XXXVI

LETTERS 1897.  LONDON, SWITZERLAND, VIENNA

Mark Twain worked steadily on his book that sad winter and managed to keep the gloom out of his chapters, though it is noticeable that ‘Following the Equator’ is more serious than his other books of travel.  He wrote few letters, and these only to his three closest friends, Howells, Twichell, and Rogers.  In the letter to Twichell, which follows, there is mention of two unfinished manuscripts which he expects to resume.  One of these was a dream story, enthusiastically begun, but perhaps with insufficient plot to carry it through, for it never reached conclusion.  He had already tried it in one or two forms and would begin it again presently.  The identity of the other tale is uncertain.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: 

London, Jan. 19, ’97.  Dear Joe,—­Do I want you to write to me?  Indeed I do.  I do not want most people to write, but I do want you to do it.  The others break my heart, but you will not.  You have a something divine in you that is not in other men.  You have the touch that heals, not lacerates.  And you know the secret places of our hearts.  You know our life—­the outside of it—­as the others do—­and the inside of it—­which they do not.  You have seen our whole voyage.  You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail—­and the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift—­derelicts; battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone.  For it is gone.  And there is nothing in its place.  The vanity of life was all we had, and there is no more vanity left in us.  We are even ashamed of that we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded high—­to come to this!

I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go away; I did not know that she could go away, and take our lives with her, yet leave our dull bodies behind.  And I did not know what she was.  To me she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need to look at it daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary; and now that I would do it, it is too late; they tell me it is not there, has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I am a pauper.  How am I to comprehend this?  How am I to have it?  Why am I robbed, and who is benefited?

Ah, well, Susy died at home.  She had that privilege.  Her dying eyes rested upon nothing that was strange to them, but only upon things which they had known and loved always and which had made her young years glad; and she had you, and Sue, and Katy, and John, and 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, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction.  We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome—­and we could not enter it unmoved.  And could we now, oh, now, in spirit we should enter it unshod.