the sea horses, and also to listen to the roar of the surf, and watch the
ships drifting about, here, and there, and far away at sea. When I stood
on the beach and let the surf wet my feet, I recollected doing the same
thing on the shores of the Atlantic--and then I had a proper appreciation
of the vastness of this country--for I had traveled from ocean to ocean
across it.
(Remainder missing.)


Not far from Virginia City there are some warm springs that
constantly send up jets of steam through fissures in the
mountainside. The place was a health resort, and Clemens, always
subject to bronchial colds, now and again retired there for a cure.

A letter written in the late summer--a gay, youthful document
--belongs to one of these periods of convalescence.


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

No. 12--$20 enclosed.
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, August 19, '63.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--Ma, you have given my vanity a deadly thrust.
Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest reputation, as a local
editor, of any man on the Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward and
tell me "if I work hard and attend closely to my business, I may aspire
to a place on a big San Francisco daily, some day." There's a comment on
human vanity for you! Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I
could get such a situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don't
want it. No paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my