the distance is
thirty-eight miles! and if necessary, they could supply every family in
New York with one hundred barrels of water per day!

I am very sorry to learn that Henry has been sick. He ought to go to the
country and take exercise; for he is not half so healthy as Ma thinks he
is. If he had my walking to do, he would be another boy entirely. Four
times every day I walk a little over one mile; and working hard all day,
and walking four miles, is exercise--I am used to it, now, though, and
it is no trouble. Where is it Orion's going to? Tell Ma my promises are
faithfully kept, and if I have my health I will take her to Ky. in the
spring--I shall save money for this. Tell Jim and all the rest of them
to write, and give me all the news. I am sorry to hear such bad
news from Will and Captain Bowen. I shall write to Will soon. The
Chatham-square Post Office and the Broadway office too, are out of my
way, and I always go to the General Post Office; so you must write the
direction of my letters plain, "New York City, N. Y.," without giving
the street or anything of the kind, or they may go to some of the other
offices. (It has just struck 2 A.M. and I always get up at 6, and am
at work at 7.) You ask me where I spend my evenings. Where would you
suppose, with a free printers' library containing more than 4,000
volumes within a quarter of a mile of me, and nobody at home to talk to?
I shall write to Ella soon. Write soon

Truly your Brother

SAM.

P. S. I have written this by a light so dim that you nor Ma could not
read by it.

He was lodging in a mechanics' cheap boarding-house in Duane Street,
and we may imagine the bareness of his room, the feeble poverty of
his lamp.

"Tell Ma my promises are faithfully kept." It was the day when he
had left Hannibal. His mother, Jane Clemens, a resolute, wiry woman
of forty-nine, had put together his few belongings. Then, holding
up a little Testament:

"I want you to take hold of the end of this, Sam," she said, "and
make me a promise. I want you to repeat after me these words:
'I do solemnly swear that I will not throw a card, or drink a drop
of liquor while I am gone.'"

It was this oath, repeated after her, that he was keeping
faithfully. The Will Bowen mentioned is a former playmate, one of
Tom Sawyer's outlaw band. He