There comes a time when we want their company and
their interest. We want it more than anything in the world, and we are
likely to be starved for it, just as they were starved so long ago. There
is no appreciation of my books that is so precious to me as appreciation
from my children. Theirs is the praise we want, and the praise we are
least likely to get."
His moods of remorse seemed to overwhelm him at times. He spoke of
Henry's death and little Langdon's, and charged himself with both. He
declared that for years he had filled Mrs. Clemens's life with
privations, that the sorrow of Susy's death had hastened her own end. How
darkly he painted it! One saw the jester, who for forty years had been
making the world laugh, performing always before a background of tragedy.
But such moods were evanescent. He was oftener gay than somber. One
morning before we settled down to work he related with apparent joy how
he had made a failure of story-telling at a party the night before. An
artist had told him a yarn, he said, which he had considered the most
amusing thing in the world. But he had not been satisfied with it, and
had attempted to improve on it at the party. He had told it with what he
considered the nicest elaboration of detail and artistic effect, and when
he had concluded and expected applause, only a sickening silence had
followed.
"A crowd like that can make a good deal of silence when they combine," he
said, "and it probably lasted as long as ten seconds, because it seemed
an hour and a half.
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