April 18 Tuesday – Still ailing in Chicago, Sam wrote to Livy, back at the Villa Viviani in Florence:

The doctor is done with me but requires Mr. Hall to keep me in bed a day longer, & maybe two. I do not mind it, for the reading & smoking is (are) pleasant — but! Yesterday the calling was like a levee. No respite, no rest. To-day we are wiser.

Eugene Field brought me “Cranford” — I never could read it before; but this time I blasted my determined way through the obstructing granite, slate & clay walls, not giving up till I reached the vein — since then I have been taking out pay ore right along.

I love you all, every one — Susy, Ben, Jean — & mamma at the head of the procession & also at the foot of it [LLMT 264].

Note: Eugene Field (1850-1895), well known poet and columnist for the Chicago Record, brought Sam a copy of Mrs. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell’s (1810-1865) Cranford (?). See Gribben 253. Note: Field was also from Missouri with a newspaper background. On his last visit to St. Louis in 1902 Sam would unveil a marker at Field’s birthplace.

Joe Twichell wrote to Livy that he and Harmony had returned home from Europe on Apr. 16, and since his wife had suffered from pneumonia, stricken on New Years’ Eve, but had “pretty much recovered.” He apologized profusely for not writing sooner. He offered that the question, “When are the Clemenses coming home?” was “a question raised hereabouts…” He asked that they send any of the girls “to pass two or three or four months with us, we have plenty of room for them” [MTP].