Dear Mr. Severtson: For Clemens's comments on marriage, you might want to take a look at his letters written during his courtship of Olivia Langdon and just before and after their wedding (*Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 3: 1869,* and *Volume 4: 1870-1871* [University of California Press, 1992 and 1995]). There are so many good ones that it is hard to choose, but here are a few samples: "This is your birthday darling, & you are 24. May you treble your age, in happiness & peace, & I be with you to love you & cherish you all the long procession of years! I have kept this day & honored this anniversary alone, in solitary state--the anniversary of an event which was happening when I was a giddy school-boy a thousand miles away, & played heedlessly all that day & slept heedlessly all that night unconscious that it was the mightiest day that had ever winged its viewless hours over my head--unconscious that on that day, two journeys were begun, wide as the poles apart, two paths marked out, which, wandering & wandering, now far & now near, were still narrowing, always narrowing toward one point & one blessed consummation, & these the goal of twenty-four years' marching!--unconscious I was, in that day of my heedless boyhood, that an event had just transpired, so tremendous that without it all my future life had been a sullen pilgrimage, but with it that same future was saved!--a sun had just peered above the horizon which should rise & shine out of the zenith upon those coming years & fill them with light & warmth, with peace & blessedness, for all time." [28 November 1869, written just after their formal engagement, *Volume 3,* 412-13] "I plainly see, now, why Joe Goodman gradually lost all interest in his poetry (he was a born poet) & finally lost all ambition in that direction & ceased to write. The one whose applause would have been dearer to him & more potent than that of all the world beside, could not help him, or encourage him or spur him, because she was far below his intellectual level & could not appreciate the work of his brain or feel an interest in it. When I told him you took care of my sketches for me & listened with a lively interest to any manuscript of mine before it was printed, he dropped an unconscious remark that was so full of pathos--so fraught with 'It might have been'--that my heart ached for him. He *could* have been so honored of men, & so loved by all for whom poetry has a charm, but for the dead weight & clog upon his winged genius, of a wife whose soul could have no companionship save with the things of the dull earth. "But I am blessed above my kind, with *another self*--a life companion who is *part of me*--part of my heart, & flesh & spirit--& not a fellow-pilgrim who lags far behind or flies ahead, or soars above me. Side by side, my darling, we walk the ways of life; & the ray of light that falls upon the one, illumines the face of the other; the cloud that darkens the hope of one casts its sable shadow upon the other; & the storms that come will beat upon no single head, but both will feel their might & brave their desolation." [10 January 1870 to Olivia L. Langdon, written less than a month before their wedding, *Volume 4,* 17-18] "I have had so much to do of late (had so much 'setting around' to do, being now in the fourth week of the honeymoon,} that I have had no comfortable opportunity to answer your welcome letter. "I wish you had told me--you experienced people--if it is always as pleasant as it is now. If all one's married days are as happy as these new ones have been to me, I have deliberately fooled away 30 years of my life. If it were to do over again I would marry in early infancy instead of wasting time cutting teeth & breaking crockery." [6 March 1870 to Robert M. and Louise M. Howland, *Volume 4,* 87] I hope this is helpful. Yours sincerely, Victor Fischer Mark Twain Project