Mark Twain's Letters--1853-1866, by Mark Twain

P. S. I have written this by a light so dim that you nor Ma could not read by it.

     He was lodging in a mechanics' cheap boarding-house in Duane Street,
     and we may imagine the bareness of his room, the feeble poverty of
     his lamp.

     “Tell Ma my promises are faithfully kept.” It was the day when he
     had left Hannibal. His mother, Jane Clemens, a resolute, wiry woman
     of forty-nine, had put together his few belongings. Then, holding
     up a little Testament:

     “I want you to take hold of the end of this, Sam,” she said, “and
     make me a promise. I want you to repeat after me these words:
     'I do solemnly swear that I will not throw a card, or drink a drop
     of liquor while I am gone.'”

     It was this oath, repeated after her, that he was keeping
     faithfully. The Will Bowen mentioned is a former playmate, one of
     Tom Sawyer's outlaw band. He had gone on the river to learn
     piloting with an elder brother, the “Captain.” What the bad news
     was is no longer remembered, but it could not have been very
     serious, for the Bowen boys remained on the river for many years.
     “Ella” was Samuel Clemens's cousin and one-time sweetheart, Ella
     Creel. “Jim” was Jim Wolfe, an apprentice in Orion's office, and
     the hero of an adventure which long after Mark Twain wrote under the
     title of, “Jim Wolfe and the Cats.”

     There is scarcely a hint of the future Mark Twain in this early
     letter. It is the letter of a boy of seventeen who is beginning to
     take himself rather seriously—who, finding himself for the first
     time far from home and equal to his own responsibilities, is willing
     to carry the responsibility of others. Henry, his brother, three
     years younger, had been left in the printing-office with Orion, who,
     after a long, profitless fight, is planning to remove from Hannibal.
     The young traveler is concerned as to the family outlook, and will
     furnish advice if invited. He feels the approach of prosperity, and
     will take his mother on a long-coveted trip to her old home in the
     spring. His evenings? Where should he spend them, with a free
     library of four thousand volumes close by? It is distinctly a
     youthful letter, a bit pretentious, and wanting in the spontaneity
     and humor of a later time. It invites comment, now, chiefly because
     it is the first surviving document in the long human story.

     He was working in the printing-office of John A. Gray and Green, on
     Cliff Street, and remained there through the summer. He must have
     written more than once during this period, but the next existing
     letter—also to Sister Pamela—was written in October. It is
     perhaps a shade more natural in tone than the earlier example, and
     there is a hint of Mark Twain in the first paragraph.

NEW YORK..., Oct. Saturday '53.

MY DEAR SISTER,—I have not written to any of the family for some time, from the fact, firstly, that I didn't know where they were, and secondly, because I have been fooling myself with the idea that I was going to leave New York every day for the last two weeks. I have taken a liking to the abominable place, and every time I get ready to leave, I put it off a day or so, from some unaccountable cause. It is as hard on my conscience to leave New York, as it was easy to leave Hannibal. I think I shall get off Tuesday, though.

Edwin Forrest has been playing, for the last sixteen days, at the Broadway Theatre, but I never went to see him till last night. The play was the “Gladiator.” I did not like parts of it much, but other portions were really splendid. In the latter part of the last act, where the “Gladiator” (Forrest) dies at his brother's feet, (in all the fierce pleasure of gratified revenge,) the man's whole soul seems absorbed in the part he is playing; and it is really startling to see him. I am sorry I did not see him play “Damon and Pythias” the former character being his greatest. He appears in Philadelphia on Monday night.

I have not received a letter from home lately, but got a “'Journal'” the other day, in which I see the office has been sold. I suppose Ma, Orion and Henry are in St. Louis now. If Orion has no other project in his head, he ought to take the contract for getting out some weekly paper, if he cannot get a foremanship. Now, for such a paper as the “Presbyterian” (containing about 60,000,—[Sixty thousand ems, type measurement.]) he could get $20 or $25 per week, and he and Henry could easily do the work; nothing to do but set the type and make up the forms....

