December 31 Sunday –Sam also wrote his signature to William H. Ridgway in Contesville, Penn.: “None Genuine without this signature on the bottle: / Truly Yours / Mark Twain” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to George Standring:
Dear Standring it was good to hear from you. I wish you lived here, & close by—I should enjoy that. For I have no young friends now; except Aldrich & [Thomas] Wentworth
Higginson & Julia Ward Howe & Edward Everet Hale: Howells is old, Tom Reed & John Hay were young, but they are gone.
With old-time affection [MTP].
Gertrude Natkin wrote to Sam.
“The old year which was so happy toward the last is nearing its end and I want to wish you a very happy new year. I hope that I will have as pleasant an incident this new year as I had the fortune to have last year. Thanking you for your sweet letter, I am the little girl who loves you. Gertrude” [MTAq 9].
Muriel M. Pears wrote to Sam.
Always Dear and Great Mr. Clemens,
Now that I know you, I always find it quite a little difficult to address you—isn’t that unreasonable and feminine? But you can see Why—If one had gone away in the least disappointed or left indifferent it would have been so easy to have gone straight ahead without concern! But as it is—why, I can never even see the mental image of that two nights’ host without a quick, soft feeling of lovableness; I wish so much I could express that feeling of personal attachment; I grope about for words and phrases; and oh, I am so disappointed and disapproving of my hopeless futile efforts in the end! The only consolation I have is to reflect that, anyway, magicians always do know everything, even the things that don’t come off;—and who should know if not you who tore my heart with Eve’s sweet Diary, and the memorable Birthday Speech. I cannot bear to think of these things; the sorrows of life seem sometimes nearly unendurable: “Not in our dreams, O Lord, not even in our dreams!”—yet isn’t that about all that our love for our friends can do, only a little and in a degree to understand something of what they have had to meet and accept. So now you see that I am trying to thank you for the remembrance and friendship expressed in the Christmas Harper and the cutting about the Banquet. I wish I had known of this, for then I would have cabled my love too, with all the rest of the world wide choir. As it is, I am sending, as soon as it comes out, one of the Queen’s Carols to the Little Lady, as a token of the Season’s greetings and good wishes… [MTP].
Sam also wrote to George Standring:
Dear Standring it was good to hear from you. I wish you lived here, & close by—I should enjoy that. For I have no young friends now; except Aldrich & [Thomas] Wentworth
Higginson & Julia Ward Howe & Edward Everet Hale: Howells is old, Tom Reed & John Hay were young, but they are gone.
With old-time affection [MTP].
Gertrude Natkin wrote to Sam.
“The old year which was so happy toward the last is nearing its end and I want to wish you a very happy new year. I hope that I will have as pleasant an incident this new year as I had the fortune to have last year. Thanking you for your sweet letter, I am the little girl who loves you. Gertrude” [MTAq 9].
Muriel M. Pears wrote to Sam.
Always Dear and Great Mr. Clemens,
Now that I know you, I always find it quite a little difficult to address you—isn’t that unreasonable and feminine? But you can see Why—If one had gone away in the least disappointed or left indifferent it would have been so easy to have gone straight ahead without concern! But as it is—why, I can never even see the mental image of that two nights’ host without a quick, soft feeling of lovableness; I wish so much I could express that feeling of personal attachment; I grope about for words and phrases; and oh, I am so disappointed and disapproving of my hopeless futile efforts in the end! The only consolation I have is to reflect that, anyway, magicians always do know everything, even the things that don’t come off;—and who should know if not you who tore my heart with Eve’s sweet Diary, and the memorable Birthday Speech. I cannot bear to think of these things; the sorrows of life seem sometimes nearly unendurable: “Not in our dreams, O Lord, not even in our dreams!”—yet isn’t that about all that our love for our friends can do, only a little and in a degree to understand something of what they have had to meet and accept. So now you see that I am trying to thank you for the remembrance and friendship expressed in the Christmas Harper and the cutting about the Banquet. I wish I had known of this, for then I would have cabled my love too, with all the rest of the world wide choir. As it is, I am sending, as soon as it comes out, one of the Queen’s Carols to the Little Lady, as a token of the Season’s greetings and good wishes… [MTP].
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