Midnight and after! and I must do many things to-day, and lecture tonight.

A world of thanks to you, Joe dear, and a world of love to all of you.

Mark.

Perhaps for readers of a later day a word as to what constituted the Jameson raid would not be out of place here.  Dr. Leander Starr Jameson was an English physician, located at Kimberley.  President Kruger (Oom Paul), head of the South African Republic, was one of his patients; also, Lobengula, the Matabele chief.  From Lobengula concessions were obtained which led to the formation of the South African Company.  Jameson gave up his profession and went in for conquest, associating himself with the projects of Cecil Rhodes.  In time he became administrator of Rhodesia.  By the end of 1894. he was in high feather, and during a visit to England was feted as a sort of romantic conqueror of the olden time.  Perhaps this turned his head; at all events at the end of 1895 came the startling news that “Dr. Jim,” as he was called, at the head of six hundred men, had ridden into the Transvaal in support of a Rhodes scheme for an uprising at Johannesburg.  The raid was a failure.  Jameson, and those other knights of adventure, were captured by the forces of “Oom Paul,” and some of them barely escaped execution.  The Boer president handed them over to the English Government for punishment, and they received varying sentences, but all were eventually released.  Jameson, later, became again prominent in South-African politics, but there is no record of any further raids.

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The Clemens party sailed from South Africa the middle of July, 1896, and on the last day of the month reached England.  They had not planned to return to America, but to spend the winter in or near London in some quiet place where Clemens could write the book of his travels.

The two daughters in America, Susy and Jean, were expected to arrive August 12th, but on that day there came, instead, a letter saying that Susy Clemens was not well enough to sail.  A cable inquiry was immediately sent, but the reply when it came was not satisfactory, and Mrs. Clemens and Clara sailed for America without further delay.  This was on August 15th.  Three days later, in the old home at Hartford, Susy Clemens died of cerebral fever.  She had been visiting Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner, but by the physician’s advice had been removed to the comfort and quiet of her own home, only a few steps away.

Mark Twain, returning from his triumphant tour of the world in the hope that soon, now, he might be free from debt, with his family happily gathered about him, had to face alone this cruel blow.  There was no purpose in his going to America; Susy would be buried long before his arrival.  He awaited in England the return of his broken family.  They lived that winter in a quiet corner of Chelsea, No. 23 Tedworth Square.

To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.: