A moody and sometimes irascible girl

From Warriors: Portraits from the Battlefield by Max Hastings. Page 45.

Figures you do not often hear of in military history books and yet who are interesting and consequential, in this case Joshua Chamberlain.

Still anticipating a career as a missionary, and too poor to marry Fannie Adams, whose family anyway opposed the match, Chamberlain enrolled at Bangor Theological Seminary. He spent the next three years studying—Hebrew, German, Arabic and Latin as well as theology — and preaching, to growing local acclaim. In 1855 he became an instructor in logic and natural theology at Bowdoin, and was soon promoted to professor of rhetoric and oratory. Having at last achieved some financial security, he was able to marry Fannie, evidently a moody and sometimes irascible girl, whose enthusiasm for her husband later waned, as his for her never seemed to do. They began to raise a family. By 1861 Joshua Chamberlain had become a significant local figure, respected for his cleverness, integrity and commitment to everything he undertook. Though he had abandoned ideas of a career in the ministry, in a God-fearing age he was a sombrely upright, God-fearing man, not much given to jesting, direct to the edge of naivety.

What a sadness captured in that turn of phrase, "he was able to marry Fannie, evidently a moody and sometimes irascible girl, whose enthusiasm for her husband later waned, as his for her never seemed to do."