February 9 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:
All these days are full of interesting doings. A steady flame of delight burns through every hour; it burns—but sometimes the fog of little trying circumstances will obscure it until the wit comes to make you see right through the fog to the wonderful, wonderful flame. I don’t want any earthly thing outside of this house. And it is such a comfort to have Mr. Paine full of the love of the daily dictation, missing not a gesture—not a word—not a glance, but treasuring it all.
Mr. Clemens has begun to sit for a portrait to young Mr. Woolf. He doesn’t enjoy it, for he hates to be photographed or painted. We were speaking of the Gessford photograph today, it has so much fire in the eyes, a rare thing to find in any of his photographs and he said that he was just beginning to lose his temper and was on the verge of saying so when the final exposure was made [MTP TS 27-28]. Note: Samuel Johnson Woolf.
Clemens’ A.D. for this day: The “strong language” episode in the bath-room—Susy’s reference to “The Prince and the Pauper”—The mother and the children help edit the books— Reference to ancestors [AMT 1: 346-354].
In Wrentham, Mass. Helen Keller collapsed from overwork after attending a meeting in behalf of the deaf in Portland, Maine. She had to cancel a Mar. 20 New York appearance at which Mark Twain was to preside and Joseph Hodges Choate was to have been one of the speakers [The Oregonian, Feb. 10, 1906, p. 1, “Helen Kellar [sic] Has Collapsed”].
All these days are full of interesting doings. A steady flame of delight burns through every hour; it burns—but sometimes the fog of little trying circumstances will obscure it until the wit comes to make you see right through the fog to the wonderful, wonderful flame. I don’t want any earthly thing outside of this house. And it is such a comfort to have Mr. Paine full of the love of the daily dictation, missing not a gesture—not a word—not a glance, but treasuring it all.
Mr. Clemens has begun to sit for a portrait to young Mr. Woolf. He doesn’t enjoy it, for he hates to be photographed or painted. We were speaking of the Gessford photograph today, it has so much fire in the eyes, a rare thing to find in any of his photographs and he said that he was just beginning to lose his temper and was on the verge of saying so when the final exposure was made [MTP TS 27-28]. Note: Samuel Johnson Woolf.
Clemens’ A.D. for this day: The “strong language” episode in the bath-room—Susy’s reference to “The Prince and the Pauper”—The mother and the children help edit the books— Reference to ancestors [AMT 1: 346-354].
In Wrentham, Mass. Helen Keller collapsed from overwork after attending a meeting in behalf of the deaf in Portland, Maine. She had to cancel a Mar. 20 New York appearance at which Mark Twain was to preside and Joseph Hodges Choate was to have been one of the speakers [The Oregonian, Feb. 10, 1906, p. 1, “Helen Kellar [sic] Has Collapsed”].
Entry Date
Links to Twain's Geography Entries