which a little
later would have its flower in Nasby and Artemus Ward. Only careful
examination reveals in it a hint of the later Mark Twain. The letters
were signed "Snodgrass," and there are but two of them. The second,
dated exactly four months after the first, is in the same assassinating
dialect, and recounts among other things the scarcity of coal in
Cincinnati and an absurd adventure in which Snodgrass has a baby left on
his hands.

From the fewness of the letters we may assume that Snodgrass found them
hard work, and it is said he raised on the price. At all events, the
second concluded the series. They are mainly important in that they are
the first of his contributions that have been preserved; also the first
for which he received a cash return.

He secured work at his trade in Cincinnati at the printing-office of
Wrightson & Co., and remained there until April, 1857. That winter in
Cincinnati was eventless enough, but it was marked by one notable
association--one that beyond doubt forwarded Samuel Clemens's general
interest in books, influenced his taste, and inspired in him certain
views and philosophies which he never forgot.

He lodged at a cheap boarding-house filled with the usual commonplace
people, with one exception. This exception was a long, lank, unsmiling
Scotchman named Macfarlane, who was twice as old as Clemens and wholly
unlike him--without humor or any comprehension of it. Yet meeting on the
common plane of intellect, the two became friends. Clemens spent his
evenings in Macfarlane's room until the clock struck ten; then Macfarlane
grilled a herring, just as the Englishman Sumner in Philadelphia had done
two years before, and the evening ended.

Macfarlane had books, serious books: histories, philosophies, and
scientific works; also a Bible and a dictionary. He had studied these
and knew them by heart; he was a direct and diligent talker. He never
talked of himself, and beyond the statement that he had acquired his
knowledge from reading, and not at school, his personality was a mystery.
He left the house at six in the morning and returned at the same hour in
the evening. His hands were hardened from some sort of toil-mechanical
labor, his companion thought, but he never knew. He would have liked to
know, and he watched for some reference to slip out that would betray
Macfarlane's trade; but this never happened.

What he did learn was that Macfarlane was a veritable storehouse of
abstrus