I am very glad indeed that Susy has taken up Mental Science, and I do hope it may do her as much good as she hopes.  Last winter we were so very anxious to have her get hold of it, and even felt at one time that we must go to America on purpose to have her have the treatment, so it all seems very fortunate that it should have come about as it has this winter.

Just how much or how little Susy was helped by this treatment cannot be known.  Like Stevenson, she had “a soul of flame in a body of gauze,” a body to be guarded through the spirit.  She worked continuously at her singing and undoubtedly overdid herself.  Early in the year she went over to Hartford to pay some good-by visit, remaining most of the time in the home of Charles Dudley Warner, working hard at her singing.  Her health did not improve, and when Katie Leary went to Hartford to arrange for their departure she was startled at the change in her.

“Miss Susy; you are sick,” she said.  “You must have the doctor come.”

Susy refused at first, but she grew worse and the doctor was sent for.  He thought her case not very serious—­the result, he said, of overwork.  He prescribed some soothing remedies, and advised that she be kept very quiet, away from company, and that she be taken to her own home, which was but a step away.  It was then that the letter was written and the first cable sent to England.  Mrs. Crane was summoned from Elmira, also Charles Langdon.  Mr. Twichell was notified and came down from his summer place in the Adirondacks.

Susy did not improve.  She became rapidly worse, and a few days later the doctor pronounced her ailment meningitis.  This was on the 15th of August—­that hot, terrible August of 1896.  Susy’s fever increased and she wandered through the burning rooms in delirium and pain; then her sight left her, an effect of the disease.  She lay down at last, and once, when Katie Leary was near her, she put her hands on Katie’s face and said, “mama.”  She did not speak after that, but sank into unconsciousness, and on the evening of Tuesday, August 18th, the flame went out forever.

To Twichell Clemens wrote of it: 

Ah, well, Susy died at home.  She had that privilege.  Her dying eyes rested upon no thing that was strange to them, but only upon things which they had known & loved always & which had made her young years glad; & she had you & Sue & Katie & & John & Ellen.  This was happy fortune—­I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her.  If she had died in another house—­well, I think I could not have borne that.  To us our house was not unsentient matter—­it had a heart & a soul & eyes to see us with, & approvals & solicitudes & deep sympathies; it was of us, & we were in its confidence, & lived in its grace & in the peace of its benediction.  We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up & speak out its eloquent welcome—­& we could not enter it unmoved.  And could we now?