March 6 Sunday — In Hamilton, Bermuda Sam wrote a humorous receipt for Miss Helen S. Allen.
Received of S. L. C.
Two Dollars and Forty Cents
in return for my promise to believe everything he says hereafter.
[signed] Helen S. Allen
[verso] For Sale
The proprietor of the hereinbefore mentioned Promise desires to part with it on account of ill health and obliged to go away somewhere so as to let it recipricate, and will take any reasonable amount for it above 2 percent of its face because experienced parties think it will not keep but only a little while in this kind of weather & is a kind of proppity that don’t give a cuss for cold storage nohow [MTP].
Sam also replied to daughter Clara’s Feb. 16. Sam addressed the letter to Berlin, Germany; it was forwarded to Pontresina, Switzerland, Monte Carlo, Monaco, and Rome, Italy.
Clara dear, yours of Feb, 16 is just received,
Am I well? Yes—plenty well enough. I have had bronchitis for 2 or 3 weeks, with the proper cough, but it kept me in bed only about 3 days, instead of the customary 5 weeks. Therefore it has not been an inconvenience. I go & come as I please, & bark hardly any.
Concerning your suggestions to Paine about reducing the live stock & saving expense, I am writing him to stick to his own plans in that matter, as lately laid before me. He has probably laid the same before you by this time.
You see, I don’t feel so cramped now, as I’ve been feeling for some years past. Paine’s February report is in, & it changes the complexion of things. He has suddenly reduced monthly expenses to less than a third of what they have been for the past 5 years. He thinks he can run Stormfield for $10,000 a year, even when we are there.
I did not take any notice of Haithwaite’s letter, & stopped Paine from doing it.
You say “I wasn’t so far off in my guess about Miss Lyon, was I?”
Do you mean a recent guess? In your guess of a year ago you were unquestionably & unqualifiedly right. The severalties of that guess being that she was a liar, a forger, a thief, a hypocrite, a drunkard, a sneak, a humbug, a traitor, a conspirator, a filthy-minded & salacious slut pining for seduction & always getting disappointed, poor child.
Oh, by George I am glad to know of the success of Miss Jones’s book, & proud to remember that it was your plucky & persistent fight for her & her rights that secured the book’s birth when otherwise it would have perished in the womb. Yes indeed I am glad for Miss Jones, & very very proud & fond of her sweet champion my Clara, / Marcus [MTP].
Note. see Feb. 5 for more on Haithwaite. Miss Eudora (“Dora”) Duty Jones (1859-1913), renowned educator and speaker, author of The Technique of Speech: A Guide to the Study of Diction, etc. (1909). Miss Jones, daughter of Greensboro Female College president Rev. Turner Myrick Jones, became Lady President of after her mother’s death in 1884, From the mid 1890s on she lived in Europe and in London for the last two years of her life [Gribben 359; Museum of Greensboro College website].
Albert Bigelow Paine wrote from Redding to Clemens: “The farm deal is completed. Mr Nash came up yesterday and paid over the money and got his title. He is a fine man, I believe, and his wife seems an agreeable woman.” More details about stock prices and sales, and a word about John Bigelow quoting Twain’s tariff sentiment at a Chamber of Commerce dinner [MTP] Note: ‘ans mch 11”