September 24 Thursday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to William Dean Howells.
Oh I reckon you will be able to stand such abuse as my autobiography will deal out to you. Particularly as you will be in heaven & not caring a dam in that distant future day appointed for the appearance of the Auto in print.
But—speaking of the burglary: I thought it was merely a pretty little adventure & useful to joke about—but no! It happened 6 days ago, but not a woman in this house has had a whole solid hour’s sleep since. I mean Clara, Miss Lyon & all the others. They drop into feverish cat-naps, & at the very slightest & almost inaudible noises they spring to a sitting posture, panting & gasping & quaking. It is pitiful. They look wan & haggard, & Miss Lyon has kept her bed for the last two days. Clara left for New York promptly & never wants to sleep in the house again. Miss Lyon & two of the maids will soon go away for a week & busy themselves with theatres & other burglar-abolishing restfulnesses.
Lately I was once more reading your incomparable Tuscan Cities—a book [1886] whose details I love to forget, so that I can read them again with the pristine relish. If I had a memory I should know the book by heart by this time.
Damn the flies!—there’s a million of them swarming around me, this sultry close day. /Good- bye, / Yrs ever [MTHL 2: 834-5]. Note: the source adds, “apparently a missing letter from Howells made jocular inquiry about his role in Mark Twain’s autobiographical Dictation” [n1].
Sam also inscribed a copy of JA to Marguerite Schmidt (Schmitt): “To / Mademoiselle Marguerite Schmitt, / with the high esteem & the / friendly regards of / The Author. / Sept. 24/08”. Sam added the very last paragraph from JA, noting from page 461 :
“Love, Mercy, Charity, Fortitude, War, Peace, Poetry, Music—these may be symbolised as any shall prefer: by figures of either sex & of any age; but a slender girl in her first young bloom, with the martyr’s crown upon her head, & in her hand the sword that severed her country’s bonds—shall not this, & no other, stand for PATRIOTISM through all the ages until time shall end?” [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Benares [Ashcroft] came back” [MTP: IVL TS 66].
Manfred Goldschmidt wrote from NYC to Sam, enclosing a letter and translation by his sister who was 21 and had lived in Germany for eleven years [MTP].
Julia Langdon Loomis (Mrs. Edward E. Loomis) wrote to Sam on notepaper from French Lick Springs Hotel (Ind.) for which she apologized. Was there a chance he might come and visit them at their country home in Short Hills, NJ? It wasn’t far from Redding [MTP]. Note: IVL: “answered”
Inez Shannon wrote from on Gerard Hotel, NYC letterhead to ask Sam for a fifteen-minute interview from “the daughter of one of your boyhood schoolmates at Hannibal—namely —‘Fanny McFarland’. Before she died she told me to make myself known to you.” Shannon needed advice badly for things she could not explain on paper. She enclosed a very large playbill picturing “Inez Shannon And Her Children—Frances, Pat and Zyllah” from the Morning Telegraph, NY, July 26, 1908 [MTP].
William Singerman for the Children’s Educational Theatre wrote to thank Sam for his “very beautiful photograph” [MTP].