I was glad that the boys came here to invite me to the house-warming and I think they understood why a man in the shadow of a calamity like mine could not go.

It has taken three months to repair and renovate our house—­corner of 9th and 5th Avenue, but I shall be in it in io or 15 days hence.  Much of the furniture went into it today (from Hartford).  We have not seen it for 13 years.  Katy Leary, our old housekeeper, who has been in our service more than 24 years, cried when she told me about it to-day.  She said “I had forgotten it was so beautiful, and it brought Mrs. Clemens right back to me—­in that old time when she was so young and lovely.”

Jean and my secretary and the servants whom we brought from Italy because Mrs. Clemens liked them so well, are still keeping house in the Berkshire hills—­and waiting.  Clara (nervously wrecked by her mother’s death) is in the hands of a specialist in 69th St., and I shall not be allowed to have any communication with her—­even telephone—­for a year.  I am in this comfortable little hotel, and still in bed—­for I dasn’t budge till I’m safe from my pet devil, bronchitis.

Isn’t it pathetic?  One hour and ten minutes before Mrs. Clemens died I was saying to her “To-day, after five months search, I’ve found the villa that will content you:  to-morrow you will examine the plans and give it your consent and I will buy it.”  Her eyes danced with pleasure, for she longed for a home of her own.  And there, on that morrow, she lay white and cold.  And unresponsive to my reverent caresses—­a new thing to me and a new thing to her; that had not happened before in five and thirty years.

I am coming to see you and Mrs. Doubleday by and bye.  She loved and
honored Mrs. Doubleday and her work. 
                                   Always yours,
          
                                        mark.

It was a presidential year and the air was thick with politics.  Mark Twain was no longer actively interested in the political situation; he was only disheartened by the hollowness and pretense of office-seeking, and the methods of office-seekers in general.  Grieved that Twichell should still pin his faith to any party when all parties were so obviously venal and time-serving, he wrote in outspoken and rather somber protest.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: 

TheGrosvenor, Nov. 4, ’04.  Oh, dear! get out of that sewer—­party politics—­dear Joe.  At least with your mouth.  We hail only two men who could make speeches for their parties and preserve their honor and their dignity.  One of them is dead.  Possibly there were four.  I am sorry for John Hay; sorry and ashamed.  And yet I know he couldn’t help it.  He wears the collar, and he had to pay the penalty.  Certainly he had no more desire to stand up before a mob of confiding human incapables and debauch them than you had.  Certainly he took no more real pleasure in distorting history, concealing facts, propagating immoralities, and appealing to the sordid side of human nature than did you; but he was his party’s property, and he had to climb away down and do it.