She had lost something, too; she had outstripped her traditions.  One day, when she and her sister had walked across the fields, and had stopped to rest in a little grove by a pretty pond, she confessed, timidly enough and not without sorrow, how she had drifted away from her orthodox views.  She had ceased to believe, she said, in the orthodox Bible God, who exercised a personal supervision over every human soul.  The hordes of people she had seen in many lands, the philosophies she had listened to from her husband and those wise ones about him, the life away from the restricted round of home, all had contributed to this change.  Her God had become a larger God; the greater mind which exerts its care of the individual through immutable laws of time and change and environment—­the Supreme Good which comprehends the individual flower, dumb creature, or human being only as a unit in the larger scheme of life and love.  Her sister was not shocked or grieved; she too had grown with the years, and though perhaps less positively directed, had by a path of her own reached a wider prospect of conclusions.  It was a sweet day there in the little grove by the water, and would linger in the memory of both so long as life lasted.  Certainly it was the larger faith; though the moment must always come when the narrower, nearer, more humanly protecting arm of orthodoxy lends closer comfort.  Long afterward, in the years that followed the sorrow of heavy bereavement, Clemens once said to his wife, “Livy, if it comforts you to lean on the Christian faith do so,” and she answered, “I can’t, Youth.  I haven’t any.”

And the thought that he had destroyed her illusion, without affording a compensating solace, was one that would come back to him, now and then, all his days.

CXXIII

THE GRANT SPEECH OF 1879

If the lunar rainbow had any fortuitous significance, perhaps we may find it in the two speeches which Mark Twain made in November and December of that year.  The first of these was delivered at Chicago, on the occasion of the reception of General Grant by the Army of the Tennessee, on the evening of November 73, 1879.  Grant had just returned from his splendid tour of the world.  His progress from San Francisco eastward had been such an ovation as is only accorded to sovereignty.  Clemens received an invitation to the reunion, but, dreading the long railway journey, was at first moved to decline.  He prepared a letter in which he made “business” his excuse, and expressed his regret that he would not be present to see and hear the veterans of the Army of the Tennessee at the moment when their old commander entered the room and rose in his place to speak.

“Besides,” he said, “I wanted to see the General again anyway and renew the acquaintance.  He would remember me, because I was the person who did not ask him for an office.”

He did not send the letter.  Reconsidering, it seemed to him that there was something strikingly picturesque in the idea of a Confederate soldier who had been chased for a fortnight in the rain through Ralls and Monroe counties, Missouri, now being invited to come and give welcome home to his old imaginary pursuer.  It was in the nature of an imperative command, which he could not refuse to obey.