If my letters do not come often, you need not bother yourself about me; for if you have a brother nearly eighteen years of age, who is not able to take care of himself a few miles from home, such a brother is not worth one's thoughts: and if I don't manage to take care of No. 1, be assured you will never know it. I am not afraid, however; I shall ask favors from no one, and endeavor to be (and shall be) as “independent as a wood-sawyer's clerk.”

I never saw such a place for military companies as New York. Go on the street when you will, you are sure to meet a company in full uniform, with all the usual appendages of drums, fifes, &c. I saw a large company of soldiers of 1812 the other day, with a '76 veteran scattered here and there in the ranks. And as I passed through one of the parks lately, I came upon a company of boys on parade. Their uniforms were neat, and their muskets about half the common size. Some of them were not more than seven or eight years of age; but had evidently been well-drilled.

Passage to Albany (160 miles) on the finest steamers that ply' the Hudson, is now 25 cents—cheap enough, but is generally cheaper than that in the summer.

I want you to write as soon as I tell you where to direct your letter. I would let you know now, if I knew myself. I may perhaps be here a week longer; but I cannot tell. When you write tell me the whereabouts of the family. My love to Mr. Moffett and Ella. Tell Ella I intend to write to her soon, whether she wants me to nor not.

Truly your Brother,

SAML L. CLEMENS.

     He was in Philadelphia when he wrote the nest letter that has come
     down to us, and apparently satisfied with the change. It is a
     letter to Orion Clemens, who had disposed of his paper, but
     evidently was still in Hannibal. An extended description of a trip
     to Fairmount Park is omitted because of its length, its chief
     interest being the tendency it shows to descriptive writing—the
     field in which he would make his first great fame. There is,
     however, no hint of humor, and only a mild suggestion of the author
     of the Innocents Abroad in this early attempt. The letter as here
     given is otherwise complete, the omissions being indicated.

PHILADELPHIA, PA. Oct. 26,1853.

MY DEAR BROTHER,—It was at least two weeks before I left New York, that I received my last letter from home: and since then, not a word have I heard from any of you. And now, since I think of it, it wasn't a letter, either, but the last number of the “Daily Journal,” saying that that paper was sold, and I very naturally supposed from that, that the family had disbanded, and taken up winter quarters in St. Louis. Therefore, I have been writing to Pamela, till I've tired of it, and have received no answer. I have been writing for the last two or three weeks, to send Ma some money, but devil take me if I knew where she was, and so the money has slipped out of my pocket somehow or other, but I have a dollar left, and a good deal owing to me, which will be paid next Monday. I shall enclose the dollar in this letter, and you can hand it to her. I know it's a small amount, but then it will buy her a handkerchief, and at the same time serve as a specimen of the kind of stuff we are paid with in Philadelphia, for you see it's against the law, in Pennsylvania, to keep or pass a bill of less denomination than $5. I have only seen two or three bank bills since I have been in the State. On Monday the hands are paid off in sparkling gold, fresh from the Mint; so your dreams are not troubled with the fear of having doubtful money in your pocket.

I am subbing at the Inquirer office. One man has engaged me to work for him every Sunday till the first of next April, (when I shall return home to take Ma to Ky;) and another has engaged my services for the 24th of next month; and if I want it, I can get subbing every night of the week. I go to work at 7 o'clock in the evening, and work till 3 o'clock the next morning. I can go to the theatre and stay till 12 o'clock and then go to the office, and get work from that till 3 the next morning; when I go to bed, and sleep till 11 o'clock, then get up and loaf the rest of the day. The type is mostly agate and minion, with some bourgeois; and when one gets a good agate take,—[“Agate,” “minion,” etc., sizes of type; “take,” a piece of work. Type measurement is by ems, meaning the width of the letter 'm'.]—he is sure to make money. I made $2.50 last Sunday, and was laughed at by all the hands, the poorest of whom sets 11,000 on Sunday; and if I don't set 10,000, at least, next Sunday, I'll give them leave to laugh as much as they want to. Out of the 22 compositors in this office, 12 at least, set 15,000 on Sunday.

