At the time of
his death Moffett held an important editorial position on Collier's
Weekly.
Clemens was fond and proud of his nephew. Returning from the funeral, he
was much depressed, and a day or two later became really ill. He was in
bed for a few days, resting, he said, after the intense heat of the
journey. Then he was about again and proposed billiards as a diversion.
We were all alone one very still, warm August afternoon playing, when he
suddenly said:
"I feel a little dizzy; I will sit down a moment."
I brought him a glass of water and he seemed to recover, but when he rose
and started to play I thought he had a dazed look. He said:
"I have lost my memory. I don't know which is my ball. I don't know
what game we are playing."
But immediately this condition passed, and we thought little of it,
considering it merely a phase of biliousness due to his recent journey. I
have been told since, by eminent practitioners, that it was the first
indication of a more serious malady.
He became apparently quite himself again and showed his usual vigor-light
of step and movement, able to skip up and down stairs as heretofore. In
a letter to Mrs. Crane, August 12th, he spoke of recent happenings:
DEAR AUNT SUE,--It was a most moving, a most heartbreaking sight,
the spectacle of that stunned & crushed & inconsolable family. I
came back here in bad shape, & had a bilious collapse, but I am all
right again, though the doctor from New York has given peremptory
orders that I am not to stir from here before frost.
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