That seems ungenerous. There's no evidence of impropriety. Twain outlived his wife and two of his three daughters, and characterized the "aquarium club" as "sur

That seems ungenerous. There's no evidence of impropriety. Twain outlived his wife and two of his three daughters, and characterized the "aquarium club" as "surrogate granddaughters". Twain's only actual granddaughter was born a few months after his death in 1910, and since he celebrated children in works like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the idea of the "aquarium club" consoling the embittered old man with a dose of childhood optimism seems plausible.