It is simple and frank, like Thoreau. Perhaps, had she exercised it, there was a third gift—the gift of written thought.
Clemens remained at Stormfield ten days after Jean was gone. The weather was fiercely cold, the landscape desolate, the house full of tragedy. He kept pretty closely to his room, where he had me bring the heaps of letters, a few of which he answered personally; for the others he prepared a simple card of acknowledgment. He was for the most part in gentle mood during these days, though he would break out now and then, and rage at the hardness of a fate that had laid an unearned burden of illness on Jean and shadowed her life.
They were days not wholly without humor—none of his days could be altogether without that, though it was likely to be of a melancholy sort.
Many of the letters offered orthodox comfort, saying, in effect: "God does not willingly punish us."
When he had read a number of these he said:
"Well, why does He do it then? We don't invite it. Why does He give
Himself the trouble?"
I suggested that it was a sentiment that probably gave comfort to the writer of it.
"So it does," he said, "and I am glad of it—glad of anything that gives comfort to anybody."
He spoke of the larger God—the God of the great unvarying laws, and by and by dropped off to sleep, quite peacefully, and indeed peace came more and more to him each day with the thought that Jean and Susy and their mother could not be troubled any more. To Mrs. Gabrilowitsch he wrote:
REDDING, CONN, December 29, 1909.