Portland,
Oregon
Aug.
18, 1903.
My dear, dear mark twain,—May
a little girl write and tell you how dearly she loves
and admires your writings? Well, I do and I want
to tell you your ownself. Don’t think
me too impertinent for indeed I don’t mean to
be that! I have read everything of yours that
I could get and parts that touch me I have read over
and over again. They seem such dear friends
to me, so like real live human beings talking and laughing,
working and suffering too! One cannot but feel
that it is your own life and experience that you have
painted. So do not wonder that you seem a dear
friend to me who has never even seen you. I often
think of you as such in my own thoughts. I wonder
if you will laugh when I tell you I have made a hero
of you? For when people seem very sordid and
mean and stupid (and it seems as if everybody was)
then the thought will come like a little crumb of
comfort “well, Mark Twain isn’t anyway.”
And it does really brighten me up.
You see I have gotten an idea that you are a great, bright spirit of kindness and tenderness. One who can twist everybody’s-even your own-faults and absurdities into hearty laughs. Even the person mocked must laugh! Oh, Dear! How often you have made me laugh! And yet as often you have struck something infinite away down deep in my heart so that I want to cry while half laughing!
So this all means that I want to thank you and to
tell you. “God always
love Mark Twain!” is often my wish. I dearly
love to read books, and I
never tire of reading yours; they always have a charm
for me. Good-bye,
I am afraid I have not expressed what I feel.
But at least I have tried.
Sincerely
yours.
Margaret
M.——
Clemens and family left Elmira October the 5th for New York City. They remained at the Hotel Grosvenor until their sailing date, October 24th. A few days earlier, Mr. Frank Doubleday sent a volume of Kipling’s poems and de Blowitz’s Memoirs for entertainment on the ship. Mark Twain’s acknowledgment follows.
To F. N. Doubleday, in New York:
TheGrosvenor,
October
12, ’03.
Dear Doubleday,—The books came—ever
so many thanks. I have been reading “The
Bell Buoy” and “The Old Men” over
and over again—my custom with Kipling’s
work-and saving up the rest for other leisurely and
luxurious meals. A bell-buoy is a deeply impressive
fellow-being. In these many recent trips up and
down the Sound in the Kanawha —[Mr. Rogers’s
yacht.]—he has talked to me nightly, sometimes
in his pathetic and melancholy way, sometimes with
his strenuous and urgent note, and I got his meaning—now
I have his words! No one but Kipling could do
this strong and vivid thing. Some day I hope
to hear the poem chanted or sung—with the
bell-buoy breaking in, out of the distance.