From some cause, I cannot set type nearly so fast as when I was at home.
Sunday is a long day, and while others set 12 and 15,000, yesterday, I
only set 10,000. However, I will shake this laziness off, soon, I reckon
....

How do you like "free-soil?"--I would like amazingly to see a good
old-fashioned negro.
My love to all
Truly your brother
SAM.


We may believe that it never occurred to the young printer, looking
up landmarks of Ben Franklin, that time would show points of
resemblance between the great Franklin's career and his own. Yet
these seem now rather striking. Like Franklin, he had been taken
out of school very young and put at the printer's trade; like
Franklin, he had worked in his brother's office, and had written for
the paper. Like him, too, he had left quietly for New York and
Philadelphia to work at the trade of printing, and in time Samuel
Clemens, like Benjamin Franklin, would become a world-figure,
many-sided, human, and of incredible popularity. The boy Sam
Clemens may have had such dreams, but we find no trace of them.

There is but one more letter of this early period. Young Clemens
spent some time in Washington, but if he wrote from there his
letters have disappeared. The last letter is from Philadelphia and
seems to reflect homesickness. The novelty of absence and travel
was wearing thin.