The balance of your letter, I say, pleases me exceedingly.  Especially that about the H. and D. being worth from $30 to $50 in Cal.  It pleases me because, if the ledges prove to be worthless, it will be a pleasant reflection to know that others were beaten worse than ourselves.  Raish sold a man 30 feet, yesterday, at $20 a foot, although I was present at the sale, and told the man the ground wasn’t worth a d—–­n.  He said he had been hankering after a few feet in the H. and D. for a long time, and he had got them at last, and he couldn’t help thinking he had secured a good thing.  We went and looked at the ledges, and both of them acknowledged that there was nothing in them but good “indications.”  Yet the owners in the H. and D. will part with anything else sooner than with feet in these ledges.  Well, the work goes slowly—­very slowly on, in the tunnel, and we’ll strike it some day.  But—­if we “strike it rich,”—­I’ve lost my guess, that’s all.  I expect that the way it got so high in Cal. was, that Raish’s brother, over there was offered $750.00 for 20 feet of it, and he refused .....

Couldn’t go on the hill today.  It snowed.  It always snows here, I expect.

Don’t you suppose they have pretty much quit writing, at home?

When you receive your next 1/4 yr’s salary, don’t send any of it here until after you have told me you have got it.  Remember this.  I am afraid of that H. and D.

They have struck the ledge in the Live Yankee tunnel, and I told the President, Mr. Allen, that it wasn’t as good as the croppings.  He said that was true enough, but they would hang to it until it did prove rich.  He is much of a gentleman, that man Allen.

And ask Gaslerie why the devil he don’t send along my commission as Deputy Sheriff.  The fact of my being in California, and out of his country, wouldn’t amount to a d—–­n with me, in the performance of my official duties.

I have nothing to report, at present, except that I shall find out all I want to know about this locality before I leave it.

How do the Records pay? 
                              Yr.  Bro. 
                                        Sam.

In one of the foregoing letters—­the one dated May 11 there is a reference to the writer’s “Enterprise Letters.”  Sometimes, during idle days in the camp, the miner had followed old literary impulses and written an occasional burlesque sketch, which he had signed “Josh,” and sent to the Territorial Enterprise, at Virginia City. —­[One contribution was sent to a Keokuk paper, The Gate City, and a letter written by Mrs. Jane Clemens at the time would indicate that Mark Twain’s mother did not always approve of her son’s literary efforts.  She hopes that he will do better, and some time write something “that his kin will be proud of."]—­The rough, vigorous humor of these had attracted some attention, and Orion, pleased with any measure of success that might come to his brother, had allowed the authorship of them to become known.  When, in July, the financial situation became desperate, the Esmeralda miner was moved to turn to literature for relief.  But we will let him present the situation himself.

To Orion Clemens, in Carson City: