Hartford, November 27, 1875.  Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great success in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world.  Every day we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that we can never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a regret that we were ever joined.  You are dearer to me to-day, my child, than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were dearer then than you were a year before—­you have grown more and more dear from the first of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this precious progression will continue on to the end.

Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.

So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!

                              Always Yours
                                        S. L. C.

MARK TWAIN’S LETTERS 1876-1885

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

VOLUME III.

XVI.

Letters, 1876, chiefly to W. D. Howells.  Literature and politics.  Planning A play with Bret Harte

The Monday Evening Club of Hartford was an association of most of the literary talent of that city, and it included a number of very distinguished members.  The writers, the editors, the lawyers, and the ministers of the gospel who composed it were more often than not men of national or international distinction.  There was but one paper at each meeting, and it was likely to be a paper that would later find its way into some magazine.

Naturally Mark Twain was one of its favorite members, and his contributions never failed to arouse interest and discussion.  A “Mark Twain night” brought out every member.  In the next letter we find the first mention of one of his most memorable contributions—­a story of one of life’s moral aspects.  The tale, now included in his collected works, is, for some reason, little read to-day; yet the curious allegory, so vivid in its seeming reality, is well worth consideration.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: