pressed
deep regard for him and friendship but he was not inclined to add him to
the family; the young lady herself, in a general way, accorded with these
views. The applicant for favor left sadly enough, but he could not
remain discouraged or sad. He lectured at Cleveland with vast success,
and the news of it traveled quickly to Elmira. He was referred to by
Cleveland papers as a "lion" and "the coming man of the age." Two days
later, in Pittsburgh (November 19th), he "played" against Fanny Kemble,
the favorite actress of that time, with the result that Miss Kemble had
an audience of two hundred against nearly ten times the number who
gathered to hear Mark Twain. The news of this went to Elmira, too. It
was in the papers there next morning; surely this was a conquering hero
--a gay Lochinvar from out of the West--and the daughter of the house
must be guarded closely, that he did not bear her away. It was on the
second morning following the Pittsburgh triumph, when the Langdon family
were gathered at breakfast, that a bushy auburn head poked fearfully in
at the door, and a low, humble voice said:

"The calf has returned; may the prodigal have some breakfast?"

No one could be reserved or reprovingly distant, or any of those
unfriendly things with a person like that; certainly not Jervis Langdon,
who delighted in the humor and the tricks and turns and oddities of this
eccentric visitor. Giving his daughter to him was another matter, but
even that thought was less disturbing than it had been at the start. In
truth, the Langdon household had somehow grown to feel that he belonged
to them. The elder sister's husband, Theodore Crane, endorsed him fully.
He had long before read some of the Mark Twain sketches that had traveled
eastward in advance of their author, and had recognized, even in the
crudest of them, a classic charm. As for Olivia Langdon's mother and
sister, their happiness lay in hers. Where her heart went theirs went
also, and it would appear that her heart, in spite of herself, had found
its rightful keeper. Only young Langdon was irreconciled, and eventually
set out for a voyage around the world to escape the situation.

There was only a provisional engagement at first. Jervis Langdon
suggested, and Samuel Clemens agreed with him, that it was proper to know
something of his past, as well as of his present, before the official
parental sanction should be given. When Mr. Langdon inquired as to the
names of per