ce disliked
each other cordially.

It is at this point that the letters begin once more--the first
having been written when young Clemens, now twenty-two years old,
had been on the river nearly a year. Life with Brown, of course,
was not all sorrow, and in this letter we find some of the fierce
joy of adventure which in those days Samuel Clemens loved.

To Onion Clemens and Wife, in Keokuk, Iowa:

SAINT LOUIS, March 9th, 1858.

DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER,--I must take advantage of the opportunity
now presented to write you, but I shall necessarily be dull, as I feel
uncommonly stupid. We have had a hard trip this time. Left Saint Louis
three weeks ago on the Pennsylvania. The weather was very cold, and the
ice running densely. We got 15 miles below town, landed the boat, and
then one pilot. Second Mate and four deck hands took the sounding boat
and shoved out in the ice to hunt the channel. They failed to find it,
and the ice drifted them ashore. The pilot left the men with the boat
and walked back to us, a mile and a half. Then the other pilot and
myself, with a larger crew of men started out and met with the same
fate. We drifted ashore just below the other boat. Then the fun
commenced. We made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the yawl,
and put the men (both crews) to it like horses, on the shore. Brown, the
pilot, stood in the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took
the tiller. We would start the men, and all would go well till the yawl
would bring up on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like
so many ten-pins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of
the boat. After an hour's hard work we got back, with ice half an inch
thick on the oars. Sent back and warped up the other yawl, and then
George (the first mentioned pilot,) and myself, took a double crew of
fresh men and tried it again. This time we found the channel in less
than half an hour, and landed on an island till the Pennsylvania came
along and took us off. The next day was colder still. I was out in the
yawl twice, and then we got through, but the infernal steamboat came
near running over us. We went ten miles further, landed, and George and
I cleared out again--found the channel first trial, but got caught in
the gorge and drifted helplessly down the river. The Ocean Spray came
along and started into the ice after us, but although she did