Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
"At a quarter-past nine this evening she that was the life of my life
passed to the relief and the peace of death, after twenty-two months
of unjust and unearned suffering. I first saw her thirty-seven
years ago, and now I have looked upon her face for the last time....
I was full of remorse for things done and said in these thirty-
four years of married life that have hurt Livy's heart."
And to Howells a few days later:
"To-day, treasured in her worn, old testament, I found a dear and
gentle letter from you dated Far Rockaway, September 12, 1896, about
our poor Susy's death. I am tired and old; I wish I were with Livy."
They brought her to America; and from the house, and the rooms, where she
had been made a bride bore her to a grave beside Susy and little Langdon.
LVIII.
MARK TWAIN AT SEVENTY
In a small cottage belonging to Richard Watson Gilder, at Tyringham,
Massachusetts, Samuel Clemens and his daughters tried to plan for the
future. Mrs. Clemens had always been the directing force--they were lost
without her. They finally took a house in New York City, No. 21 Fifth
Avenue, at the corner of Ninth Street, installed the familiar
furnishings, and tried once more to establish a home. The house was
handsome within and without--a proper residence for a venerable author
and sage--a suitable setting for Mark Twain. But it was lonely for him.
It lacked soul--comfort that would reach the heart. He added presently a
great Aeolian orchestrelle, with a variety of music for his different
moods. Sometimes he played it himself, though oftener his secretary
played to him. He went out little that winter--seeing only a few old and
intimate friends. His writing, such as it was, was of a serious nature,
protests against oppression and injustice in a variety of forms. Once he
wrote a "War Prayer," supposed to have been made by a mysterious,
white-robed stranger who enters a church during those ceremonies that
precede the marching of the nation's armies to battle. The minister had
prayed for victory, a prayer which the stranger interprets as a petition
that the enemy's country be laid waste, its soldiers be torn by shells,
its people turned out roofless, to wander through their desolated land
in rags and hunger. It was a scathing arraignment of war, a prophecy,
indeed, which to-day has been literally fulfilled. He did not print it,
because then it would have been regarded as sacrilege.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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