Unlike New York, I like this Philadelphia amazingly, and the people in it. There is only one thing that gets my “dander” up—and that is the hands are always encouraging me: telling me—“it's no use to get discouraged—no use to be down-hearted, for there is more work here than you can do!” “Down-hearted,” the devil! I have not had a particle of such a feeling since I left Hannibal, more than four months ago. I fancy they'll have to wait some time till they see me down-hearted or afraid of starving while I have strength to work and am in a city of 400,000 inhabitants. When I was in Hannibal, before I had scarcely stepped out of the town limits, nothing could have convinced me that I would starve as soon as I got a little way from home....

The grave of Franklin is in Christ Church-yard, corner of Fifth and Arch streets. They keep the gates locked, and one can only see the flat slab that lies over his remains and that of his wife; but you cannot see the inscription distinctly enough to read it. The inscription, I believe, reads thus:

                        “Benjamin |
                         and       | Franklin”
                          Deborah   |

I counted 27 cannons (6 pounders) planted in the edge of the sidewalk in Water St. the other day. They are driven into the ground, about a foot, with the mouth end upwards. A ball is driven fast into the mouth of each, to exclude the water; they look like so many posts. They were put there during the war. I have also seen them planted in this manner, round the old churches, in N. Y.....

There is one fine custom observed in Phila. A gentleman is always expected to hand up a lady's money for her. Yesterday, I sat in the front end of the 'bus, directly under the driver's box—a lady sat opposite me. She handed me her money, which was right. But, Lord! a St. Louis lady would think herself ruined, if she should be so familiar with a stranger. In St. Louis a man will sit in the front end of the stage, and see a lady stagger from the far end, to pay her fare. The Phila. 'bus drivers cannot cheat. In the front of the stage is a thing like an office clock, with figures from 0 to 40, marked on its face. When the stage starts, the hand of the clock is turned toward the 0. When you get in and pay your fare, the driver strikes a bell, and the hand moves to the figure 1—that is, “one fare, and paid for,” and there is your receipt, as good as if you had it in your pocket. When a passenger pays his fare and the driver does not strike the bell immediately, he is greeted “Strike that bell! will you?”

I must close now. I intend visiting the Navy Yard, Mint, etc., before I write again. You must write often. You see I have nothing to write interesting to you, while you can write nothing that will not interest me. Don't say my letters are not long enough. Tell Jim Wolfe to write. Tell all the boys where I am, and to write. Jim Robinson, particularly. I wrote to him from N. Y. Tell me all that is going on in H—l.

Truly your brother

SAM.

     Those were primitive times. Imagine a passenger in these
     easy-going days calling to a driver or conductor to “Strike
     that bell!”

     “H—l” is his abbreviation for Hannibal. He had first used
     it in a title of a poem which a few years before, during one
     of Orion's absences, he had published in the paper. “To
     Mary in Hannibal” was too long to set as a display head in
     single column. The poem had no great merit, but under the
     abbreviated title it could hardly fail to invite notice. It
     was one of several things he did to liven up the circulation
     during a brief period of his authority.

     The doubtful money he mentions was the paper issued by
     private banks, “wild cat,” as it was called. He had been
     paid with it in New York, and found it usually at a
     discount—sometimes even worthless. Wages and money were
     both better in Philadelphia, but the fund for his mother's
     trip to Kentucky apparently did not grow very rapidly.

     The next letter, written a month later, is also to Orion
     Clemens, who had now moved to Muscatine, Iowa, and
     established there a new paper with an old title, 'The
     Journal'.

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 28th, 1853.

MY DEAR BROTHER,—I received your letter today. I think Ma ought to spend the winter in St. Louis. I don't believe in that climate—it's too cold for her.

The printers' annual ball and supper came off the other night. The proceeds amounted to about $1,000. The printers, as well as other people, are endeavoring to raise money to erect a monument to Franklin, but there are so many abominable foreigners here (and among printers, too,) who hate everything American, that I am very certain as much money for such a purpose could be raised in St. Louis, as in Philadelphia. I was in Franklin's old office this morning—the “North American” (formerly “Philadelphia Gazette”) and there was at least one foreigner for every American at work there.

