of the machinery of his colossal universe is proof that he is at least steadfast to his purposes; whose unwritten laws, so far as they affect man, being equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair; these things, taken together, suggest that if he shall ordain us to live hereafter, he will still be steadfast, just, and fair toward us.  We shall not need to require anything more.

It seems mild enough, obvious, even orthodox, now—­so far have we traveled in forty years.  But such a declaration then would have shocked a great number of sincerely devout persons.  His wife prevailed upon him not to print it.  She respected his honesty—­even his reasoning, but his doubts were a long grief to her, nevertheless.  In time she saw more clearly with his vision, but this was long after, when she had lived more with the world, had become more familiar with its larger needs, and the proportions of created things.

They did not mingle much or long with the social life of Buffalo.  They received and returned calls, attended an occasional reception; but neither of them found such things especially attractive in those days, so they remained more and more in their own environment.  There is an anecdote which seems to belong here.

One Sunday morning Clemens noticed smoke pouring from the upper window of the house across the street.  The owner and his wife, comparatively newcomers, were seated upon the veranda, evidently not aware of impending danger.  The Clemens household thus far had delayed calling on them, but Clemens himself now stepped briskly across the street.  Bowing with leisurely politeness, he said: 

“My name is Clemens; we ought to have called on you before, and I beg your pardon for intruding now in this informal way, but your house is on fire.”

Almost the only intimate friends they had in Buffalo were in the family of David Gray, the poet-editor of the Courier.  Gray was a gentle, lovable man.  “The gentlest spirit and the loveliest that ever went clothed in clay, since Sir Galahad laid him to rest,” Mark Twain once said of him.  Both Gray and Clemens were friends of John Hay, and their families soon became intimate.  Perhaps, in time, the Clemens household would have found other as good friends in the Buffalo circles; but heavy clouds that had lain unseen just beyond the horizon during those earlier months of marriage rose suddenly into view, and the social life, whatever it might have become, was no longer a consideration.

LXXIX

THE OLD HUMAN STORY

Jervis Langdon was never able to accept his son-in-law’s invitation to the new home.  His health began to fail that spring, and at the end of March, with his physician and Mrs. Langdon, he made a trip to the South.  In a letter written at Richmond he said, “I have thrown off all care,” and named a list of the four great interests in which he was involved.  Under “number 5,” he included