September 13 Friday – Sam wrote from Geneva, Switzerland to Olivia Lewis Langdon. This is a delightful letter to Sam’s mother-in-law, with notes about the children. Sam wrote about Clara Spaulding watching the children while he and Livy traveled to Chamonix and Mont Blanc. The children “entertained” Clara, he wrote,

…sometimes with philosophical remarks & sometimes with questions which only the Almighty could answer. Susie said, “Aunt Clara, if the horses should run away & mamma be killed, would you be my mamma?” “Yes, for a little while, Susie, till we got to Elmira—but you wouldn’t want your mamma to be killed by the horses, of course?”——“Well,—I wouldn’t want her to go in that WAY, but I would like to have you for my mamma.”

Susie persecuted Clara with questions as to how God could build all these people out of dust “and make them stick together.”

You must understand that Susie’s thinkings run nearly altogether on the heavenly & the supernatural; but Bay’s mind is essentially worldly. Bay says she does not want to go to heaven—prefers Hartford [MTLE 3: 90-1].

Joe Twichell, en route home, wrote to Sam with a heavy heart, thinking of leaving him at Geneva. He related a pretty girl sitting across from him on the train, who told him “it was not allowed to smoke here.” He wrote, “In an instant she was transformed into a hag” [MTP].