Villadi Quarto, Firenze,
May 26, 1904. 
Dear Governor Francis,—­It has been a dear wish of mine to exhibit myself at the Great Fair and get a prize, but circumstances beyond my control have interfered, and I must remain in Florence.  Although I have never taken prizes anywhere else I used to take them at school in Missouri half a century ago, and I ought to be able to repeat, now, if I could have a chance.  I used to get the medal for good spelling, every week, and I could have had the medal for good conduct if there hadn’t been so much curruption in Missouri in those days; still, I got it several times by trading medals and giving boot.  I am willing to give boot now, if —­however, those days are forever gone by in Missouri, and perhaps it is better so.  Nothing ever stops the way it was in this changeable world.  Although I cannot be at the Fair, I am going to be represented there anyway, by a portrait, by Professor Gelli.  You will find it excellent.  Good judges here say it is better than the original.  They say it has all the merits of the original and keeps still, besides.  It sounds like flattery, but it is just true.

I suppose you will get a prize, because you have created the most
prodigious and in all ways most wonderful Fair the planet has ever seen. 
Very well, you have indeed earned it:  and with it the gratitude of the
State and the nation. 
                                   Sincerely yours,
          
                                        mark twain

It was only a few days after the foregoing was written that death entered Villa Quarto—­unexpectedly at last—­for with the first June days Mrs. Clemens had seemed really to improve.  It was on Sunday, June 5th, that the end came.  Clemens, with his daughter Jean, had returned from a long drive, during which they had visited a Villa with the thought of purchase.  On their return they were told that their patient had been better that afternoon than for three months.  Yet it was only a few hours later that she left them, so suddenly and quietly that even those near her did not at first realize that she was gone.

To W. D. Howells, in New York.

Villadi Quarto, Florence,
June 6, ’94. [1904]
Dear Howells,—­Last night at 9.20 I entered Mrs. Clemens’s room to say the usual goodnight—­and she was dead—­tho’ no one knew it.  She had been cheerfully talking, a moment before.  She was sitting up in bed—­she had not lain down for months—­and Katie and the nurse were supporting her.  They supposed she had fainted, and they were holding the oxygen pipe to her mouth, expecting to revive her.  I bent over her and looked in her face, and I think I spoke—­I was surprised and troubled that she did not notice me.  Then we understood, and our hearts broke.  How poor we are today!

But how thankful I am that her persecutions are ended.  I would not call her back if I could.