They had all said of Olivia Langdon, who was the "family idol," that "no one was good enough for her--certainly not this adventurous soldier of letters from the West." Charles Langdon, her brother and Mark Twain's old comrade, was so mortified at having brought this ignominy upon his own household, that he set off on a voyage round the world in order to escape the wedding. Furthermore, Mark Twain's friends in California replied unanimously to Mr. Langdon's enquiries about his character, that, while he was certainly a good fellow, he would make the "worst husband on record." Would not all these things have put any lover on his mettle? Mark Twain was on probation, and his provisional acceptability in this new situation was due not to his genius but to the fact that he was able to make money by it. What made the Langdons relent and consider his candidacy was quite plainly, as we can see from Mr. Paine's record, the vast success Mark Twain was having as a humorous journalist and lecturer. With the publication of "The Innocents Abroad," as we know, "he had become suddenly a person of substance--an associate of men of consequence": even in New York people pointed him out in the street. He was a lion, a conquering hero, and Elmira could not help yielding to that: "it would be difficult," as Mr. Paine says, "for any family to refuse relationship with one whose star was so clearly ascending." But could he, would he, keep it up? To be sure, he considered himself, we are specifically told, not as a literary man but as a journalist; his financial pace had been set for him; "I wasn't going to touch a book," he wrote, "unless there was _money_ in it, and a good deal of it"; he had already formed those habits of "pecuniary emulation" and "conspicuous waste" which Mr. Veblen has defined for us and which were almost a guarantee that he would take a common-sense view of his talent and turn it to the best financial account; three months before his marriage, this erstwhile barefoot boy was already--the best possible omen for one with his resources--$22,000 in debt! He had put his shoulder to the wheel and had proved that he was able to make money even faster than he spent it; and the instincts of the family man had so manifested themselves in his new devotion that, other things being equal--and his wife would see to that--he really was a safe, conservative risk as a wealthy coal-dealer's son-in-law. Jervis Langdon capitulated: he was a hearty soul, he had always liked Mark Twain, anyway; now he felt that this soldier of fortune could be trusted to cherish his daughter in the style, as people say, to which she had been accustomed. His own household expenses were $40,000 a year: of course they couldn't begin on that scale; it wasn't to be expected, and besides, it wasn't the custom. But, at any rate, he was going to start them off, and he was going to do it handsomely. One remembers how, in "The Gilded Age," when Philip Sterling conquers the mountain of coal