D, June 15, 1872.

FRIEND HOWELLS,--Could you tell me how I could get a copy of your
portrait as published in Hearth and Home? I hear so much talk about it
as being among the finest works of art which have yet appeared in that
journal, that I feel a strong desire to see it. Is it suitable for
framing? I have written the publishers of H & H time and again, but they
say that the demand for the portrait immediately exhausted the edition
and now a copy cannot be had, even for the European demand, which has
now begun. Bret Harte has been here, and says his family would not be
without that portrait for any consideration. He says his children get up
in the night and yell for it. I would give anything for a copy of that
portrait to put up in my parlor. I have Oliver Wendell Holmes and Bret
Harte's, as published in Every Saturday, and of all the swarms that
come every day to gaze upon them none go away that are not softened and
humbled and made more resigned to the will of God. If I had yours to put
up alongside of them, I believe the combination would bring more souls
to earnest reflection and ultimate conviction of their lost condition,
than any other kind of warning would. Where in the nation can I get that
portrait? Here are heaps of people that want it,--that need it. There
is my uncle. He wants a copy. He is lying at the point of death. He has
been lying at the point of death for two years. He wants a copy--and I
want him to have a copy. And I want you to send a copy to the man that
shot my dog. I want to see if he is dead to every human instinct.

Now you send me that portrait. I am sending you mine, in this letter;
and am glad to do it, for it has been greatly admired. People who are
judges of art, find in the execution a grandeur which has not been
equalled in this country, and an expression which has not been
approached in any.

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 mor