“I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother—her incomparable mother!—five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! … Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night—and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here—writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery.
“Seventy-four years old twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?”
Alicia
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4 comments:
How beautiful and sad. I'm going to go look up the details now.
Thanks for posting.
That last line-- he's sorry to have lived so long.
I think he must have died the next year, because I remember he was born a Halley's comet year, and died the next one-- that's 75 years.
Alicia
He sure loved semicolons.
I love semicolons too! And let me tell you, me and old Twain, we are fighters together! Go, semicolons! Onward, colons! 19th Century punctuation rules!
Alicia
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