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Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
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Mary Leah Christmas <[log in to unmask]>
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Fri, 1 Aug 2003 13:52:05 -0400
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Mary Leah Christmas <[log in to unmask]>
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The recent thread about Jordan Water has scratched an old itch. (How's that
for a mixed metaphor?) While doing some Mark Twain-Augustus St.-Gaudens
research several years ago, I read with interest these passages in Paine:

        In New York I had once brought [Mark Twain] a print of the
        superb "Adams Memorial," by Saint-Gaudens--the bronze
        woman who sits in the still court in the Rock Creek Cemetery
        at Washington. (MTB3-1351).

And:

        It was a bleak, dull December day, and as we walked down
        through the avenues of the dead there was a presence of
        realized sorrow that seemed exactly suited to such a visit.
        We entered the little inclosure of cedars where sits the dark
        figure which is art's supreme expression of the great human
        mystery of life and death. Instinctively we removed our hats,
        and neither spoke until after we had come away....

        "What does he call it?" [Mark Twain] asked.

        I did not know, though I had heard applied to it that great line
        of Shakespeare's--"the rest is silence."

         "But that figure is not silent," he said.

        And later, as we were driving home:

        "It is in deep meditation on sorrowful things."

        When we returned to New York he had the little print framed, and
        kept it always on his mantlepiece. (Ibid.)

The question is: What ever became of that "little print"? Is it at the Mark
Twain Project? In Bob Slotta's safe deposit box? Or somewhere else? Yours
Truly, as an infant, was baptized at Rock Creek Church, and as a youth once
visited the "Grief" monument (as it is often called), so the answer is of
great personal relevance.

Regards,

Mary Leah Christmas

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