How many subscribers has the Journal got? What does the job-work pay? and what does the whole concern pay?...

I will try to write for the paper occasionally, but I fear my letters will be very uninteresting, for this incessant night-work dulls one's ideas amazingly.

From some cause, I cannot set type nearly so fast as when I was at home. Sunday is a long day, and while others set 12 and 15,000, yesterday, I only set 10,000. However, I will shake this laziness off, soon, I reckon....

How do you like “free-soil?”—I would like amazingly to see a good old-fashioned negro.

                                  My love to all

                                        Truly your brother

                                                       SAM.

     We may believe that it never occurred to the young printer, looking
     up landmarks of Ben Franklin, that time would show points of
     resemblance between the great Franklin's career and his own. Yet
     these seem now rather striking. Like Franklin, he had been taken
     out of school very young and put at the printer's trade; like
     Franklin, he had worked in his brother's office, and had written for
     the paper. Like him, too, he had left quietly for New York and
     Philadelphia to work at the trade of printing, and in time Samuel
     Clemens, like Benjamin Franklin, would become a world-figure,
     many-sided, human, and of incredible popularity. The boy Sam
     Clemens may have had such dreams, but we find no trace of them.

     There is but one more letter of this early period. Young Clemens
     spent some time in Washington, but if he wrote from there his
     letters have disappeared. The last letter is from Philadelphia and
     seems to reflect homesickness. The novelty of absence and travel
     was wearing thin.

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 5, '53.

MY DEAR SISTER,—I have already written two letters within the last two hours, and you will excuse me if this is not lengthy. If I had the money, I would come to St. Louis now, while the river is open; but within the last two or three weeks I have spent about thirty dollars for clothing, so I suppose I shall remain where I am. I only want to return to avoid night-work, which is injuring my eyes. I have received one or two letters from home, but they are not written as they should be, and I know no more about what is going on there than the man in the moon. One only has to leave home to learn how to write an interesting letter to an absent friend when he gets back. I suppose you board at Mrs. Hunter's yet—and that, I think, is somewhere in Olive street above Fifth. Philadelphia is one of the healthiest places in the Union. I wanted to spend this winter in a warm climate, but it is too late now. I don't like our present prospect for cold weather at all.

Truly your brother

SAM.

     But he did not return to the West for another half year. The
     letters he wrote during that period have not survived. It was late
     in the summer of 1854 when he finally started for St. Louis. He sat
     up for three days and nights in a smoking-car to make the journey,
     and arrived exhausted. The river packet was leaving in a few hours
     for Muscatine, Iowa, where his mother and his two brothers were now
     located. He paid his sister a brief visit, and caught the boat.
     Worn-out, he dropped into his berth and slept the thirty-six hours
     of the journey.

     It was early when-he arrived—too early to arouse the family. In
     the office of the little hotel where he waited for daylight he found
     a small book. It contained portraits of the English rulers, with
     the brief facts of their reigns. Young Clemens entertained himself
     by learning this information by heart. He had a fine memory for
     such things, and in an hour or two had the printed data perfectly
     and permanently committed. This incidentally acquired knowledge
     proved of immense value to him. It was his groundwork for all
     English history.

II. LETTERS 1856-61. KEOKUK, AND THE RIVER. END OF PILOTING

     There comes a period now of nearly four years, when Samuel Clemens
     was either a poor correspondent or his letters have not been
     preserved. Only two from this time have survived—happily of
     intimate biographical importance.

