CIV. MARK TWAIN AND HIS WIFE

Clemens and his wife traveled to Boston for one of those happy
fore-gatherings with the Howellses, which continued, at one end of
the journey or another, for so many years. There was a luncheon with
Longfellow at Craigie House, and, on the return to Hartford, Clemens
reported to Howells how Mrs. Clemens had thrived on the happiness of the
visit. Also he confesses his punishment for the usual crimes:

I "caught it" for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about her
coffee, when it was a "good deal better than we get at home." I
"caught it" for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing
her the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS.
when the printers are done with it. I "caught it" once more for
personating that drunken Colonel James. I "caught it" for
mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's picture was slightly damaged; and
when, after a lull in the storm, I confessed, shamefacedly, that I
had privately suggested to you that we hadn't any frames, and that
if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton, etc., etc., etc., the
madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute. Then she
said:

"How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his
sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er--"

"Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a
man who--"

She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on in
the hall, so she took it out of George. I am glad of that, because
it saved the babies.

Clemens used to admit, at a later day, that his education did not
advance by leaps and bounds, but gradually, very gradually; and it used
to give him a pathetic relief in those after-years, when that sweet
presence had gone out of his life, to tell the way of it, to confess
over-fully, perhaps, what a responsibility he had been to her.

He used to tell how, for a long time, he concealed his profanity from
her; how one morning, when he thought the door was shut between
their bedroom and the bathroom, he was in there dressing and shaving,
accompanying these trying things with language intended only for the
strictest privacy; how presently, when he discovered a button off the
shirt he intended to put on, he hurled it through the window into the
yard with appropriate remarks, followed it with another shirt that
was in the same condition, and added certain collar