NewYork, Oct. 26, 1900.
Dear Mr. Baxter,—It was
a great pleasure to me to renew the other days with
you, and there was a pathetic pleasure in seeing Hartford
and the house again; but I realize that if we ever
enter the house again to live, our hearts will break.
I am not sure that we shall ever be strong enough
to endure that strain.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. Clemens.
Mr. and Mrs. Rogers wished to have them in their neighborhood, but the houses there were not suitable, or were too expensive. Through Mr. Frank Doubleday they eventually found, at 14 West Tenth Street, a large residence handsomely furnished, and this they engaged for the winter. “We were lucky to get this big house furnished,” he wrote MacAlister in London. “There was not another one in town procurable that would answer us, but this one is all right—space enough in it for several families, the rooms all old-fashioned, great size.”
The little note that follows shows
that Mark Twain had not entirely
forgotten the days of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
To a Neighbor on West Tenth Street, New York:
Nov. 30. Dear madam,—I know I ought to respect my duty and perform it, but I am weak and faithless where boys are concerned, and I can’t help secretly approving pretty bad and noisy ones, though I do object to the kind that ring door-bells. My family try to get me to stop the boys from holding conventions on the front steps, but I basely shirk out of it, because I think the boys enjoy it.
My wife has been complaining to me this evening about
the boys on the front steps and under compulsion I
have made some promises. But I am very forgetful,
now that I am old, and my sense of duty is getting
spongy.
Very
truly yours,
S.
L. Clemens.