afterward he said: "It is forty years ago; from that day to this she
has never been out of my mind."

From his next letter we learn of the lecture which apparently was
delivered in Washington.

*****

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

WASH. Jan. 9, 1868.

MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--That infernal lecture is over, thank Heaven!
It came near being a villainous failure. It was not advertised at all.
The manager was taken sick yesterday, and the man who was sent to tell
me, never got to me till afternoon today. There was the dickens to pay.
It was too late to do anything--too late to stop the lecture. I scared
up a door-keeper, and was ready at the proper time, and by pure good
luck a tolerably good house assembled and I was saved! I hardly knew
what I was going to talk about, but it went off in splendid style. I was
to have preached again Saturday night, but I won't--I can't get along
without a manager.

I have been in New York ever since Christmas, you know, and now I shall
have to work like sin to catch up my correspondence.

And I have got to get up that book, too. Cut my letters out of the
Alta's and send them to me in an envelop. Some, here, that are not
mailed yet, I shall have to copy, I suppose.

I have got a thousand things to do, and am not doing any of them. I feel
perfectly savage.

Good bye
Yrs aff
SAM.

On the whole, matters were going well with him. His next letter is
full of his success--overflowing with the boyish radiance which he
never quite outgrew.

*****

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

HARTFORD, CONN. Jan. 24-68.

DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--This is a good week for me. I stopped in the
Herald office as I came through New York, to see the boys on the
staff, and young James Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week,
impersonally, for the Herald, and said if I would I might have full
swing, and (write) about anybody and everybody I wanted to. I said I
must have the very fullest possible swing, and he said "all right." I
said "It's a contract--" and that settled that matter.

I'll make it a point to write one letter a week, any-how.

But the best thing that has happened was here. This great American
Publishin