name was adopted somewhat later and much preferred. It appears as
"Susie" in most of the earlier letters.]--Clemens's third birthday,
certainly a pretty picture, and as sweet and luminous and tender
today as it was forty years ago-as it will be a hundred years hence,
if these lines should survive that long. The letter is to her uncle
Charles Langdon, the "Charlie" of the Quaker City. "Atwater" was
associated with the Langdon coal interests in Elmira. "The play"
is, of course, "The Gilded Age."

*****

To Charles Langdon, in Elmira:

Mch. 19, 1875.

DEAR CHARLIE,--Livy, after reading your letter, used her severest form
of expression about Mr. Atwater--to wit: She did not "approve" of
his conduct. This made me shudder; for it was equivalent to Allie
Spaulding's saying "Mr. Atwater is a mean thing;" or Rev. Thomas
Beecher's saying "Damn that Atwater," or my saying "I wish Atwater was
three hundred million miles in----!"

However, Livy does not often get into one of these furies, God be
thanked.

In Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago,
the play paid me an average of nine hundred dollars a week. In smaller
towns the average is $400 to $500.

This is Susie's birth-day. Lizzie brought her in at 8.30 this morning
(before we were up) hooded with a blanket, red curl-papers in her hair,
a great red japonica, in one hand (for Livy) and a yellow rose-bud
nestled in violets (for my buttonhole) in the other--and she looked
wonderfully pretty. She delivered her memorials and received her
birth-day kisses. Livy laid her japonica, down to get a better "holt"
for kissing--which Susie presently perceived, and became thoughtful:
then said sorrowfully, turning the great deeps of her eyes upon her
mother: "Don't you care for you wow?"

Right after breakfast we got up a rousing wood fire in the main hall (it
is a cold morning) illuminated the place with a rich glow from all the
globes of the newell chandelier, spread a bright rug before the fire,
set a circling row of chairs (pink ones and dove-colored) and in the
midst a low invalid-table covered with a fanciful cloth and laden with
the presents--a pink azalia in lavish bloom from Rosa; a gold inscribed
Russia-leather bible from Patrick and Mary; a gold ring (inscribed) from
"Maggy Cook;" a silver thimble (inscribed with motto and initials) from
Lizzie; a