Yrs truly,
S. L. CLEMENS.

P. S. 62,000 copies of "Roughing It" sold and delivered in 4 months.


The Clemens family did not spend the summer at Quarry Farm that
year. The sea air was prescribed for Mrs. Clemens and the baby, and
they went to Saybrook, Connecticut, to Fenwick Hall. Clemens wrote
very little, though he seems to have planned Tom Sawyer, and perhaps
made its earliest beginning, which was in dramatic form.

His mind, however, was otherwise active. He was always more or less
given to inventions, and in his next letter we find a description of
one which he brought to comparative perfection.

He had also conceived the idea of another book of travel, and this
was his purpose of a projected trip to England.


To Orion Clemens, in Hartford:

FENWICK HALL, SAYBROOK, CONN.
Aug. 11, 1872.
MY DEAR BRO.--I shall sail for England in the Scotia, Aug. 21.

But what I wish to put on record now, is my new invention--hence this
note, which you will preserve. It is this--a self-pasting scrap-book
--good enough idea if some juggling tailor does not come along and
ante-date me a couple of months, as in the case of the elastic veststrap.