an way. One day he coaxed
and petted them beyond their due, the next he harried and lashed
them beyond their deserts. He sulked, he cursed, he raged, he
grieved, according to his mood and the circumstances, but all to no
purpose; his efforts were all vain, he could not govern them. When
the fury was on him he was blind to all reason--he not only
slaughtered the offender, but even his harmless little children and
dumb cattle....

To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive,
fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God
is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose
beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering 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 i