s and neckties and
bath-room requisites, decorating the shrubbery outside, where the people
were going by to church; how in this extreme moment he heard a slight
cough and turned to find that the door was open! There was only one door
to the bath-room, and he knew he had to pass her. He felt pale and sick,
and sat down for a few moments to consider. He decided to assume that
she was asleep, and to walk out and through the room, head up, as if
he had nothing on his conscience. He attempted it, but without success.
Half-way across the room he heard a voice suddenly repeat his last
terrific remark. He turned to see her sitting up in bed, regarding him
with a look as withering as she could find in her gentle soul. The humor
of it struck him.

"Livy," he said, "did it sound like that?"

"Of course it did," she said, "only worse. I wanted you to hear just how
it sounded."

"Livy," he said, "it would pain me to think that when I swear it sounds
like that. You got the words right, Livy, but you don't know the tune."

Yet he never willingly gave her pain, and he adored her and gloried in
her dominion, his life long. Howells speaks of his beautiful and tender
loyalty to her as the "most moving quality of his most faithful soul."

It was a greater part of him than the love of most men for their wives,
and she merited all the worship he could give her, all the devotion, all
the implicit obedience, by her surpassing force and beauty of character.

She guarded his work sacredly; and reviewing the manuscripts which
he was induced to discard, and certain edited manuscripts, one gets a
partial idea of what the reading world owes to Olivia Clemens. Of the
discarded manuscripts (he seems seldom to have destroyed them) there
are a multitude, and among them all scarcely one that is not a proof
of her sanity and high regard for his literary honor. They are
amusing--some of them; they are interesting--some of them; they are
strong and virile--some of them; but they are unworthy--most of them,
though a number remain unfinished because theme or interest failed.

Mark Twain was likely to write not wisely but too much, piling up
hundreds of manuscript pages only because his brain was thronging as
with a myriad of fireflies, a swarm of darting, flashing ideas demanding
release. As often as not he began writing with only a nebulous idea
of what he proposed to do. He would start with a few characters and
situations, trusting in Providence to