     Young Clemens had not remained in Muscatine. His brother had no
     inducements to offer, and he presently returned to St. Louis, where
     he worked as a compositor on the Evening News until the following
     spring, rooming with a young man named Burrough, a journeyman
     chair-maker with a taste for the English classics. Orion Clemens,
     meantime, on a trip to Keokuk, had casually married there, and a
     little later removed his office to that city. He did not move the
     paper; perhaps it did not seem worth while, and in Keokuk he
     confined himself to commercial printing. The Ben Franklin Book and
     Job Office started with fair prospects. Henry Clemens and a boy
     named Dick Hingham were the assistants, and somewhat later, when
     brother Sam came up from St. Louis on a visit, an offer of five
     dollars a week and board induced him to remain. Later, when it
     became increasingly difficult to pay the five dollars, Orion took
     his brother into partnership, which perhaps relieved the financial
     stress, though the office methods would seem to have left something
     to be desired. It is about at this point that the first of the two
     letters mentioned was written. The writer addressed it to his
     mother and sister—Jane Clemens having by this time taken up her
     home with her daughter, Mrs. Moffett.

KEOKUK, Iowa, June 10th, 1856.

MY DEAR MOTHER & SISTER,—I have nothing to write. Everything is going on well. The Directory is coming on finely. I have to work on it occasionally, which I don't like a particle I don't like to work at too many things at once. They take Henry and Dick away from me too. Before we commenced the Directory, I could tell before breakfast just how much work could be done during the day, and manage accordingly—but now, they throw all my plans into disorder by taking my hands away from their work. I have nothing to do with the book—if I did I would have the two book hands do more work than they do, or else I would drop it. It is not a mere supposition that they do not work fast enough—I know it; for yesterday the two book hands were at work all day, Henry and Dick all the afternoon, on the advertisements, and they set up five pages and a half—and I set up two pages and a quarter of the same matter after supper, night before last, and I don't work fast on such things. They are either excessively slow motioned or very lazy. I am not getting along well with the job work. I can't work blindly—without system. I gave Dick a job yesterday, which I calculated he would set in two hours and I could work off in three, and therefore just finish it by supper time, but he was transferred to the Directory, and the job, promised this morning, remains untouched. Through all the great pressure of job work lately, I never before failed in a promise of the kind.

Your Son

SAM
Excuse brevity this is my 3rd letter to-night.

     Samuel Clemens was never celebrated for his patience; we may imagine
     that the disorder of the office tried his nerves. He seems, on the
     whole, however, to have been rather happy in Keokuk. There were
     plenty of young people there, and he was a favorite among them. But
     he had grown dissatisfied, and when one day some weeks later there
     fell into His hands an account of the riches of the newly explored
     regions of the upper Amazon, he promptly decided to find his fortune
     at the headwaters of the great South-American river. The second
     letter reports this momentous decision. It was written to Henry
     Clemens, who was temporarily absent-probably in Hannibal.

KEOKUK, August 5th, '56.

MY DEAR BROTHER,—.... Ward and I held a long consultation, Sunday morning, and the result was that we two have determined to start to Brazil, if possible, in six weeks from now, in order to look carefully into matters there and report to Dr. Martin in time for him to follow on the first of March. We propose going via New York. Now, between you and I and the fence you must say nothing about this to Orion, for he thinks that Ward is to go clear through alone, and that I am to stop at New York or New Orleans until he reports. But that don't suit me. My confidence in human nature does not extend quite that far. I won't depend upon Ward's judgment, or anybody's else—I want to see with my own eyes, and form my own opinion. But you know what Orion is. When he gets a notion into his head, and more especially if it is an erroneous one, the Devil can't get it out again. So I know better than to combat his arguments long, but apparently yielded, inwardly determined to go clear through. Ma knows my determination, but even she counsels me to keep it from Orion. She says I can treat him as I did her when I started to St. Louis and went to New York—I can start to New York and go to South America! Although Orion talks grandly about furnishing me with fifty or a hundred dollars in six weeks, I could not depend upon him for ten dollars, so I have “feelers” out in several directions, and have already asked for a hundred dollars from one source (keep it to yourself.) I will lay on my oars for awhile, and see how the wind sets, when I may probably try to get more. Mrs. Creel is a great friend of mine, and has some influence with Ma and Orion, though I reckon they would not acknowledge it. I am going up there tomorrow, to press her into my service. I shall take care that Ma and Orion are plentifully supplied with South American books. They have Herndon's Report now. Ward and the Dr. and myself will hold a grand consultation tonight at the office. We have agreed that no more shall be admitted into our company.

