6 Chapter 5 The Gilded Age

Chapter 5 The Gilded Age "My works are like water. The works of the great masters are like wine. But everybody drinks water." —Mark Twain "We are two as happy people as you ever saw," Livy wrote soon after the wedding. The newlyweds moved to Buffalo, New York, where Mark was now part owner—thanks to a loan from Livy's father—of the Buffalo Express. Mr. Langdon's wedding gift was a fully furnished house, plus a cook, maid, and coachman. Mark, or "Youth," as Livy called him, was in heaven. In a letter to the Langdons, Mark described himself as "Little Sammy in Fairyland."

Mark was now also the bestselling author of The Innocents Abroad. Mark had worried that critics would pay no attention to his book. But a reviewer from the respected Atlantic Monthly praised the book and said Mark Twain was not just a humorist but a writer "quite worthy of the company of the best." That pleased both Mark and Livy, who was Mark Twain's editor to the end of her days.

Hoping to repeat the success of The Innocents Abroad, Mark began Roughing It, a book about his time in the West. But it was hard to concentrate on his writing. Livy's father died in August. Then, in November, Livy had her first child, a sickly boy named Langdon. Soon after giving birth, Livy developed typhoid fever. Mark became a frantic, around-the-clock nurse for both his wife and infant son.

Once Livy was better, Mark moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut, for a fresh start. Six months later, a second child, Susy, was born. Susy was healthy and strong. But frail Langdon was still unwell. Ten weeks later, Langdon died of diphtheria.

Mark and Livy were heartbroken. "It seems as if I could not do without [Langdon]," Livy wrote. Throughout his life, Mark Twain believed that "the secret source of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow." And, indeed, his life was marked by much sorrow and tragedy. But not everything Mark wrote was humorous. In 1873, Mark and his friend Charles Warner wrote a novel called The Gilded Age. "Gilded" means covered with a thin layer of gold. The book was about a new class of Americans: the superrich.

Since the Civil War, America's economy was growing more and more powerful. It was no longer based on farming. It was now based on industry: coal mining, oil refining, iron and steel manufacturing, and railroad-building. These big businesses were owned by a few wealthy men who became known as "robber barons." Swindling, lies, bribery, and get-rich-quick schemes were the order of the day. Even government officials were involved. While most workers, many of them newly arrived immigrants, lived in crowded city tenements and barely made a