I guess I am out of the field permanently.  Have got a lovely wife, a lovely house, bewitchingly furnished, a lovely carriage, and a coachman whose style and dignity are simply awe-in-spiring, nothing less; and I am making more money than necessary, by considerable, and therefore why crucify myself nightly on the platform?  The subscriber will have to be excused for the present season at least.

So they were very happy during those early months, acquiring pleasantly the education which any matrimonial experience is sure to furnish, accustoming themselves to the uses of housekeeping, to life in partnership, with all the discoveries and mental and spiritual adaptations that belong to the close association of marriage.  They were far, very far, apart on many subjects.  He was unpolished, untrained, impulsive, sometimes violent.  Twichell remembers that in the earlier days of their acquaintance he wore a slouch hat pulled down in front, and smoked a cigar that sometimes tilted up and touched the brim of it.  The atmosphere and customs of frontier life, the Westernisms of that day, still clung to him.  Mrs. Clemens, on the other hand, was conservative, dainty, cultured, spiritual.  He adored her as little less than a saint, and she became, indeed, his saving grace.  She had all the personal refinement which he lacked, and she undertook the work of polishing and purifying her life companion.  She had no wish to destroy his personality, to make him over, but only to preserve his best, and she set about it in the right way—­gently, and with a tender gratitude in each achievement.

She did not entirely approve of certain lines of his reading; or, rather, she did not understand them in those days.  That he should be fond of history and the sciences was natural enough, but when the Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, appeared, and he sat up nights to absorb it, and woke early and lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great showman, she was at a loss to comprehend this particular literary passion, and indeed was rather jealous of it.  She did not realize then his vast interest in the study of human nature, or that such a book contained what Mr. Howells calls “the root of the human matter,” the inner revelation of the human being at first hand.

Concerning his religious observances her task in the beginning was easy enough.  Clemens had not at that time formulated any particular doctrines of his own.  His natural kindness of heart, and especially his love for his wife, inclined him toward the teachings and customs of her Christian faith—­unorthodox but sincere, as Christianity in the Langdon family was likely to be.  It took very little persuasion on his wife’s part to establish family prayers in their home, grace before meals, and the morning reading of a Bible chapter.  Joe Goodman, who made a trip East, and visited them during the early days of their married life, was dumfounded to see Mark Twain ask a blessing and join in family worship.  Just how long these forms continued cannot be known to-day; the time of their abandonment has perished from the recollection of any one now living.