k again where I was in the black days when I was buried
under a mountain of debt. I called the daughters to me in private
council and paralysed them with the announcement, "Our outgo has
increased in the past 8 months until our expenses are now 125 per cent.
greater than our income."

It was a mistake. When I came down in the morning a gray and aged wreck,
and went over the figures again, I found that in some unaccountable way
(unaccountable to a business man but not to me) I had multiplied the
totals by 2. By God I dropped 75 years on the floor where I stood.

Do you know it affected me as one is affected when he wakes out of a
hideous dream and finds that it was only a dream. It was a great comfort
and satisfaction to me to call the daughters to a private meeting of the
Board again and say, "You need not worry any more; our outgo is only a
third more than our income; in a few months your mother will be out of
her bed and on her feet again--then we shall drop back to normal and be
all right."

Certainly there is a blistering and awful reality about a well-arranged
unreality. It is quite within the possibilities that two or three nights
like that night of mine could drive a man to suicide. He would refuse
to examine the figures; they would revolt him so, and he could go to his
death unaware that there was nothing serious about them. I cannot get
that night out of my head, it was so vivid, so real, so ghastly. In any
other year of these 33 the relief would have been simple: go where you
can cut your cloth to fit your income. You can't do that when your wife
can't be moved, even from one room to the next.

Clam spells the trained nurse afternoons; I am allowed to see Mrs.
Clemens 20 minutes twice a day and write her two letters a day provided
I put no news in them. No other person ever sees her except the
physician and now and then a nerve-specialist from New York. She saw
there was something the matter that morning, but she got no facts out of
me. But that is nothing--she hasn't had anything but lies for 8 months.
A fact would give her a relapse.

The doctor and a specialist met in conspiracy five days ago, and
in their belief she will by and by come out of this as good as new,
substantially. They ordered her to Italy for next winter--which seems
to indicate that by autumn she will be able to undertake the voyage. So
Clara is writing a Florence friend to take a look round among the villas
for us in the regions near