Susy Clemens was born in 1872, and of all Clemen's children, she was, arguably, his favorite. She had a way about her that would make us modern folk describe her as eight going on 18. Or more accurately, eight going on 38. She exhibited in her too short a life insight and wisdom beyond her years, and a gift for stating the complex intricacies of the world in plain, meaningful language. When she was but eight years old, she formulated the following, taken from the autobiography of Mark Twain:
For a week, her mother had not been able to go to the nursery, evenings, at the child's prayer hour. She spoke of it - was sorry for it and said she would come tonight and hoped she could continue to come every night and hear Susy pray, as before. Noticing that the child wished to respond but was evidently troubled as to how to word her answer, she asked what the difficulty was. Susy explained that Miss Foote (the governess) had been teaching her about the Indians and their religious beliefs, whereby it appeared that they had not only a god, but several. This had set Susy to thinking. As a result of this thinking she had stopped praying. She qualified this statement - that it, she modified it - saying she did not now pray "in the same way" as she had formerly done. Her mother said, "Tell me about it, dear."
"Well mamma, the Indians believed they knew, but now we know they were wrong. By and by it can turn out that we are wrong. So now I only pray that there may be a God and a heaven - or something better."
I wrote down this pathetic prayer in its precise wording at the time in a record which we kept of the children's sayings and my reverence for it has grown with the years that have passed over my head since then. Its untaught grace and simplicity are a child's but the wisdom and the pathos of it are of all the ages that have come and gone since the race of man has lived and longed and hoped and feared and doubted.
True that. Amen.
Mark Twain Quote: "Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing came of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It wern't any good to me without hooks." (Huckleberry Finn)
