July 16 Tuesday – † In the evening in Hartford, Sam dined with the Charles Warners and then wrote a “response” not an “answer” to his daughter Clara’s letter of the previous day.

I asked Cousin Susy to play the Seventh Symphony for me, and she done it. Also she played that other deep, rich, noble Beethoven piece — the one where, all along and all along, half a dozen of the bass notes keep rolling back down-stairs a little way — only to the first landing; and get up again and roll down again, and are the darling of the piece and the charm of it [MTP].

He wrote of a horrible train derailment, news received by his neighbors in a letter from Mrs. William D. Cabell. He also wrote of the night before also at the Warners [MTP]. Note: Isa Carrington Cabell of Virginia, a friend of the Warners and guest there in the past winter [MTNJ 3: 498n57]. See Oct. 28-31, 1893 entry for Sam’s opinion of Isa Carrington Cabell, and of Susy Warner’s meek acceptance of her “coarsest tyrannies.”

Sam also wrote to Andrew Chatto:

Your statement and drafts came yesterday, for £364, for which I thank you and endorse your opinion that it’s a very good return for an off year.

I have revised the “Yankee” twice; Stedman has critically read it & pointed out to me some needed emendations: Mrs. Clemens has read it & made me strike out many passages and soften others; I have read chapters of it in public several times where Englishmen were present, & have profited by their suggestions. Next week I shall make a final revision. After that, if it still isn’t blemishless I can’t help it, and ain’t going to try.

…If you can publish it without altering a single word, or omitting one, go ahead. Otherwise, please hand it to J.R. Osgood in time for him to have it published at my expense.

This is important, for the reason that the book was not written for America, it was written for England. So many Englishmen have done their sincerest to teach us something for our betterment, that it seems to me high time that some of us should substantially recognize the good intent by trying to pry up the English nation to a little higher level of manhood in turn [MTP].

Sam also responded to a letter from his daughter Susy Clemens, complimenting her writing. She was reading McCauley’s The History of England from the Accession of James II.

For forty years Macauley’s England has been a fascinator of mine, from the stately opening sentence to the massacre of Glencoe. I am glad you are reading it. And I hope it is aloud, to Mamma [Gribben 437].

This is a very dark and silent cavern, now — this house. The thick foliage and lowered curtains make deep twilight; the little piano is gone and the big one locked. So, sometimes I have a feeling which I don’t exactly know how to describe, but it is made up of revery, and dreariness, and lonesomeness, and is either the malady called homesickness or is a something which is “just contagious” to it [MTP].