r, those days are forever gone by in Missouri,
and perhaps it is better so. Nothing ever stops the way it was in this
changeable world. Although I cannot be at the Fair, I am going to be
represented there anyway, by a portrait, by Professor Gelli. You will
find it excellent. Good judges here say it is better than the original.
They say it has all the merits of the original and keeps still, besides.
It sounds like flattery, but it is just true.

I suppose you will get a prize, because you have created the most
prodigious and in all ways most wonderful Fair the planet has ever seen.
Very well, you have indeed earned it: and with it the gratitude of the
State and the nation.

Sincerely yours,
MARK TWAIN

It was only a few days after the foregoing was written that death
entered Villa Quarto--unexpectedly at last--for with the first June
days Mrs. Clemens had seemed really to improve. It was on Sunday,
June 5th, that the end came. Clemens, with his daughter Jean, had
returned from a long drive, during which they had visited a Villa
with the thought of purchase. On their return they were told that
their patient had been better that afternoon than for three months.
Yet it was only a few hours later that she left them, so suddenly
and quietly that even those near her did not at first realize that
she was gone.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in New York.

VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE,
June 6, '94. [1904]

DEAR HOWELLS,--Last night at 9.20 I entered Mrs. Clemens's room to say
the usual goodnight--and she was dead--tho' no one knew it. She had been
cheerfully talking, a moment before. She was sitting up in bed--she had
not lain down for months--and Katie and the nurse were supporting her.
They supposed she had fainted, and they were holding the oxygen pipe to
her mouth, expecting to revive her. I bent over her and looked in her
face, and I think I spoke--I was surprised and troubled that she did
not notice me. Then we understood, and our hearts broke. How poor we are
today!

But how thankful I am that her persecutions are ended. I would not call
her back if I could.

Today, treasured in her worn old Testament, I found a dear and gentle
letter from you, dated Far Rockaway, Sept. 13, 1896, about our poor
S