is your receipt, as good as if you had it in your pocket. When a
passenger pays his fare and the driver does not strike the bell
immediately, he is greeted "Strike that bell! will you?"

I must close now. I intend visiting the Navy Yard, Mint, etc., before I
write again. You must write often. You see I have nothing to write
interesting to you, while you can write nothing that will not interest
me. Don't say my letters are not long enough. Tell Jim Wolfe to write.
Tell all the boys where I am, and to write. Jim Robinson, particularly.
I wrote to him from N. Y. Tell me all that is going on in H--l.
Truly your brother
SAM.


Those were primitive times. Imagine a passenger in these easy-going days
calling to a driver or conductor to "Strike that bell!"

"H--l" is his abbreviation for Hannibal. He had first used it in a title
of a poem which a few years before, during one of Orion's absences, he
had published in the paper. "To Mary in Hannibal" was too long to set as
a display head in single column. The poem had no great merit, but under
the abbreviated title it could hardly fail to invite notice. It was one
of several things he did to liven up the circulation during a brief
period of his authority.

The doubtful money he mentions was the paper issued by private banks,
"wild cat," as it was called. He had been paid with it in New York,
and found it usually at a discount--sometimes even worthless. Wages and
money were both better in Philadelphia, but the fund for his mother's
trip to Kentucky apparently did not grow very rapidly.