st December--but I'll telegraph you.

Love to all.
Yrs.
MARK.

His lecture tour continued from October until December, a
period of picturesque incident, the story of which has been
recorded elsewhere. --[See Mark Twain: A Biography, by the
same author]--It paid him well; he could go home now,
without shame. Indeed, from his next letter, full of the
boyish elation which always to his last years was the
complement of his success, we gather that he is going home
with special honors--introductions from ministers and the
like to distinguished personages of the East.

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

SAN F., Dec. 4, 1866.

MY DEAR FOLKS,--I have written to Annie and Sammy and Katie some time
ago--also, to the balance of you.

I called on Rev. Dr. Wadsworth last night with the City College man,
but he wasn't at home. I was sorry, because I wanted to make his
acquaintance. I am thick as thieves with the Rev. Stebbings, and I am
laying for the Rev. Scudder and the Rev. Dr. Stone. I am running on
preachers, now, altogether. I find them gay. Stebbings is a regular
brick. I am taking letters of introduction to Henry Ward Beecher, Rev.
Dr. Tyng, and other eminent parsons in the east. Whenever anybody offers
me a letter to a preacher, now I snaffle it on the spot. I shall make
Rev. Dr. Bellows trot out the fast nags of the cloth for me when I get
to New York. Bellows is an able, upright and eloquent man--a man of
imperial intellect and matchless power--he is Christian in the truest
sense of the term and is unquestionably a brick....

Gen. Drum has arrived in Philadelphia and established his head-quarters
there, as Adjutant Genl. to Maj. Gen. Meade. Col. Leonard has received a
letter from him in which he offers me a complimentary benefit if I will
come there. I am much obliged, really, but I am afraid I shan't lecture
much in the States.

The China Mail Steamer is getting ready and everybody says I am throwing
away a fortune in not going in her. I firmly believe it myself.

I sail for the States in the Opposition steamer of the 5th inst.,
positively and without reserve. My room is already secured for me, and
is the choicest in the ship. I know all the officers.