friends" at
first, but if all his friends of today could gather to his grave from
the four corners of the earth what a procession there would be! And
Rab's friends are your friends.

I am going to work when we get on the hill-till then I've got to lie
fallow, albeit against my will. We join in love to you and yours.

Your friend ever,
SAML. L. CLEMENS.

P. S. I enclose a specimen of villainy. A man pretends to be my brother
and my lecture agent--gathers a great audience together in a city more
than a thousand miles from here, and then pockets the money and elopes,
leaving the audience to wait for the imaginary lecturer! I am after him
with the law.

It was a historic summer at the Farm. A new baby arrived in June; a
new study was built for Mark Twain by Mrs. Crane, on the hillside
near the old quarry; a new book was begun in it--The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer--and a play, the first that Mark Twain had really
attempted, was completed--the dramatization of The Gilded Age.

An early word went to Hartford of conditions at the Farm.

*****

To Rev. and Mrs. Twichell, in Hartford:

ELMIRA, June 11, 1874.

MY DEAR OLD JOE AND HARMONY,--The baby is here and is the great American
Giantess--weighing 7 3/4 pounds. We had to wait a good long time for
her, but she was full compensation when she did come.

The Modoc was delighted with it, and gave it her doll at once. There is
nothing selfish about the Modoc. She is fascinated with the new baby.
The Modoc rips and tears around out doors, most of the time, and
consequently is as hard as a pine knot and as brown as an Indian. She is
bosom friend to all the ducks, chickens, turkeys and guinea hens on the
place. Yesterday as she marched along the winding path that leads up the
hill through the red clover beds to the summer-house, there was a long
procession of these fowls stringing contentedly after her, led by a
stately rooster who can look over the Modoc's head. The devotion of
these vassals has been purchased with daily largess of Indian meal, and
so the Modoc, attended by her bodyguard, moves in state wherever she
goes.

Susie Crane has built the loveliest study for me, you ever saw. It
is octagonal, with a peaked roof, each octagon filled with a spacious
window, and it sits perched in complete isolation on top