Submitted by scott on
October 1 Sunday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam began a letter (that he finished Oct. 3) to daughter Clara, in care of Katy Leary in N.Y.C..

Oh, you poor dear child! how the fiendish maladies do hunt you down & persecute you. But I am lavishing maledictions upon them & doing everything I can to help. I was very uneasy about you last night, & wanted to telegraph Miss Gordon for news, but the others desuaded me & said the news was that you are getting along. Well, continue, dear! Jean has gone climbing Monadnock for all day; I finished “A Horse’s Tale” yesterday evening & am satisfied with it, though it was not manufactured calmly but with an eight-day drive & rush—a dangerous process; it is noon, now, warm, brilliant, profoundly still & reposeful, the valley & the retreating hills are a bewildering intoxication of color—why, it is a joy to be alive! There is no place like Dublin. I will get up, now, & Miss Lyon & I will call a livery carriage & go look at the house—I have never seen it. / Love & progress to you, dear! Don’t write. Rest! / Father [MTP].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: This morning Mr. Clemens called me upstairs and read the last, the end of the beautiful story “The Horse’s Tale.” It is so lovely and so touching. Mr. Clemens’s output this summer has been a remarkable one. The Microbe Story—the Wonderful Poem to Death—adding to the “Mysterious Stranger” some fine imaginative chapters—The beautiful Eve’s Diary—Revising the Gospel—The Deity Article—The Freedom of Speech article and now this exquisite story.

Mr. Clemens and I went over to the Upton house—we looked it all over, and he likes it. Lovely drive. Franklin MacVeagh, Ex. Gov. Smith of Vt., brother of Greg Smith, was here. Then Mrs. Learned came in. Jean climbed Monadnock with Nancy Brush [MTP TS 103].

Day By Day Acknowledgment

Mark Twain Day By Day was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition.