“Now, Joy, we will have another wedding. This is Mr. Colonel Williams, and you are to become his wedded wife.”
So Joy stood up very gravely and Clemens performed the ceremony, and I gave the bride away, and Joy to him became Mrs. Colonel Williams thereafter, and entered happily into her new estate.
CCLXXXVI. AUTUMN DAYS
A harvest of letters followed the wedding: a general congratulatory expression, mingled with admiration, affection, and good-will. In his interview Clemens had referred to the pain in his breast; and many begged him to deny that there was anything serious the matter with him, urging him to try this relief or that, pathetically eager for his continued life and health. They cited the comfort he had brought to world-weary humanity and his unfailing stand for human justice as reasons why he should live. Such letters could not fail to cheer him.
A letter of this period, from John Bigelow, gave him a pleasure of its own. Clemens had written Bigelow, apropos of some adverse expression on the tariff:
Thank you for any hard word you can say about the tariff. I guess
the government that robs its own people earns the future it is
preparing for itself.
Bigelow was just then declining an invitation to the annual dinner of the Chamber of Commerce. In sending his regrets he said:
The sentiment I would propose if I dared to be present would be the
words of Mark Twain, the statesman:
“The government that robs its own people earns the future it is
preparing for itself.”
Now to Clemens himself he wrote: