toming 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 for