aken rooms further down the
street. I shall stay in this little quiet street, because it is full of
gardens and shrubbery, and there are none but dwelling houses in it.

I am taking life easy, now, and I mean to keep it up for awhile. I don't
work at night any more. I told the "Call" folks to pay me $25 a week and
let me work only in daylight. So I get up at ten every morning, and quit
work at five or six in the afternoon. You ask if I work for greenbacks?
Hardly. What do you suppose I could do with greenbacks here?

I have engaged to write for the new literary paper--the
"Californian"--same pay I used to receive on the "Golden Era"--one
article a week, fifty dollars a month. I quit the "Era," long ago. It
wasn't high-toned enough. The "Californian" circulates among the highest
class of the community, and is the best weekly literary paper in the
United States--and I suppose I ought to know.

I work as I always did--by fits and starts. I wrote two articles last
night for the Californian, so that lets me out for two weeks. That would
be about seventy-five dollars, in greenbacks, wouldn't it?

Been down to San Jose (generally pronounced Sannozay--emphasis on last
syllable)--today fifty miles from here, by railroad. Town of 6,000
inhabitants, buried in flowers and shrubbery. The climate is finer than
ours here, because it is not so close to the ocean, and is protected
from the winds by the coast range.

I had an invitation today, to go down on an excursion to San Luis
Obispo, and from thence to the city of Mexico, to be gone six or eight
weeks, or possibly longer, but I could not accept, on account of my
contract to act as chief mourner or groomsman at Steve's wedding.

I have triumphed. They refused me and other reporters some information
at a branch of the Coroner's office--Massey's undertaker establishment,
a few weeks ago. I published the wickedest article on them I ever wrote
in my life, and you can rest assured we got all the information we
wanted after that.

By the new census, San Francisco has a population of 130,000. They don't
count the hordes of Chinamen.

Yrs aftly,
SAM.

I send a picture for Annie, and one for Aunt Ella--that is, if she will
have it.

Relations with the Call ceased before the end of the year, though
not in the manner described in Roughing It. Mark Twain loved to
make fiction of his m