n was often their headquarters that winter ('69
and '70), and they were much together. "Josh Billings," another of
Redpath's lecturers, was likewise often to be found in the Lyceum
offices. There is a photograph of Mark Twain, Nasby, and Josh
Billings together.

Clemens also, that winter, met William Dean Howells, then in the
early days of his association with the Atlantic Monthly. The two
men, so widely different, became firm friends at sight, and it was
to Howells in the years to come that Mark Twain would write more
letters, and more characteristic letters, than to any other living
man. Howells had favorably reviewed 'The Innocents Abroad,' and
after the first moment of their introduction had passed Clemens
said: "When I read that review of yours I felt like the woman who
said that she was so glad that her baby had come white." It was not
the sort of thing that Howells would have said, but it was the sort
of thing that he could understand and appreciate from Mark Twain.

In company with Nasby Clemens, that season, also met Oliver Wendell
Holmes. Later he had sent Holmes a copy of his book and received a
pleasantly appreciative reply. "I always like," wrote Holmes, "to
hear what one of my fellow countrymen, who is not a Hebrew scholar,
or a reader of hiero-glyphics, but a good-humored traveler with a
pair of sharp, twinkling Yankee (in the broader sense) eyes in his
head, has to say about the things that learned travelers often make
unintelligible, and sentimental ones ridiculous or absurd.... I
hope your booksellers will sell a hundred thousand copies of your
travels." A wish that was realized in due time, though it is
doubtful if Doctor Holmes or any one else at the moment believed
that a book of that nature and price (it was $3.50 a copy) would
ever reach such a sale.

*****

To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

BOSTON, Nov. 9, 1869.

MY DEAR SISTER,--Three or four letters just received from home. My
first impulse was to send Orion a check on my publisher for the money he
wants, but a sober second thought suggested that if he has not defrauded
the government out of money, why pay, simply because the government
chooses to consider him in its debt? No: Right is right. The idea don't
suit me. Let him write the Treas