about it and its author, and the papers are copying it far and
near. It is voted the best thing of the day. Cannot the
Californian afford to keep Mark all to itself? It should not let
him scintillate so widely without first being filtered through the
California press."

The New York publishing house of Carleton & Co. gave the sketch to the
Saturday Press when they found it was too late for the book.

Though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers in
this part of the country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte, I
think, though he denies it, along with the rest. He wants me to club a
lot of old sketches together with a lot of his, and publish a book. I
wouldn't do it, only he agrees to take all the trouble. But I want to
know whether we are going to make anything out of it, first. However,
he has written to a New York publisher, and if we are offered a bargain
that will pay for a month's labor we will go to work and prepare the
volume for the press.

Yours affy,
SAM.

Bret Harte and Clemens had by this time quit the Californian,
expecting to contribute to Eastern periodicals. Clemens, however,
was not yet through with Coast journalism. There was much interest
just at this time in the Sandwich Islands, and he was selected by
the foremost Sacramento paper to spy out the islands and report
aspects and conditions there. His letters home were still
infrequent, but this was something worth writing.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

SAN FRANCISCO, March 5th, 1866.

MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I start to do Sandwich Islands day after
tomorrow, (I suppose Annie is geographer enough by this time to find
them on the map), in the steamer "Ajax." We shall arrive there in
about twelve days. My friends seem determined that I shall not lack
acquaintances, for I only decided today to go, and they have already
sent me letters of introduction to everybody down there worth knowing. I
am to remain there a month and ransack the islands, the great cataracts
and the volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters to the
Sacramento Union--for which they pay me as much money as I would get if
I staid at home.

If I come back here I expect to start straight across the continent by
way of the Columbia rive