dated Carson City, where he seems to be making a brief sojourn. It
is a rather heavy attempt to be light-hearted; its playfulness
suggests that of a dancing bear.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in St. Louis:

CARSON CITY, April 2, 1862.
MY DEAR MOTHER,--Yours of March 2nd has just been received. I see I am
in for it again--with Annie. But she ought to know that I was always
stupid. She used to try to teach me lessons from the Bible, but I never
could understand them. Doesn't she remember telling me the story of
Moses, one Sunday, last Spring, and how hard she tried to explain it and
simplify it so that I could understand it--but I couldn't? And how she
said it was strange that while her ma and her grandma and her uncle Orion
could understand anything in the world, I was so dull that I couldn't
understand the "ea-siest thing?" And doesn't she remember that finally a
light broke in upon me and I said it was all right--that I knew old Moses
himself--and that he kept a clothing store in Market Street? And then
she went to her ma and said she didn't know what would become of her
uncle Sam he was too dull to learn anything--ever! And I'm just as dull
yet. Now I have no doubt her letter was spelled right, and was correct
in all particulars--but then I had to read it according to my lights; and
they being inferior, she ought to overlook the mistakes I make specially,
as it is not my fault that I wasn't born with good sense. I am sure she
will detect an encouraging ray of intelligence in that last argument.....

I am waiting here, trying to rent a better office for Orion. I have got
the refusal after next week of a room on first floor of a fire-proof
brick-rent, eighteen hundred dollars a year. Don't know yet whether we