rroundings back into worlds and dreams that he had known
and laid away.

He went out very little that winter--usually to the homes of old and
intimate friends. Once he attended a small dinner given him by George
Smalley at the Metropolitan Club; but it was a private affair, with only
good friends present. Still, it formed the beginning of his return to
social life, and it was not in his nature to retire from the brightness
of human society, or to submerge himself in mourning. As the months wore
on he appeared here and there, and took on something of his old-time
habit. Then his annual bronchitis appeared, and he was confined a good
deal to his home, where he wrote or planned new reforms and enterprises.

The improvement of railway service, through which fewer persons should be
maimed and destroyed each year, interested him. He estimated that the
railroads and electric lines killed and wounded more than all of the wars
combined, and he accumulated statistics and prepared articles on the
subject, though he appears to have offered little of such matter for
publication. Once, however, when his sympathy was awakened by the victim
of a frightful trolley and train collision in Newark, New Jersey, he
wrote a letter which promptly found its way into print.

DEAR MISS MADELINE, Your good & admiring & affectionate brother has
told me of your sorrowful share in the trolley disaster which
brought unaccustomed tears to millions of eyes & fierce resentment
against those whose criminal indifference to their responsibilities
caused it, & the reminder has brought back to me a pang out of that
bygone time. I wish I could take you sound & whole out of your bed
& break the legs of those officials & put them in it--to stay there.
For in my spirit I am merciful, and would not break their necks &
backs also, as some would who have no feeling.

It is your brother who permits me to write this line--& so it is not
an intrusion, you see.

May you get well-& soon!
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

A very little later he was writing another letter on a similar subject to
St. Clair McKelway, who had narrowly escaped injury in a railway
accident.

DEAR McKELWAY, Your innumerable friends are grateful, most grateful.

As I understand the telegrams, the engineers of your train had never
seen a locomotive before . . . . The government's