I believe the Guards went down to Quincy today to escort our first locomotive home.

                         Write soon.

                                   Your Brother,
                                                  SAM.

     Readers familiar with the life of Mark Twain know that none of the
     would-be adventurers found their way to the Amazon: His two
     associates gave up the plan, probably for lack of means. Young
     Clemens himself found a fifty-dollar bill one bleak November day
     blowing along the streets of Keokuk, and after duly advertising his
     find without result, set out for the Amazon, by way of Cincinnati
     and New Orleans.

     “I advertised the find and left for the Amazon the same day,” he
     once declared, a statement which we may take with a literary
     discount.

     He remained in Cincinnati that winter (1856-57) working at his
     trade. No letters have been preserved from that time, except two
     that were sent to a Keokuk weekly, the Saturday Post, and as these
     were written for publication, and are rather a poor attempt at
     burlesque humor—their chief feature being a pretended illiteracy
     —they would seem to bear no relation to this collection. He roomed
     that winter with a rugged, self-educated Scotchman—a mechanic, but
     a man of books and philosophies, who left an impress on Mark Twain's
     mental life.

     In April he took up once more the journey toward South America, but
     presently forgot the Amazon altogether in the new career that opened
     to him. All through his boyhood and youth Samuel Clemens had wanted
     to be a pilot. Now came the long-deferred opportunity. On the
     little Cincinnati steamer, the Paul Jones, there was a pilot named
     Horace Bixby. Young Clemens idling in the pilot-house was one
     morning seized with the old ambition, and laid siege to Bixby to
     teach him the river. The terms finally agreed upon specified a fee
     to Bixby of five hundred dollars, one hundred down, the balance when
     the pupil had completed the course and was earning money. But all
     this has been told in full elsewhere, and is only summarized here
     because the letters fail to complete the story.

     Bixby soon made some trips up the Missouri River, and in his absence
     turned his apprentice, or “cub,” over to other pilots, such being
     the river custom. Young Clemens, in love with the life, and a
     favorite with his superiors, had a happy time until he came under a
     pilot named Brown. Brown was illiterate and tyrannical, and from
     the beginning of their association pilot and apprentice disliked
     each other cordially.

     It is at this point that the letters begin once more—the first
     having been written when young Clemens, now twenty-two years old,
     had been on the river nearly a year. Life with Brown, of course,
     was not all sorrow, and in this letter we find some of the fierce
     joy of adventure which in those days Samuel Clemens loved.

SAINT LOUIS, March 9th, 1858.

DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER,—I must take advantage of the opportunity now presented to write you, but I shall necessarily be dull, as I feel uncommonly stupid. We have had a hard trip this time. Left Saint Louis three weeks ago on the Pennsylvania. The weather was very cold, and the ice running densely. We got 15 miles below town, landed the boat, and then one pilot. Second Mate and four deck hands took the sounding boat and shoved out in the ice to hunt the channel. They failed to find it, and the ice drifted them ashore. The pilot left the men with the boat and walked back to us, a mile and a half. Then the other pilot and myself, with a larger crew of men started out and met with the same fate. We drifted ashore just below the other boat. Then the fun commenced. We made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the yawl, and put the men (both crews) to it like horses, on the shore. Brown, the pilot, stood in the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took the tiller. We would start the men, and all would go well till the yawl would bring up on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many ten-pins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of the boat. After an hour's hard work we got back, with ice half an inch thick on the oars. Sent back and warped up the other yawl, and then George (the first mentioned pilot,) and myself, took a double crew of fresh men and tried it again. This time we found the channel in less than half an hour, and landed on an island till the Pennsylvania came along and took us off. The next day was colder still. I was out in the yawl twice, and then we got through, but the infernal steamboat came near running over us. We went ten miles further, landed, and George and I cleared out again—found the channel first trial, but got caught in the gorge and drifted helplessly down the river. The Ocean Spray came along and started into the ice after us, but although she didn't succeed in her kind intention of taking us aboard, her waves washed us out, and that was all we wanted. We landed on an island, built a big fire and waited for the boat. She started, and ran aground! It commenced raining and sleeting, and a very interesting time we had on that barren sandbar for the next four hours, when the boat got off and took us aboard. The next day was terribly cold. We sounded Hat Island, warped up around a bar and sounded again—but in order to understand our situation you will have to read Dr. Kane. It would have been impossible to get back to the boat. But the Maria Denning was aground at the head of the island—they hailed us—we ran alongside and they hoisted us in and thawed us out. We had then been out in the yawl from 4 o'clock in the morning till half past 9 without being near a fire. There was a thick coating of ice over men, yawl, ropes and everything else, and we looked like rock-candy statuary. We got to Saint Louis this morning, after an absence of 3 weeks—that boat generally makes the trip in 2.

