to pay the price of it, whether in money or in endurance, and
Mrs. Clemens heroically did her part. She loved these things also, in
her own way. She took pride in them, and realized that they were a part
of his vast success. Yet in her heart she often longed for the simpler
life--above all, for the farm life at Elmira. Her spirit cried out for
the rest and comfort there. In one of her letters she says:
The house has been full of company, and I have been "whirled
around." How can a body help it? Oh, I cannot help sighing for the
peace and quiet of the farm. This is my work, and I know that I do
very wrong when I feel chafed by it, but how can I be right about
it? Sometimes it seems as if the simple sight of people would drive
me mad. I am all wrong; if I would simply accept the fact that this
is my work and let other things go, I know I should not be so
fretted; but I want so much to do other things, to study and do
things with the children, and I cannot.

I have the best French teacher that I ever had, and if I could give
any time to it I could not help learning French.

When we reflect on the conditions, we are inclined to say how much better
it would have been to have remained there among the hills in that quiet,
inexpensive environment, to have let the world go. But that was not
possible. The game was of far larger proportions than any that could be
restricted to the limits of retirement and the simpler round of life.
Mark Twain's realm had become too large for his court to be established
in a cottage.

It is hard to understand that in spite of a towering fame Mark Twain was
still not regarded by certain American arbiters of reputations as a
literary fixture; his work was not yet recognized by them as being of
important meaning and serious purport.

In Boston, at that time still the Athens of America, he was enjoyed,
delighted in; but he was not honored as being quite one of the elect.
Howells tells us that:

In proportion as people thought themselves refined they questioned
that quality which all recognize in him now, but which was then the
inspired knowledge of the simple-hearted multitude.

Even at the Atlantic dinners his place was "below the salt"--a place of
honor, but not of the greatest honor. He did not sit on the dais with
Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Howells, and Aldrich. We of a
later period, who remember him always as the center of e