ore voyage and they would be in England, where they had planned for
Susy and Jean to join them.

Mrs. Clemens, eager for letters, writes of her disappointment in not
finding one from Susy. The reports from Quarry Farm had been cheerful,
and there had been small snap-shot photographs which were comforting,
but her mother heart could not be entirely satisfied that Susy did not
send letters. She had a vague fear that some trouble, some illness, had
come to Susy which made her loath to write. Susy was, in fact, far from
well, though no one, not even Susy herself, suspected how serious was
her condition.

Mrs. Clemens writes of her own hopefulness, but adds that her husband is
often depressed.

Mr. Clemens has not as much courage as I wish he had, but, poor old
darling, he has been pursued with colds and inabilities of various
sorts. Then he is so impressed with the fact that he is sixty years
old. Naturally I combat that thought all I can, trying to make him
rejoice that he is not seventy....

He does not believe that any good thing will come, but that we must
all our lives live in poverty. He says he never wants to go back to
America. I cannot think that things are as black as he paints them,
and I trust that if I get him settled down for work in some quiet
English village he will get back much of his cheerfulness; in fact,
I believe he will because that is what he wants to do, and that is
the work that he loves: The platform he likes for the two hours that
he is on it, but all the rest of the time it grinds him, and he says
he is ashamed of what he is doing. Still, in spite of this sad
undercurrent, we are having a delightful trip. People are so nice,
and with people Mr. Clemens seems cheerful. Then the ocean trips
are a great rest to him.

Mrs. Clemens and Clara remained at the hotel in Durban while Clemens
made his platform trip to the South African cities. It was just at the
time when the Transvaal invasion had been put down--when the Jameson
raid had come to grief and John Hares Hammond, chief of the reformers,
and fifty or more supporters were lying in the jail at Pretoria under
various sentences, ranging from one to fifteen years, Hammond himself
having received the latter award. Mrs. Hammond was a fellow-Missourian;
Clemens had known her in America. He went with her now to see the
prisoners, who seemed to be having a pretty good time, expectin