February 28 Wednesday – Mary Mason Fairbanks wrote long to Sam & Livy. In part:

My dear unreliable boy, but much more reliable daughter!

I hardly know where to take up the broken thread. I feel as if you had been to Europe.

I did n’t mind your not writing. Livy’s pleasant letter was the sweetest peace-offering you could have sent me. I know by experience how much there is to hinder our letters, even to those to whom our loving thoughts fly quickest. All that had been reckoned up and no balance brought in against you. I heard of you here and there and everywhere. I knew your weariness and your annoyances. Mother-like I so often wished for you, that you might sleep all day in my house, where no one could find you. That you might have just what you wanted for breakfast—as many cups of coffee as you wanted, with two sugar bowls to one cup. Oh! I was full of tenderness for you, and when Livy wrote that you would make Cleveland for Sunday before Toledo, I was in ecstasy! I fixed your room, and then I un-fixed it! I forced the green-house and I forced the kitchen. I added up and subtracted and divided the time you were to be here, that I might make the most of it, for you and for me and for all of us who were so glad of your coming. Mr. Fairbanks judiciously suggested that I must not be too sanguine! I withered him with rebuke for such distrust! Did I not know you—? With all your eccentricity, had you ever broken faith with me? I took a new dignity upon myself at thought of my confidence in you, and your certain justification of it. This was the role I filled the week before you went to Toledo. The week following, the play was withdrawn and the house closed. The subject is not commented upon in my presence. My husband had a peculiar way of reading aloud any notice he saw of “Mark Twain” in Columbus—“Mark Twain” in Pittsburg,—points from which Cleveland has always been very accessible heretofore. I would n’t notice him. It was enough for me to know way down in my inner heart, that the boy I had so doted upon had outgrown me. It did not make the matter any better to “put myself in his place”—for I know that if I had been on a lecture circuit, I would have disappointed my audience, before I would have passed him—or I would have treated them to “Casabianca” or “Hohenlinden”—It is all passed now—I have resumed my regular duties, but there is a little sore spot in my heart, and it throbs whenever any one says “when is Mr. Clemens coming to see you?” I think I shall do with the next questioner, what you did with your book catechizer—kill him! I have n’t seen the book yet—Frank has it & will send it me when he has read it. I hear pleasant things of it from others.

You are coming to Elmira in March—that will be a delight to all concerned. If it concerned me I should rejoice too, for I have wished for a sight of Livy’s face—and I have something of a grand Mother’s love for the white-faced baby who calls his nurse Pa. Alas! like Jeptha I have made a vow. I come from a proud clan, and henceforth you must find me within my castle walls. You propose to take me home with you from Elmira[.] What do you take me for? Read Acts 16th—last clause of verse 37th. Paul and I are of one mind.

We have been saying all winter we were going to New-York, but we are loth to leave home.

We shall probably go before warm weather, because then we wish to be at home to our friends.

A bushel of love to Livy & Langdon and for yourself all you choose to come for

Mother

I shall write soon to Livy. None of these hard words are for her [MTPO].