“Livy dear, a mouse kept me awake last night till 3 or 4 o’clock — so I am lying abed this morning. I would not [‘knot’] give sixpence [the nibs of six pens] to be out yonder in the storm, although it is only snow.”

He added, “There — that’s for the children — was not sure that they could read writing, especially Jean, who is strangely ignorant in some things.” Jean was 15 months old.

(From Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain’s Letters, 1917.)