proper
appreciation of the vastness of this country--for I had traveled from
ocean to ocean across it. (Remainder missing.)

Not far from Virginia City there are some warm springs that
constantly send up jets of steam through fissures in the
mountainside. The place was a health resort, and Clemens, always
subject to bronchial colds, now and again retired there for a cure.

A letter written in the late summer--a gay, youthful document
--belongs to one of these periods of convalescence.

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

No. 12--$20 enclosed.

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, August 19, '63.

MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--Ma, you have given my vanity a deadly
thrust. Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest reputation, as
a local editor, of any man on the Pacific coast, and you gravely come
forward and tell me "if I work hard and attend closely to my business, I
may aspire to a place on a big San Francisco daily, some day." There's
a comment on human vanity for you! Why, blast it, I was under the
impression that I could get such a situation as that any time I asked
for it. But I don't want it. No paper in the United States can afford
to pay me what my place on the "Enterprise" is worth. If I were not
naturally a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay
me $20,000 a year. But I don't suppose I shall ever be any account. I
lead an easy life, though, and I don't care a cent whether school keeps
or not. Everybody knows me, and I fare like a prince wherever I go, be
it on this side of the mountains or the other. And I am proud to say I
am the most conceited ass in the Territory.

You think that picture looks old? Well, I can't help it--in reality I am
not as old as I was when I was eighteen.

I took a desperate cold more than a week ago, and I seduced Wilson (a
Missouri boy, reporter of the Daily Union,) from his labors, and we went
over to Lake Bigler. But I failed to cure my cold. I found the "Lake
House" crowded with the wealth and fashion of Virginia, and I could
not resist the temptation to take a hand in all the fun going. Those
Virginians--men and women both--are a stirring set, and I found if
I went with them on all their eternal excursions, I should bring the
consumption home with me--so I left, day before yesterday, and came back
into the Territory again. A lot of them had purchased a sit