Henry was doing little or nothing here, and I sent him to our clerk to work his way for a trip, by measuring wood piles, counting coal boxes, and other clerkly duties, which he performed satisfactorily. He may go down with us again, for I expect he likes our bill of fare better than that of his boarding house.

I got your letter at Memphis as I went down. That is the best place to write me at. The post office here is always out of my route, somehow or other. Remember the direction: “S.L.C., Steamer Pennsylvania Care Duval & Algeo, Wharfboat, Memphis.” I cannot correspond with a paper, because when one is learning the river, he is not allowed to do or think about anything else.

I am glad to see you in such high spirits about the land, and I hope you will remain so, if you never get richer. I seldom venture to think about our landed wealth, for “hope deferred maketh the heart sick.”

I did intend to answer your letter, but I am too lazy and too sleepy now. We have had a rough time during the last 24 hours working through the ice between Cairo and Saint Louis, and I have had but little rest.

I got here too late to see the funeral of the 10 victims by the burning of the Pacific hotel in 7th street. Ma says there were 10 hearses, with the fire companies (their engines in mourning—firemen in uniform,) the various benevolent societies in uniform and mourning, and a multitude of citizens and strangers, forming, altogether, a procession of 30,000 persons! One steam fire engine was drawn by four white horses, with crape festoons on their heads.

                    Well I am—just—about—asleep—

                                   Your brother
                                                  SAM.

     Among other things, we gather from this letter that Orion Clemens
     had faith in his brother as a newspaper correspondent, though the
     two contributions from Cincinnati, already mentioned, were not
     promising. Furthermore, we get an intimation of Orion's unfailing
     confidence in the future of the “land”—that is to say, the great
     tract of land in Eastern Tennessee which, in an earlier day, his
     father had bought as a heritage for his children. It is the same
     Tennessee land that had “millions in it” for Colonel Sellers—the
     land that would become, as Orion Clemens long afterward phrased it,
     “the worry of three generations.”

     The Doctor Kane of this letter is, of course, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane,
     the American Arctic explorer. Any book of exploration always
     appealed to Mark Twain, and in those days Kane was a favorite.

     The paragraph concerning Henry, and his employment on the
     Pennsylvania, begins the story of a tragedy. The story has been
     fully told elsewhere,—[Mark Twain: A Biography, by same author.]
     —and need only be sketched briefly here. Henry, a gentle, faithful
     boy, shared with his brother the enmity of the pilot Brown. Some
     two months following the date of the foregoing letter, on a down
     trip of the Pennsylvania, an unprovoked attack made by Brown upon
     the boy brought his brother Sam to the rescue. Brown received a
     good pummeling at the hands of the future humorist, who, though
     upheld by the captain, decided to quit the Pennsylvania at New
     Orleans and to come up the river by another boat. The Brown episode
     has no special bearing on the main tragedy, though now in retrospect
     it seems closely related to it. Samuel Clemens, coming up the river
     on the A. T. Lacey, two days behind the Pennsylvania, heard a voice
     shout as they approached the Greenville, Mississippi, landing:

     “The Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis, at Ship Island!
     One hundred and fifty lives lost!”

