talk to?
Write soon.

Truly your brother, SAM

P.S.-I have written this by a light so dim that you nor Ma could not
read by it. Write, and let me know how Henry is.

It is a good letter; it is direct and clear in its descriptive quality,
and it gives us a scale of things. Double the population of Hannibal
visited the Crystal Palace in one day! and the water to supply the city
came a distance of thirty-eight miles! Doubtless these were amazing
statistics.

Then there was the interest in family affairs--always strong--his concern
for Henry, whom he loved tenderly; his memory of the promise to his
mother; his understanding of her craving to visit her old home. He did
not write to her direct, for the reason that Orion's plans were then
uncertain, and it was not unlikely that he had already found a new
location. From this letter, too, we learn that the boy who detested
school was reveling in a library of four thousand books--more than he had
ever seen together before. We have somehow the feeling that he had all
at once stepped from boyhood to manhood, and that the separation was
marked by a very definite line.

The work he had secured was in Cliff Street in the printing establishment
of John A. Gray & Green, who agreed to pay him four dollars a week, and
did pay that amount in wildcat money, which saved them about twenty-five
per cent. of the sum. He lodged at a mechanics' boarding-house in Duane
Street, and when he had paid his board and washing he sometimes had as
much as fifty cents to lay away.

He did not like the board. He had been accustomed to the Southern mode
of cooking, and wrote home complaining that New-Yorkers did not have
"hot-bread" or biscuits, but ate "light-bread," which they allowed to get
stale, seeming to prefer it in that way. On the whole, there was not
much inducement to remain in New York after he had satisfied himself with
its wonders. He lingered, however, through the hot months of 1853, and
found it not easy to go. In October he wrote to Pamela, suggesting plans
for Orion; also for Henry and Jim Wolfe, whom he seems never to have
overlooked. Among other things he says:

I have not written to any of the family for some time, from the
fact, firstly, that I didn't know where they were, and, secondly,
because I have been fooling myself with the idea that I was going to
leave New York every day for the last two weeks. I have taken a
liking