ble, but I never
could understand them. Doesn't she remember telling me the story of
Moses, one Sunday, last Spring, and how hard she tried to explain it and
simplify it so that I could understand it--but I couldn't? And how she
said it was strange that while her ma and her grandma and her uncle
Orion could understand anything in the world, I was so dull that I
couldn't understand the "ea-siest thing?" And doesn't she remember that
finally a light broke in upon me and I said it was all right--that I
knew old Moses himself--and that he kept a clothing store in Market
Street? And then she went to her ma and said she didn't know what would
become of her uncle Sam he was too dull to learn anything--ever! And I'm
just as dull yet. Now I have no doubt her letter was spelled right, and
was correct in all particulars--but then I had to read it according to
my lights; and they being inferior, she ought to overlook the mistakes
I make specially, as it is not my fault that I wasn't born with good
sense. I am sure she will detect an encouraging ray of intelligence in
that last argument.....

I am waiting here, trying to rent a better office for Orion. I have got
the refusal after next week of a room on first floor of a fire-proof
brick-rent, eighteen hundred dollars a year. Don't know yet whether we
can get it or not. If it is not rented before the week is up, we can.

I was sorry to hear that Dick was killed. I gave him his first lesson in
the musket drill. We had half a dozen muskets in our office when it was
over Isbell's Music Rooms.

I hope I am wearing the last white shirt that will embellish my person
for many a day--for I do hope that I shall be out of Carson long before
this reaches you.

Love to all.
Very Respectfully
SAM.

The "Annie" in this letter was his sister Pamela's little daughter;
long years after, she would be the wife of Charles L. Webster, Mark
Twain's publishing partner. "Dick" the reader may remember as Dick
Hingham, of the Keokuk printing-office; he was killed in charging
the works at Fort Donelson.

Clemens was back in Esmeralda when the next letter was written, and
we begin now to get pictures of that cheerless mining-camp, and to
know something of the alternate hopes and discouragements of the
hunt for g