     It was a true report. At six o'clock of a warm, mid-June morning,
     while loading wood, sixty miles below Memphis, the Pennsylvania's
     boilers had exploded with fearful results. Henry Clemens was among
     the injured. He was still alive when his brother reached Memphis on
     the Lacey, but died a few days later. Samuel Clemens had idolized
     the boy, and regarded himself responsible for his death. The letter
     that follows shows that he was overwrought by the scenes about him
     and the strain of watching, yet the anguish of it is none the less
     real.

MEMPHIS, TENN., Friday, June 18th, 1858.

DEAR SISTER MOLLIE,—Long before this reaches you, my poor Henry my darling, my pride, my glory, my all, will have finished his blameless career, and the light of my life will have gone out in utter darkness. (O, God! this is hard to bear.) Hardened, hopeless,—aye, lost—lost—lost and ruined sinner as I am—I, even I, have humbled myself to the ground and prayed as never man prayed before, that the great God might let this cup pass from me—that he would strike me to the earth, but spare my brother—that he would pour out the fulness of his just wrath upon my wicked head, but have mercy, mercy, mercy upon that unoffending boy. The horrors of three days have swept over me—they have blasted my youth and left me an old man before my time. Mollie, there are gray hairs in my head tonight. For forty-eight hours I labored at the bedside of my poor burned and bruised, but uncomplaining brother, and then the star of my hope went out and left me in the gloom of despair. Men take me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me “lucky” because I was not on the Pennsylvania when she blew up! May God forgive them, for they know not what they say.

Mollie you do not understand why I was not on that boat—I will tell you. I left Saint Louis on her, but on the way down, Mr. Brown, the pilot that was killed by the explosion (poor fellow,) quarreled with Henry without cause, while I was steering. Henry started out of the pilot-house—Brown jumped up and collared him—turned him half way around and struck him in the face!—and him nearly six feet high—struck my little brother. I was wild from that moment. I left the boat to steer herself, and avenged the insult—and the Captain said I was right—that he would discharge Brown in N. Orleans if he could get another pilot, and would do it in St. Louis, anyhow. Of course both of us could not return to St. Louis on the same boat—no pilot could be found, and the Captain sent me to the A. T. Lacey, with orders to her Captain to bring me to Saint Louis. Had another pilot been found, poor Brown would have been the “lucky” man.

I was on the Pennsylvania five minutes before she left N. Orleans, and I must tell you the truth, Mollie—three hundred human beings perished by that fearful disaster. Henry was asleep—was blown up—then fell back on the hot boilers, and I suppose that rubbish fell on him, for he is injured internally. He got into the water and swam to shore, and got into the flatboat with the other survivors.—[Henry had returned once to the Pennsylvania to render assistance to the passengers. Later he had somehow made his way to the flatboat.]—He had nothing on but his wet shirt, and he lay there burning up with a southern sun and freezing in the wind till the Kate Frisbee came along. His wounds were not dressed till he got to Memphis, 15 hours after the explosion. He was senseless and motionless for 12 hours after that. But may God bless Memphis, the noblest city on the face of the earth. She has done her duty by these poor afflicted creatures—especially Henry, for he has had five—aye, ten, fifteen, twenty times the care and attention that any one else has had. Dr. Peyton, the best physician in Memphis (he is exactly like the portraits of Webster) sat by him for 36 hours. There are 32 scalded men in that room, and you would know Dr. Peyton better than I can describe him, if you could follow him around and hear each man murmur as he passes, “May the God of Heaven bless you, Doctor!” The ladies have done well, too. Our second Mate, a handsome, noble hearted young fellow, will die. Yesterday a beautiful girl of 15 stooped timidly down by his side and handed him a pretty bouquet. The poor suffering boy's eyes kindled, his lips quivered out a gentle “God bless you, Miss,” and he burst into tears. He made them write her name on a card for him, that he might not forget it.