MARK TWAIN
him. He might perhaps have thrown the whole
thinjr overboard, present it to Paige in a word
—which may have been, though it is by no
means certain, just what the latter wanted.
(Copy of letter to Gas Company)
Hartford, Feb. 12/91
Dear Sirs:
Some day you will move me almost to the verge of
irritation by your chuckle-headed Goddamned fashion of
shutting your Goddamned gas off without giving any no-
tice to your Goddamned parishioners. Several times you
have come within an ace of smothering half of this house-
hold in their beds & blowing up the other half by this
idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours. And it has
happened again today. Haven't you a telephone?
Ys
S L Clemens
February 20. It is more than two weeks since I have
seen Paige or the machine. Am deep in work—the "Date
and Fact game," "Col. Sellers,"^1 etc.
Huck comes back sixty years old, from nobody knows
where—and crazy. Thinks he is a boy again and scans
always every face for Tom, Becky, etc.
Tom comes at last from sixty years' wandering in the
world, and attends JIuck and together they talk of old
times; both are desolate, life has been a failure, all that
was lovable, all that was beautiful is under the mold.
They die together.
Mark Twain went back to Hannibal in 1902,
while John Briggs, his old playmate, was still
*Thc Sellers story here mentioned was the American Claimant^
published in 1892.
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