Actually Clemens had visited Laura Lathrop in New York sometime in the 1890’s and had benefited from the treatments he had from her, afterward recommending Christian Science and/or mind-cure to various friends, and at one point to his daughter Susy. 97 Then, in the winter of 1898–99 in Europe, emerging from the years of despair which followed his bankruptcy and Susy’s death after long medical treatment, he took up his pen and romped briefly into the subject, largely in the spirit of good-natured burlesque.