which Bliss had agreed to pay, on the retail price
of the book. The book was Roughing It, though this title was not
decided upon until considerably later. Orion Clemens eagerly
furnished a detailed memorandum of the route of their overland
journey, which brought this enthusiastic acknowledgment:

*****

To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis:

BUF., 1870.

DEAR BRO.,--I find that your little memorandum book is going to be ever
so much use to me, and will enable me to make quite a coherent narrative
of the Plains journey instead of slurring it over and jumping 2,000
miles at a stride. The book I am writing will sell. In return for the
use of the little memorandum book I shall take the greatest pleasure
in forwarding to you the third $1,000 which the publisher of the
forthcoming work sends me or the first $1,000, I am not particular--they
will both be in the first quarterly statement of account from the
publisher.

In great haste,
Yr Obliged Bro.
SAM.

Love to Mollie. We are all getting along tolerably well.

Mr. Langdon died early in August, and Mrs. Clemens returned to
Buffalo, exhausted in mind and body. If she hoped for rest now, in
the quiet of her own home, she was disappointed, as the two brief
letters that follow clearly show.

*****

To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:

BUFFALO, Aug. 31, 70.

MY DEAR SISTER,--I know I ought to be thrashed for not writing you, but
I have kept putting it off. We get heaps of letters every day; it is a
comfort to have somebody like you that will let us shirk and be patient
over it. We got the book and I did think I wrote a line thanking you for
it-but I suppose I neglected it.

We are getting along tolerably well. Mother [Mrs. Langdon] is here, and
Miss Emma Nye. Livy cannot sleep since her father's death--but I give
her a narcotic every night and make her. I am just as busy as I can
be--am still writing for the Galaxy and also writing a book like the
"Innocents" in size and style. I have got my work ciphered down to days,
and I haven't a single day to spare between this and the date which, by
written contract I am to deliver the M.S. of the book to the publisher.