was as in the old days. Summoned to go at last, he chided himself
for staying so long; but she said there was no harm and kissed him,
saying, "you will come back?" and he answered "Yes, to say good night,"
meaning at half-past nine, as was the permitted custom. He stood a
moment at the door, throwing kisses to her, and she returned them, her
face bright with smiles.

He was so full of hope--they were going to be happy again. Long ago he
had been in the habit of singing jubilee songs to the children. He went
upstairs now to the piano and played the chorus and sang "Swing Low,
Sweet Chariot," and "My Lord He Calls Me." He stopped then, but Jean,
who had come in, asked him to go on. Mrs. Clemens, from her room, heard
the music and said to Katy Leary:

"He is singing a good-night carol to me."

The music ceased presently. A moment later she asked to be lifted up.
Almost in that instant life slipped away without a sound.

Clemens, just then coming to say good-night, saw a little group gathered
about her bed, and heard Clara ask:

"Katy, is it true? Oh, Katy, is it true?"

In his note-book that night he wrote:

"At a quarter-past nine this evening she that was the life of my life
passed to the relief and the peace of death, after twenty-two months
of unjust and unearned suffering. I first saw her thirty-seven
years ago, and now I have looked upon her face for the last time....
I was full of remorse for things done and said in these thirty-
four years of married life that have hurt Livy's heart."

And to Howells a few days later:

"To-day, treasured in her worn, old testament, I found a dear and
gentle letter from you dated Far Rockaway, September 12, 1896, about
our poor Susy's death. I am tired and old; I wish I were with Livy."

They brought her to America; and from the house, and the rooms, where she
had been made a bride bore her to a grave beside Susy and little Langdon.

LVIII.

MARK TWAIN AT SEVENTY

In a small cottage belonging to Richard Watson Gilder, at Tyringham,
Massachusetts, Samuel Clemens and his daughters tried to plan for the
future. Mrs. Clemens had always been the directing force--they were lost
without her. They finally took a house in New York City, No. 21 Fifth
Avenue, at the corner of Ninth Street, installed the familiar
furnishings, and tried once more to establish a home. The house was
handsome within and without--a proper residence for a venerable aut