The Complete Letters. Mark Twain

tell Mr. Gray, Aunt Betsey — that I wish him to place himself at your command.

      All the family are well — except myself — I am in a bad way again — disease, Love, in its most malignant form. Hopes are entertained of my recovery, however. At the dinner table — excellent symptom — I am still as “terrible as an army with banners.”

      Aunt Betsey — the wickedness of this world — but I haven’t time to moralize this morning.

      Goodbye

      SAM CLEMENS. As we do not hear of this “attack” again, the recovery was probably prompt. His letters are not frequent enough for us to keep track of his boats, but we know that he was associated with Bixby from time to time, and now and again with one of the Bowen boys, his old Hannibal schoolmates. He was reveling in the river life, the ease and distinction and romance of it. No other life would ever suit him as well. He was at the age to enjoy just what it brought him — at the airy, golden, overweening age of youth.

      To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

      ST. LOUIS, Mch. 1860. MY DEAR BRO., — Your last has just come to hand. It reminds me strongly of Tom Hood’s letters to his family, (which I have been reading lately). But yours only remind me of his, for although there is a striking likeness, your humour is much finer than his, and far better expressed. Tom Hood’s wit, (in his letters) has a savor of labor about it which is very disagreeable. Your letter is good. That portion of it wherein the old sow figures is the very best thing I have seen lately. Its quiet style resembles Goldsmith’s “Citizen of the World,” and “Don Quixote,” — which are my beau ideals of fine writing.

      You have paid the preacher! Well, that is good, also. What a man wants with religion in these breadless times, surpasses my comprehension.

      Pamela and I have just returned from a visit to the most wonderfully beautiful painting which this city has ever seen — Church’s “Heart of the Andes” — which represents a lovely valley with its rich vegetation in all the bloom and glory of a tropical summer — dotted with birds and flowers of all colors and shades of color, and sunny slopes, and shady corners, and twilight groves, and cool cascades — all grandly set off with a majestic mountain in the background with its gleaming summit clothed in everlasting ice and snow! I have seen it several times, but it is always a new picture — totally new — you seem to see nothing the second time which you saw the first. We took the opera glass, and examined its beauties minutely, for the naked eye cannot discern the little wayside flowers, and soft shadows and patches of sunshine, and half-hidden bunches of grass and jets of water which form some of its most enchanting features. There is no slurring of perspective effect about it — the most distant — the minutest object in it has a marked and distinct personality — so that you may count the very leaves on the trees. When you first see the tame, ordinary-looking picture, your first impulse is to turn your back upon it, and say “Humbug” — but your third visit will find your brain gasping and straining with futile efforts to take all the wonder in — and appreciate it in its fulness — and understand how such a miracle could have been conceived and executed by human brain and human hands. You will never get tired of looking at the picture, but your reflections — your efforts to grasp an intelligible Something — you hardly know what — will grow so painful that you will have to go away from the thing, in order to obtain relief. You may find relief, but you cannot banish the picture — It remains with you still. It is in my mind now — and the smallest feature could not be removed without my detecting it. So much for the “Heart of the Andes.”

      Ma was delighted with her trip, but she was disgusted with the girls for allowing me to embrace and kiss them — and she was horrified at the Schottische as performed by Miss Castle and myself. She was perfectly willing for me to dance until 12 o’clock at the imminent peril of my going to sleep on the after watch — but then she would top off with a very inconsistent sermon on dancing in general; ending with a terrific broadside aimed at that heresy of heresies, the Schottische.

      I took Ma and the girls in a carriage, round that portion of New Orleans where the finest gardens and residences are to be seen, and although it was a blazing hot dusty day, they seemed hugely delighted. To use an expression which is commonly ignored in polite society, they were “hell-bent” on stealing some of the luscious-looking oranges from branches which overhung the fences, but I restrained them. They were not aware before that shrubbery could be made to take any queer shape which a skilful gardener might choose to twist it into, so they found not only beauty but novelty in their visit. We went out to Lake Pontchartrain in the cars. Your Brother

      SAM CLEMENS We have not before heard of Miss Castle, who appears to have been one of the girls who accompanied Jane Clemens on the trip which her son gave her to New Orleans, but we may guess that the other was his cousin and good comrade, Ella Creel. One wishes that he might have left us a more extended account of that long-ago river journey, a fuller glimpse of a golden age that has vanished as completely as the days of Washington.

      We may smile at the natural youthful desire to air his reading, and his art appreciation, and we may find his opinions not without interest. We may even commend them — in part. Perhaps we no longer count the leaves on Church’s trees, but Goldsmith and Cervantes still deserve the place assigned them.

      He does not tell us what boat he was on at this time, but later in the year he was with Bixby again, on the Alonzo Child. We get a bit of the pilot in port in his next.

      To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

      “ALONZO CHILD,” N. ORLEANS, Sep. 28th 1860. DEAR BROTHER, — I just received yours and Mollies letter yesterday — they had been here two weeks — forwarded from St. Louis. We got here yesterday — will leave at noon to-day. Of course I have had no time, in 24 hours, to do anything. Therefore I’ll answer after we are under way again. Yesterday, I had many things to do, but Bixby and I got with the pilots of two other boats and went off dissipating on a ten dollar dinner at a French restaurant breathe it not unto Ma! — where we ate sheep-head, fish with mushrooms, shrimps and oysters — birds — coffee with brandy burnt in it, &c &c, — ate, drank and smoked, from 2 p.m. until 5 o’clock, and then — then the day was too far gone to do any thing.

      Please find enclosed and acknowledge receipt of — $20.00

      In haste

      SAM L. CLEMENS It should be said, perhaps, that when he became pilot Jane Clemens had released her son from his pledge in the matter of cards and liquor. This license did not upset him, however. He cared very little for either of these dissipations. His one great indulgence was tobacco, a matter upon which he was presently to receive some grave counsel. He reports it in his next letter, a sufficiently interesting document. The clairvoyant of this visit was Madame Caprell, famous in her day. Clemens had been urged to consult her, and one idle afternoon concluded to make the experiment. The letter reporting the matter to his brother is fragmentary, and is the last remaining to us of the piloting period. Fragment of a letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

      NEW ORLEANS February 6, 1862. … She’s a very pleasant little lady — rather pretty — about 28, — say 5 feet 2 and one quarter — would weigh 116 — has black eyes and hair — is polite and intelligent — used good language, and talks much faster than I do.

      She invited me into the little back parlor, closed the door; and we were alone. We sat down facing each other. Then she asked my age. Then she put her hands before her eyes a moment, and commenced talking as if she had a good deal to say and not much time to say it in. Something after this style:

      MADAME. Yours is a watery planet; you gain your livelihood on the water; but you should have been a lawyer — there is where your talents lie: you might have distinguished yourself as an orator, or as an editor; you have written a great deal; you write well — but you are rather out of practice; no matter — you will be in practice some day; you have a superb constitution, and as excellent health as any man in the world; you have great powers of endurance; in your profession your strength holds out against the longest sieges, without flagging; still, the upper part of your lungs, the top of them is slightly affected — you must take care of yourself; you do not drink, but you use entirely