17 February 1869 • Titusville, Pa. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00255)
e. z. williams, – – – – proprietors.
Livy dear, I don’t feel a bit well this morning, & so I cannot write. I left Ravenna about noon, Monday, for Alliance—lectured there that night—sat up till 2 in the morning (because no porter at hotel to call me,) & returned on a coal train to Ravenna—got to the Ravenna hotel just at 4 o’clock in the morning—went to bed for one hour & a half & then got up half asleep & started in the early train for this Titusville section of country—had to wait from 1 P.M. till 5, at Corry, Pa., & so I found an excellent hotel & went to bed—but several merchants of the place (I use the nom de plume on hotel registers when I am a stranger & want a choice room,) same saw my name on the register & called to see me (it was business, not idle curiosity—they wanted to get me to lecture,) & when they were gone I was feverish & restless & couldn’t sleep. And at 5 I got up & soon started for this place, arriving just in fair time to open the lecture. I have slept late, this morning, but still I feel stupiefied & idiotic. Good audience, & highly gratified with the lecture.1explanatory note
I can’t write—about a million odds & ends of things I want to say to you, are whirling through my brain, but I st sit Ⓐemendation si Ⓐemendation & look on at this hurricane of whizzing fragments, bewildered—bewildered & helpless. Bewildered & idea-less—that is it. But never mind—I have your letter, & you say in it that you are happy, & & therefore I am content. I am happy—happy that I have your love; happy that you can sign yourself “Your Livy;” happy to feel & know that you are my Livy, forever & ever—my Livy & my wife; happy in the belief that we shall spend our joined lives in the sincere & earnest service of God. in margin: I read & marked “A Life for a Life” in the cars yesterday—I like it right well. 2explanatory note
{ Mou MyⒶemendation tongue & my pen hesitate to use the language of religion—they only gradually surrender consent to use it at all. This is a matter that dis has disturbed me a little—but since reading your letter last night, it don’t. When you say of my name, “Sam”—
“It does not even now come quite easily from either tongue or pen, but it is sacred to me, & I shall soon grow familiar with it”—
When you say that, I understand my own cau case Ⓐemendation without another word. I know you love me—& yet I see that the peculiar & especial language of this love seems awkward to your unaccustomed tongue. Thank you, Livy.
I am not going to lecture in Ab Auburn Ⓐemendation on the 19th—& so I shall see you on that day—
Until which time, with earnest kisses of love & honor, Good-bye Ⓐemendation, my darling Livy.
docketed by OLL: 41st
The Titusville Morning Herald reported that Clemens’s 16 February lecture in Corinthian Hall drew
one of the largest and most select audiences of the season. . . . The subject, “The American Vandal Abroad,” afforded an excellent field for the versatile genius of “Mark Twain,” for rare poetic description, as well as keen and racy bits. The lecturer held the audience in a state of subdued mirthful enjoyment for nearly two hours, occasionally exciting their uproarious laughter, or lifting them in his eloquent flights, as he apostrophized the Sphynx, or depicted the glories of Venice or Athens. (“Mark Twain’s Lecture,” 17 Feb 69, 3)
On 5 December 1868, Clemens had promised Olivia that he would read this 1859 novel, by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, about a courtship conducted chiefly through a high-minded correspondence ( L2 , 314).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L3 , 103–105; LLMT , 14, 357, brief quotation and paraphrase.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.