riday, April 6, 1906
Mr. Clemens's present house unsatisfactory because of no sunshine.---Mr. Clemens meets Etta in Washington Square. Recalls ballroom in Virginia City forty-four years ago.--Orion resumed; he invents wood-sawing machine; invents steam canal boat.--Orion's autobiography.--His death.
This house is No. 21 Fifth Avenue, and stands on the corner of Ninth Street within a couple of hundred yards of Washington Square. It was built fifty or sixty years ago by Renwick, the architect of the Roman Catholic Cathedral. It is large, and every story has good and spacious rooms, but not enough sunshine.
Yesterday I went down to Washington Square, turned out to the left to look at a house that stands on the corner of the Square and University Place. Presently I stepped over to the corner of the Square to take a general look at the frontage of the house. While crossing the street I met a woman, and was conscious that she recognized me, and it seemed to me that there was something in her face that was familiar to me. I had the instinct that she would turn and follow me and speak to me, and the instinct was right. She was a fat little woman, with a gentle and kindly but aged and homely face, and she had white hair, and was neatly but poorly dressed. She said:
"Aren't you Mr. Clemens?"
"Yes," I said, "I am."
She said, "Where is your brother Orion?"
"Dead," I said.
"Where is his wife?"
"Dead," I said; and added, "I seem to know you, but I cannot place you."
She said, "Do you remember Etta Booth?"
I had known only one Etta Booth in my lifetime, and that Etta rose before me in an instant, and vividly. It was almost as if she stood alongside of this fat little antiquated dame in the bloom and diffidence and sweetness of her thirteen years, her hair in plaited tails down her back and her fiery-red frock stopping short at her knees. Indeed I remembered Etta very well. And immediately another vision rose before me, with that child in the center of it and accenting its sober tint like a torch with her red frock. But it was not a quiet vision; not a reposeful one. The scene was a great ballroom in some ramshackle building in Gold Hill or Virginia City, Nevada. There were two or three hundred stalwart men present and dancing with cordial energy. And in the midst of the turmoil Etta's crimson frock was swirling and flashing; and she was the only dancer of her sex on the floor. Her mother, large, fleshy, pleasant, and smiling, sat on a bench against the wall in lonely and honored state and watched the festivities in placid contentment. She and Etta were the only persons of their sex in the ballroom. Half of the men represented ladies, and they had a handkerchief tied around the left arm so that they could be told from the men. I did not dance with Etta, for I was a lady myself. I wore a revolver in my belt, and so did all the other ladies--likewise the gentlemen. It was a dismal old barn of a place, and was lighted from end to end by tallow-candle chandeliers made of barrel hoops suspended from the ceiling, and the grease dripped all over us. That was in the beginning of the winter of 1862. It has taken forty-four years for Etta to cross my orbit again.
I asked after her father.
"Dead," she said.
I asked after her mother.
"Dead," she said.
Another question brought out the fact that she had long been married, but had no children. We shook hands and parted. She walked three or four steps, then turned and came back, and her eyes filled, and she said:
"I am a stranger here, and far from my friends--in fact I have hardly any friends left. Nearly all of them are dead. I must tell my news to you. I must tell it to somebody. I can't bear it by myself, while it is so new. The doctor has just told me that my husband can live only a very little while, and I was not dreaming it was so bad as this."
