. Take Mrs. T. to see
them as soon as they are fixed.

Livy is up, and the prince keeps her busy and anxious these latter days
and nights, but I am a bachelor up stairs and don't have to jump up and
get the soothing syrup--though I would as soon do it as not, I assure
you. (Livy will be certain to read this letter.)

Tell Harmony (Mrs. T.) that I do hold the baby, and do it pretty
handily, too, although with occasional apprehensions that his loose head
will fall off. I don't have to quiet him--he hardly ever utters a cry.
He is always thinking about something. He is a patient, good little
baby.

Smoke? I always smoke from 3 till 5 Sunday afternoons--and in New York
the other day I smoked a week, day and night. But when Livy is well I
smoke only those two hours on Sunday. I'm "boss" of the habit, now, and
shall never let it boss me any more. Originally, I quit solely on Livy's
account, (not that I believed there was the faintest reason in the
matter, but just as I would deprive myself of sugar in my coffee if she
wished it, or quit wearing socks if she thought them immoral), and I
stick to it yet on Livy's account, and shall always continue to do so,
without a pang. But somehow it seems a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T.
didn't mind it if I remember rightly. Ah, it is turning one's back upon
a kindly Providence to spurn away from us the good creature he sent to
make the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyable as
well as useful, to go and quit smoking when then ain't any sufficient
excuse for it! Why, my old boy, when they use to tell me I would shorten
my life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they were
wasting their puerile word upon--they little knew how trivial and
valueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it! But I won't
persuade you, Twichell--I won't until I see you again--but then we'll
smoke for a week together, and then shut off again.

I would have gone to Hartford from New York last Saturday, but I got so
homesick I couldn't. But maybe I'll come soon.

No, Sir, catch me in the metropolis again, to get homesick.

I didn't know Warner had a book out.

We send oceans and continents of love--I have worked myself down, today.

Yrs always
MARK.

With his establishment in Buffalo, Clemens, as already noted, had
persuaded his sister, now a widow, and his mother, to settle in