November 27 Thursday – Thanksgiving – Livy’s 45th birthday. Livy was still in Elmira at her mother’s bedside. She wrote Sam:

We had a bad fright last night, we thought mother was going, but after a time she got quiet and slept about four hours. It is a terrible time [MTP; A. Hoffman 362-3].

In Hartford in the morning, Sam finished his Nov. 26 to Livy.

Thursday, 9:30 a.m. Charley W. [Warner] is here; says if we are called to Elmira, Annie Price says she will come and stay till Dec. 4. Jean’s case is perfectly satisfactory now. Mrs. Bunce is visiting her this moment. I love you Darling, Sam’l. Charley’s telegram just arrived [MTP].

Sam also wrote a response to William Dean Howells’ letter of condolence (not extant). He thanked Howells for his sentiments and told of rushing home from Elmira to find out “the truth as to Jean’s condition,” and of the many telegrams from Elmira of the “steadily failing” Olivia Lewis Langdon. Sam was torn and expressed his sorrows to his old friend:

I ought to be there to a support to Mrs. Clemens in this unspeakable trouble, & so ought Susy & Clara; but Jean pleads to be not wholly forsaken; so, when the death-telegram falls, I think I shall stay with Jean & send Susy & Clara to their mother.

I have fed so full on sorrows, these last weeks that I seem to have become hardened to them — benumbed.

After his signature Sam added, “A Boy’s Town,” Howells’ memoir of his boyhood years in Hamilton, Ohio, was “perfect — as perfect as the perfectest photograph the sun ever made” [MTHL 2: 633].

Katy Leary, the longtime Clemens servant, remembered this time:

He’d joke about anything. He’d joke even at a funeral! I remember when Mrs. Clemens’ mother was dying. She was sick a long time, and Mrs. Clemens was in Elmira and kept telegraphing Mr. Clemens every morning to come that day. Finally he said he’d go, but the children all began to try and hung on to him and begged him not to, so he hadn’t the heart to leave ‘em and he got terrible upset. So he went over to Mr. Warner and says: “Warner, I’ve written a letter to everybody who has a single drop of my blood in their veins and whose funeral I may ever have to go to, and I have asked them all to come and settle right down here within a radius of two blocks and just stay until they all die, so I won’t ever have to go out of town to attend their funerals! Yes, he’d joke about anything [LWMT 212].