y from company, and that she be taken to her own home, which
was but a step away. It was then that the letter was written and the
first cable sent to England. Mrs. Crane was summoned from Elmira, also
Charles Langdon. Mr. Twichell was notified and came down from his summer
place in the Adirondacks.

Susy did not improve. She became rapidly worse, and a few days later
the doctor pronounced her ailment meningitis. This was on the 15th of
August--that hot, terrible August of 1896. Susy's fever increased and
she wandered through the burning rooms in delirium and pain; then her
sight left her, an effect of the disease. She lay down at last, and
once, when Katie Leary was near her, she put her hands on Katie's
face and said, "mama." She did not speak after that, but sank into
unconsciousness, and on the evening of Tuesday, August 18th, the flame
went out forever.

To Twichell Clemens wrote of it:

Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege. Her dying
eyes rested upon no thing that was strange to them, but only upon
things which they had known & loved always & which had made her
young years glad; & she had you & Sue & Katie & & John & Ellen.
This was happy fortune--I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her.
If she had died in another house--well, I think I could not have
borne that. To us our house was not unsentient matter--it had a
heart & a soul & eyes to see us with, & approvals & solicitudes &
deep sympathies; it was of us, & we were in its confidence, & lived
in its grace & in the peace of its benediction. We never came home
from an absence that its face did not light up & speak out its
eloquent welcome--& we could not enter it unmoved. And could we
now? oh, now, in spirit we should enter it unshod.

A tugboat with Dr. Rice, Mr. Twichell, and other friends of the family
went down the bay to meet the arriving vessel with Mrs. Clemens and
Clara on board. It was night when the ship arrived, and they did not
show themselves until morning; then at first to Clara. There had been
little need to formulate a message--their presence there was enough--and
when a moment later Clara returned to the stateroom her mother looked
into her face and she also knew. Susy already had been taken to Elmira,
and at half past ten that night Mrs. Clemens and Clara arrived there by
the through train--the same train and in the same coach which they had
taken one year and one month be