May 17 Sunday – Dorothy Sturgis wrote to Sam.

Dear Mr. Clemens.

      You are indeed a most noted personage if a letter will reach you without any address on it at all. But do tell me why it went to Hartford, did you ever live there?

      I saw a lovely article about you in the Transcript the other day, headed

      “Mark Twain-Nuisance Senator Stewart tells how he wrote ‘Innocents Abroad’ and frightened his landlady”! Was that true? If so I didn’t know that you were such a bad character, the description of you was truly awful, and not at all correct—now, except for the cigar. You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t have a cigar in your mouth or between your fingers.

      Papa read aloud “The Brushwood Boy” to me last night for about the tenth or twelve time. I believe, & I love it more every time I read it. Don’t you think yourself that of all the short stories in the English language it is one of the most wonderfully worded, the most clearly expressed, and the most exquisitely thought out of any you have read? I certainly do. Did you ever come across a writer who could cover so large a space of time and introduce so many wonderful thoughts in so short a story. / Ever your loving Dorothy [MTAq 158]. Note: “The Brushwood Boy” by Rudyard Kipling. [MTP].