April found the Clemens family in Elmira.  Mrs. Clemens was not over-strong, and the cares of house-building were many.  They went early, therefore, remaining at the Langdon home in the city until Quarry Farm should feel a touch of warmer sun, Clemens wrote the news to Doctor Brown.

To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: 

Elmira, N. Y., April 27, ’86.  Dear Doctor,—­This town is in the interior of the State of New York —­and was my wife’s birth-place.  We are here to spend the whole summer.  Although it is so near summer, we had a great snow-storm yesterday, and one the day before.  This is rather breaking in upon our plans, as it may keep us down here in the valley a trifle longer than we desired.  It gets fearfully hot here in the summer, so we spend our summers on top of a hill 6 or 700 feet high, about two or three miles from here—­it never gets hot up there.

Mrs. Clemens is pretty strong, and so is the “little wifie” barring a desperate cold in the head the child grows in grace and beauty marvellously.  I wish the nations of the earth would combine in a baby show and give us a chance to compete.  I must try to find one of her latest photographs to enclose in this.  And this reminds me that Mrs. Clemens keeps urging me to ask you for your photograph and last night she said, “and be sure to ask him for a photograph of his sister, and Jock-but say Master Jock—­do not be headless and forget that courtesy; he is Jock in our memories and our talk, but he has a right to his title when a body uses his name in a letter.”  Now I have got it all in—­I can’t have made any mistake this time.  Miss Clara Spaulding looked in, a moment, yesterday morning, as bright and good as ever.  She would like to lay her love at your feet if she knew I was writing—­as would also fifty friends of ours whom you have never seen, and whose homage is as fervent as if the cold and clouds and darkness of a mighty sea did not lie between their hearts and you.  Poor old Rab had not many “friends” at first, but if all his friends of today could gather to his grave from the four corners of the earth what a procession there would be!  And Rab’s friends are your friends.

I am going to work when we get on the hill-till then I’ve got to lie
fallow, albeit against my will.  We join in love to you and yours. 
                                   Your friend ever,
                                             SAML.  L. Clemens.

P. S. I enclose a specimen of villainy.  A man pretends to be my brother and my lecture agent—­gathers a great audience together in a city more than a thousand miles from here, and then pockets the money and elopes, leaving the audience to wait for the imaginary lecturer!  I am after him with the law.

It was a historic summer at the Farm.  A new baby arrived in June; a new study was built for Mark Twain by Mrs. Crane, on the hillside near the old quarry; a new book was begun in it—­The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—­and a play, the first that Mark Twain had really attempted, was completed—­the dramatization of The Gilded Age.

An early word went to Hartford of conditions at the Farm.