MARK TWAIN’S WIFE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2134, 7 March 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

MARK TWAIN’S WIFE.

A GLOWING TRIBUTE

The marriages of literary men are too often unfortunate and imhappy. The of literary histories bristle with melancholy examples. But there aro exceptions —beautiful, entrancexceptions—and Mark Twain-s loio story is one of these. In his autobiography, which is being published in the Sunday magazine of the New York Tribune, he writes 111 glowing words the happiness he nas found in married life. “I saw her first,” he says, 111 the form of an ivory miniature in her brother Charles’ stateroom 111 the steamer Quacker City, in tho_Bay of Smyrna, in the summer of 1867, when sho was in her twenty-second year. 1 saw her in the flesh for the first time in New York the following December. She was slender and beautiful and girlish—and she was both girl anil woman. She remained both girl and woman to the last days of her life. Under a grave and gentle exterior burned inextinguishable fires of symxiat-hy, energy, devotion, enthusiasm, and absolutely limitless affection".

“She was always frail in body, and slle lived upon her spirit, -whose hopefulness and courage were indestructible. Perfect truth, perfect honesty, perfect candour, were qualities of her character which were born with her. Her judgments of people and things were sure and accurate. Her intuitions almost never deceived her. In her judgments of characters and acts of both friends and strangers there was always room for charity, and this charity never failed. “I have compared and contrasted her with hundreds of persons, and my conviction remains that hers was tho most- perfect character I liavo ever met. And I may add that she was the most winningly dignified poison I have ever known. Her character and dispositions w r ere of the sort that not . only invites worship,, but commands it. No servant ever left service who deservd to remain in ■ it. And, she could choose with a glance of an eye, the servants she selected did ,in almost all cases deserve to remain, and they did remain.

“She was always cheerful, ,and she was always able to communicate her cheerfulness to others. During tho nine years that we spent in poverty and debt, she was always able to reason me out of my despair, and to find a bright side to the clouds, and make me see it. In all that time I never know her to utter a word of regret concerning out altered circumstances, nor did I ever know her children to do so, for sho had taught them, and they drew their fortitude from her. The love which she bestowed upon those whom she loved took tho form of worship, and in that form it was returned—-returned by relatives, friends and servants of her household

“It was a strange combination which wrought into one individual so to speak, by marriage, her disposition and her character, olid mine. She poured out her prodigal affections in kisses and caresses, and in a vocabulary of endearments whose profusion was always an astonishment to me. I r, a - I .-rn reserved as to endearments of speech and caresses, and hers broke upon me as the summer waves break upon Gibraltar. I was reared in that atmosphere of reserve. I never knew a member of my father’s family to kiss another member except once, and that at a death-bed. And our village was not a kissing community. The kissing and caressing ended with courtship, along with the deadly piano playing of that day. “She had the heart-free laugh of a girl, it came seldom ; hut when It broko upon the ear it was as inspiring as music. I heard it for the last time when she had been occupying her sick bed for more than a year, and I made