Submitted by scott on

July 8 Saturday – The family traveled on some four and a half hours by rail from Götenburg to

Jönkoping; then three miles by two-horse landau to Sanna, Sweden. Sam later described Sanna:

Sanna consists of a half a dozen villas belonging to Kellgren—in these the patients live. It is on a vast blue lake, & at its back are the open fields. In the matter of brilliant skies, pure & bracing air, & intense quiet & reposefulness, of course the place is perfection.

The rooms in the villas are small. Take no cat; you cannot swing her. However, one is out doors from breakfast till the daylight dies at midnight, the first half of the season, therefore one has no need of the rooms except for sleeping. The furniture is cheap, but good enough, & there is no real oversurplus of it. I always felt so fresh & fine & young there, that I grew insanely fond of the place, & had to be bribed to leave it. And yet there are flies there—a bird I never could endure.

The food is wholesome but exceedingly simple & free from variety—it is country food & country style, & rationally prepared, nothing citified about it, & my family often mourned over it, but I got along plenty well enough with it [Apr. 23, 1900 to William James].


 

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Day By Day Acknowledgment

Mark Twain Day By Day was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition.