I did intend to answer your letter, but I am too lazy and too sleepy now.
We have had a rough time during the last 24 hours working through the ice
between Cairo and Saint Louis, and I have had but little rest.

I got here too late to see the funeral of the 10 victims by the burning
of the Pacific hotel in 7th street. Ma says there were 10 hearses, with
the fire companies (their engines in mourning--firemen in uniform,) the
various benevolent societies in uniform and mourning, and a multitude of
citizens and strangers, forming, altogether, a procession of 30,000
persons! One steam fire engine was drawn by four white horses, with
crape festoons on their heads.
Well I am--just--about--asleep--
Your brother
SAM.


Among other things, we gather from this letter that Orion Clemens
had faith in his brother as a newspaper correspondent, though the
two contributions from Cincinnati, already mentioned, were not
promising. Furthermore, we get an intimation of Orion's unfailing
confidence in the future of the "land"--that is to say, the great
tract of land in Eastern Tennessee which, in an earlier day, his
father had bought as a heritage for his children. It is the same
Tennessee land that had "millions in it" for Colonel Sellers--the
land that would become, as Orion Clemens long afterward phrased it,
"the worry of three generations."

The Doctor Kane of this letter is, of course, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane,
the American Arctic explorer. Any book of exploration always