nobody
had. Somewhat carelessly, even if correctly, attired; eagerly, rather
than observantly, attentive; brilliant and startling, rather than
cultured, of speech--a blazing human solitaire, unfashioned, unset,
tossed by the drift of fortune at her feet. He disturbed rather than
gratified her. She sensed his heresy toward the conventions and forms
which had been her gospel; his bantering, indifferent attitude toward
life--to her always so serious and sacred; she suspected that he even
might have unorthodox views on matters of religion. When he had gone she
somehow had the feeling that a great fiery meteor of unknown portent had
swept across her sky.

To her brother, who was eager for her approval of his celebrity, Miss
Langdon conceded admiration. As for her father, he did not qualify his
opinion. With hearty sense of humor, and a keen perception of verity and
capability in men, Jervis Langdon accepted Samuel Clemens from the start,
and remained his stanch admirer and friend. Clemens left that night with
an invitation to visit Elmira by and by, and with the full intention of
going--soon. Fate, however, had another plan. He did not see Elmira for
the better part of a year.

He saw Miss Langdon again within the week. On New-Year's Day he set
forth to pay calls, after the fashion of the time--more lavish then than
now. Miss Langdon was receiving with Miss Alice Hooker, a niece of Henry
Ward Beecher, at the home of a Mrs. Berry; he decided to go there first.
With young Langdon he arrived at eleven o'clock in the morning, and they
did not leave until midnight. If his first impression upon Olivia
Langdon had been meteoric, it would seem that he must now have become to
her as a streaming comet that swept from zenith to horizon. One thing is
certain: she had become to him the single, unvarying beacon of his future
years. He visited Henry Ward Beecher on that trip and dined with him by
invitation. Harriet Beecher Stowe was present, and others of that
eminent family. Likewise his old Quaker City comrades, Moses S. and
Emma Beach. It was a brilliant gathering, a conclave of intellectual
gods--a triumph to be there for one who had been a printer-boy on the
banks of the Mississippi, and only a little while before a miner with
pick and shovel. It was gratifying to be so honored; it would be
pleasant to write home; but the occasion lacked something too
--everything, in fact--for when he ran his eye around the board the face
of the