“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
How beautiful and sad. I'm going to go look up the details now.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting.
That last line-- he's sorry to have lived so long.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteI love semicolons too! And let me tell you, me and old Twain, we are fighters together! Go, semicolons! Onward, colons! 19th Century punctuation rules!
ReplyDeleteAlicia