November 29 Friday – Sam’s second lecture in Napier was canceled due to a fourth carbuncle threatening. His doctor called on him again at the hotel “and told him about some drunkards reclaimed by the Salvation Army, and a ‘citizen’ told him that the colonists, rather than having their teeth filled, merely pulled them out and substituted false ones.” Stuck in bed, Sam read railroad timetables and Indian histories [Shillingsburg, At Home 165; “Down Under” 27-8].
Sam also wrote a letter to his old friend Joe Twichell, having just received his letter of “two months & five days ago” (about Sept. 24). Joe was writing an article about Mark Twain. Sam called his latest carbuncle “No. 3. Not a serious one this time.”
I lectured last night without great inconvenience, but the doctors thought best to forbid to-night’s lecture….Livy is become a first-rate surgeon, now; she has been dressing carbuncles once & twice a day almost without a holiday ever since the 25th of last May.
Livy thinks she would rather you wouldn’t use the first incident you mention — the courting-incident.
That is the only objection offered. Bang away with a perfectly free hand as regards to everything else.
Yes, I like the idea of the Flagg portrait. And I also vastly like a photo which was made in Sydney lately — I ordered one to be sent to Harper. Best one that was ever made of me. …
We are all glad it is you who are to write the article, it delights us all through.
I think it was a good stroke of luck that knocked me on my back here at Napier, instead of in some hotel in the centre of a noisy city. Here we have the smooth & placidly-complaining sea at our door, with nothing between us & it but 20 yards of shingle — & hardly a suggestion of life in that space to mar it or make a noise. Away down here fifty-five degrees south of the equator this sea seems to murmur in an unfamiliar tongue — a tongue bred among the ice-fields of the Antarctic — a murmur with a note of melancholy in it proper to the vast unvisited solitudes it has come from. …
Day before yesterday was Livy’s birthday (underworld time), & to-morrow will be mine. I shall be 60 — no thanks for it [MTP].