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begun by him at this time. His head was full of ideas for
literature of every sort. Many of his beginnings came to
nothing, for the reason that he started wrong, or with no
definitely formed plan. Others of his literary enterprises
were condemned by his wife for their grotesqueness or for
the offense they might give in one way or another, however
worthy the intention behind them. Once he wrote a burlesque
on family history "The Autobiography of a Damned Fool."
"Livy wouldn't have it," he said later, "so I gave it up."
The world is indebted to Mark Twain's wife for the check she
put upon his fantastic or violent impulses. She was his
public, his best public--clearheaded and wise. That he
realized this, and was willing to yield, was by no means the
least of his good fortunes. We may believe that he did not
always yield easily, and perhaps sometimes only out of love
for her. In the letter which he wrote her on her thirtieth
birthday we realize something of what she had come to mean
in his life.
*
****
To Mrs. Clemens on her Thirtieth Birthday:
379
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