Henry was doing little or nothing here, and I sent him to our clerk to work his way for a trip, by measuring wood piles, counting coal boxes, and other clerkly duties, which he performed satisfactorily.  He may go down with us again, for I expect he likes our bill of fare better than that of his boarding house.

I got your letter at Memphis as I went down.  That is the best place to write me at.  The post office here is always out of my route, somehow or other.  Remember the direction:  “S.L.C., Steamer Pennsylvania Care Duval & Algeo, Wharfboat, Memphis.”  I cannot correspond with a paper, because when one is learning the river, he is not allowed to do or think about anything else.

I am glad to see you in such high spirits about the land, and I hope you will remain so, if you never get richer.  I seldom venture to think about our landed wealth, for “hope deferred maketh the heart sick.”

I did intend to answer your letter, but I am too lazy and too sleepy now.  We have had a rough time during the last 24 hours working through the ice between Cairo and Saint Louis, and I have had but little rest.

I got here too late to see the funeral of the 10 victims by the burning of the Pacific hotel in 7th street.  Ma says there were 10 hearses, with the fire companies (their engines in mourning—­firemen in uniform,) the various benevolent societies in uniform and mourning, and a multitude of citizens and strangers, forming, altogether, a procession of 30,000 persons!  One steam fire engine was drawn by four white horses, with crape festoons on their heads. 
                    Well I am—­just—­about—­asleep—­
                                   Your brother
          
                                        Sam.

Among other things, we gather from this letter that Orion Clemens had faith in his brother as a newspaper correspondent, though the two contributions from Cincinnati, already mentioned, were not promising.  Furthermore, we get an intimation of Orion’s unfailing confidence in the future of the “land”—­that is to say, the great tract of land in Eastern Tennessee which, in an earlier day, his father had bought as a heritage for his children.  It is the same Tennessee land that had “millions in it” for Colonel Sellers—­the land that would become, as Orion Clemens long afterward phrased it, “the worry of three generations.”

     The Doctor Kane of this letter is, of course, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane,
     the American Arctic explorer.  Any book of exploration always
     appealed to Mark Twain, and in those days Kane was a favorite.