Mark Twain In Serious Mood on Marriage and Life

1909

MARK TWAIN IN SERIOUS MOOD.

Mark Twain, who can be serious when occasion requires, gave out a serious interview on the occasion of the recent marriage of his daughter. Twain didn't jest over the event. To him the union of two lives, the institution of a new family, was too sacred a thing to be made a subject for pun and jest. If marriages were more generally viewed in such a sacred light there might be fewer cases for the divorce court, fewer scandals, and fewer family "jars."

Twain declared a happy marriage is one of the tragical things of life. That, at first glance, appears like a contradiction. But it isn't. The happiest marriage is a tragedy, because, as Twain says, the future is filled to the brim with uncertainties. The very uncertainty of life is in itself a tragedy.

—The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, Cedar Rapids, IA, Oct. 9, 1909, p. 4