February 6 Sunday – Sam wrote from Buffalo, New York to William “Will” Bowen:

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 & 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! 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 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 in our shirt-tails, with lath swords, in the woods on Holliday’s Hill on those long summer days; since we used to go swimming above the still-house branch—& at mighty intervals wandered on vagrant fishing excursions clear up to “the Bay,” & 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 “whitecaps” toward where people said Sam. Clemens was last seen before he went down; since we got up a rebellion against Miss Newcomb, under Ed. Stevens’ leadership, (to force her to let us all go over to Miss Tory’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 school-house 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 school-house—& 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, & 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; 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————————

     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 have 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! [MTL 4: 50-51]. Note: Clemens continued a few paragraphs praising Livy, and recounting the surprise of the house given to them by Jervis Langdon. He invited Will and wife to visit. See notes in source for information on persons mentioned. Sam was capable of utterly sublime prose poetry.

Clemens went alone to services at the Lafayette Presbyterian Church, Rev. Grosvenor W. Heacock, minister [MTL 4: 55n5]. Livy rested at home [Reigstad 130]. He also sent his wedding notice to George E. Barnes, editor of the San Francisco Morning Call, who had fired Sam. The two men remained on good terms. A similar notice and note was sent to Horace E. Bixby, Sam’s old Pilot & tutor of the Big Muddy; to Laura H. Frazier (Hawkins), the old sweetheart; to John McComb, Sam’s employer on the Alta California; to Charles Warren Stoddard, co-editor of the Californian (“what is the matter with Bret Harte? –why all these airs?”); and to William Wright (Dan De Quille). Harte had met some difficulty in getting a review copy of IA. A protest letter from Harte hit Sam as “insulting.” This was the beginning of their famous split [MTL 4: 56-63].