CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY .-- III.
BY MARK TWAIN.
VI.
To-morrow will be the thirty-sixth anniversary of our marriage.

My wife passed from this life one year and eight months ago, in Florence, Italy, after an unbroken illness of twenty-two months' duration.
I saw her first in the form of an ivory miniature in her brother Charley's stateroom in the steamer "Quaker City," in the Bay of Smyrna, in the summer of 1867, when she was in her twenty-second year.

I saw her in the flesh for the first time in New York in the following December.
She was slender and beautiful and girlish--and she was both girl and woman.

She remained both girl and woman to the last day of her life.
Under a grave and gentle exterior burned inextinguishable fires of sympathy, energy, devotion, enthusiasm, and absolutely limitless affection.

She was _always_ frail in body, and she lived upon her spirit, whose hopefulness and courage were indestructible.