the first year it was considerably behind the Innocents for the
same period. As already stated, it required ten years for Roughing It
to reach the one-hundred-thousand mark, which the Innocents reached in
three.

LXXXV. A BIRTH, A DEATH, AND A VOYAGE

The year 1872 was an eventful one in Mark Twain's life. At Elmira,
on March 19th, his second child, a little girl, whom they named Susan
Olivia, was born. On June 2d, in the new home in Hartford, to which they
had recently moved, his first child, a little boy, Langdon, died. He had
never been strong, his wavering life had often been uncertain, always
more of the spirit than the body, and in Elmira he contracted a heavy
cold, or perhaps it was diphtheria from the beginning. In later years,
whenever Clemens spoke of the little fellow, he never failed to accuse
himself of having been the cause of the child's death. It was Mrs.
Clemens's custom to drive out each morning with Langdon, and once when
she was unable to go Clemens himself went instead.

"I should not have been permitted to do it," he said, remembering. "I
was not qualified for any such responsibility as that. Some one should
have gone who had at least the rudiments of a mind. Necessarily I would
lose myself dreaming. After a while the coachman looked around and
noticed that the carriage-robes had dropped away from the little fellow,
and that he was exposed to the chilly air. He called my attention to it,
but it was too late. Tonsilitis or something of the sort set in, and
he did not get any better, so we took him to Hartford. There it was
pronounced diphtheria, and of course he died."

So, with or without reason, he added the blame of another tragedy to the
heavy burden of remorse which he would go on piling up while he lived.

The blow was a terrible one to Mrs. Clemens; even the comfort of the
little new baby on her arm could not ease the ache in her breast. It
seemed to her that death was pursuing her. In one of her letters she
says:

"I feel so often as if my path is to be lined with graves," and she
expresses the wish that she may drop out of life herself before her
sister and her husband--a wish which the years would grant.

They did not return to Elmira, for it was thought that the air of the
shore would be better for the little girl; so they spent the summer at
Saybrook, Connecticut, at Fenwick Hall, leaving Orion and his wife in
charge of the house at Hartford.

Beyond a few sketches, Cleme