e friends of Miss Langdon regarded it with genuine alarm.
Elmira was a conservative place--a place of pedigree and family
tradition; that a stranger, a former printer, pilot, miner, wandering
journalist and lecturer, was to carry off the daughter of one of the
oldest and wealthiest families, was a thing not to be lightly permitted.
The fact that he had achieved a national fame did not count against other
considerations. The social protest amounted almost to insurrection, but
it was not availing. The Langdon family had their doubts too, though of
a different sort. Their doubts lay in the fear that one, reared as their
daughter had been, might be unable to hold a place as the wife of this
intellectual giant, whom they felt that the world was preparing to honor.
That this delicate, sheltered girl could have the strength of mind and
body for her position seemed hard to believe. Their faith overbore such
questionings, and the future years proved how fully it was justified.

To his mother Samuel Clemens wrote:

She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer in Christendom.
I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion
imperatively demands a two-hundred-dollar diamond one, and told her
it was typical of her future life-namely, that she would have to
flourish on substance, rather than luxuries (but you see I know the
girl--she don't care anything about luxuries).... She spends no
money but her astral year's allowance, and spends nearly every cent
of that on other people. She will be a good, sensible little wife,
without any airs about her. I don't make intercession for her
beforehand, and ask you to love her, for there isn't any use in
that--you couldn't help it if you were to try. I warn you that
whoever comes within the fatal influence of her beautiful nature is
her willing slave forevermore.

To Mrs. Crane, absent in March, her father wrote:

DEAR SUE,--I received your letter yesterday with a great deal of
pleasure, but the letter has gone in pursuit of one S. L. Clemens,
who has been giving us a great deal of trouble lately. We cannot
have a joy in our family without a feeling, on the part of the
little incorrigible in our family, that this wanderer must share it,
so, as soon as read, into her pocket and off upstairs goes your
letter, and in the next two minutes into the mail, so it is
impossible for me now to refer to it