ithout a touch of weakness; she united
wonderful tact with wonderful truth; and Clemens not only accepted
her rule implicitly, but he rejoiced, he gloried in it.

And once, in an interview with the writer of these chapters, Howells
declared: "She was not only a beautiful soul, but a woman of singular
intellectual power. I never knew any one quite like her." Then he added:
"Words cannot express Mrs. Clemens--her fineness, her delicate, her
wonderful tact with a man who was in some respects, and wished to be,
the most outrageous creature that ever breathed."

Howells meant a good many things by that, no doubt: Clemens's violent
methods, for one thing, his sudden, savage impulses, which sometimes
worked injustice and hardship for others, though he was first to
discover the wrong and to repair it only too fully. Then, too, Howells
may have meant his boyish teasing tendency to disturb Mrs. Clemens's
exquisite sense of decorum.

Once I remember seeing him come into his drawing-room at Hartford in
a pair of white cowskin slippers with the hair out, and do a crippled
colored uncle, to the joy of all beholders. I must not say all, for I
remember also the dismay of Mrs. Clemens, and her low, despairing cry of
"Oh, Youth!"

He was continually doing such things as the "crippled colored uncle,";
partly for the very joy of the performance, but partly, too, to disturb
her serenity, to incur her reproof, to shiver her a little--"shock"
would be too strong a word. And he liked to fancy her in a spirit and
attitude of belligerence, to present that fancy to those who knew the
measure of her gentle nature. Writing to Mrs. Howells of a picture of
herself in a group, he said:

You look exactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said: "Indeed, I
do not wonder that you can frame no reply; for you know only too
well that your conduct admits of no excuse, palliation, or argument
--none!"

Clemens would pretend to a visitor that she had been violently indignant
over some offense of his; perhaps he would say:

"Well I contradicted her just now, and the crockery will begin to fly
pretty soon."

She could never quite get used to this pleasantry, and a faint glow
would steal over her face. He liked to produce that glow. Yet always his
manner toward her was tenderness itself. He regarded her as some dainty
bit of porcelain, and it was said that he was always following her about
with a chair. Their union has been regar