procrastinating, & you have to wait & wait & wait till you get run over by a freight train before you can get rid of yourself, Meantime it subjects you to many many many inconveniences. For instance, you can make no journeys, even short ones; you must spend about 20 of the 24 hours in your room—& mainly in bed; you must smoke only 4 times a day instead of 40; & finally, you must do very little work. If you neglect any one of these things, the blood-pressure increases & the pains come. It is the pains that persuade you to behave yourself—nothing else could do it. Every day when the pains come, you reform; you reform right away, & you do not misbehave again for hours & hours.
“Are there any compensations? Plenty of them. As a rule the pains come only about twice a day; & the rest of the day is comfortable, & also agreeable. Idleness is my occupation; life is become a continuous holiday; a pleasant one, too, on the whole.
At West Point you were “interested in seeing all the buildings.” Buildings? That isn’t any way to spell Cadets. Go straight back to St. Timothy’s & start over again. / With lots of love / ... [MTP; MTAq 261-2].
The New York Times ran a squib datelined Redding, Conn. July 15:
MRS. ASHCROFT NOT SEEN.
Former Secretary, Whom Mark Twain is Suing, Did Not Call on Novelist.
Special to The New York Times.
REDDING, Conn., July 15—Mrs. Ralph W. Ashcroft, a former secretary of Mark Twain, who is being sued by the author for $4,000, and who has just got back from England, where she was on her honeymoon, did not see Mark Twain today, nor has she yet come back to her home here.
Miss Clemens and Mr. Clemens’s secretary saw a TIMES reporter at Stormfield, the novelist’s home, and said that Mr. Clemens would have nothing further to say about the matter, which was in the hands of his lawyer.