Write soon.
"Truly your Brother,
"SAMY.
"P.S.--I have written this by a light so dim that you nor Ma could
not read by it."
We get a fair idea of Samuel Clemens at seventeen from this letter. For
one thing, he could write good, clear English, full of interesting facts.
He is enthusiastic, but not lavish of words. He impresses us with his
statement that the visitors to the Palace each day are in number double
the population of Hannibal; a whole river is turned from its course to
supply New York City with water; the water comes thirty-eight miles, and
each family could use a hundred barrels a day! The letter reveals his
personal side--his kindly interest in those left behind, his anxiety for
Henry, his assurance that the promise to his mother was being kept, his
memory of her longing to visit her old home. And the boy who hated
school has become a reader--he is reveling in a printers' library of
thousands of volumes. We feel, somehow, that Samuel Clemens has suddenly
become quite a serious-minded person, that he has left Tom Sawyer and Joe
Harper and Huck Finn somewhere in a beautiful country a long way behind.
He found work with the firm of John A. Gray & Green, general printers, in
Cliff Street.
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