To Mrs. Onion Clemens:

MEMPHIS, TENN., Friday, June 18th, 1858.
DEAR SISTER MOLLIE,--Long before this reaches you, my poor Henry my
darling, my pride, my glory, my all, will have finished his blameless
career, and the light of my life will have gone out in utter darkness.
(O, God! this is hard to bear.) Hardened, hopeless,--aye, lost--lost
--lost and ruined sinner as I am--I, even I, have humbled myself to the
ground and prayed as never man prayed before, that the great God might
let this cup pass from me--that he would strike me to the earth, but
spare my brother--that he would pour out the fulness of his just wrath
upon my wicked head, but have mercy, mercy, mercy upon that unoffending
boy. The horrors of three days have swept over me--they have blasted my
youth and left me an old man before my time. Mollie, there are gray
hairs in my head tonight. For forty-eight hours I labored at the bedside
of my poor burned and bruised, but uncomplaining brother, and then the
star of my hope went out and left me in the gloom of despair. Men take
me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me "lucky" because I was not
on the Pennsylvania when she blew up! May God forgive them, for they
know not what they say.

Mollie you do not understand why I was not on that boat--I will tell you.
I left Saint Louis on her, but on the way down, Mr. Brown, the pilot that
was killed by the explosion (poor fellow,) quarreled with Henry without
cause, while I was steering. Henry started out of the pilot-house--Brown
jumped up and collared him--turned him half way around and struck him in
the face!--and him nearly six feet high--struck my little brother. I was
wild from that moment. I left the boat to steer herself, and avenged the