reputation at that age.  Mark Twain was of slower growth; at that age he had not even developed a definite literary ambition:  Whatever the basis of Madame Caprell’s prophecy, we must admit that she was a good guesser on several matters, “a right smart little woman,” as Clemens himself phrased it.

She overlooked one item, however:  the proximity of the Civil War.  Perhaps it was too close at hand for second sight.  A little more than two months after the Caprell letter was written Fort Sumter was fired upon.  Mask Twain had made his last trip as a pilot up the river to St. Louis—­the nation was plunged into a four years’ conflict.

There are no letters of this immediate period.  Young Clemens went to Hannibal, and enlisting in a private company, composed mainly of old schoolmates, went soldiering for two rainy, inglorious weeks, by the end of which he had had enough of war, and furthermore had discovered that he was more of a Union abolitionist than a slave-holding secessionist, as he had at first supposed.  Convictions were likely to be rather infirm during those early days of the war, and subject to change without notice.  Especially was this so in a border State.

III

Letters 1861-62.  On the frontier.  Mining adventures. 
Journalistic beginnings

Clemens went from the battle-front to Keokuk, where Orion was preparing to accept the appointment prophesied by Madame Caprell.  Orion was a stanch Unionist, and a member of Lincoln’s Cabinet had offered him the secretaryship of the new Territory of Nevada.  Orion had accepted, and only needed funds to carry him to his destination.  His pilot brother had the funds, and upon being appointed “private” secretary, agreed to pay both passages on the overland stage, which would bear them across the great plains from St. Jo to Carson City.  Mark Twain, in Roughing It, has described that glorious journey and the frontier life that followed it.  His letters form a supplement of realism to a tale that is more or less fictitious, though marvelously true in color and background.  The first bears no date, but it was written not long after their arrival, August 14, 1861.  It is not complete, but there is enough of it to give us a very fair picture of Carson City, “a wooden town; its population two thousand souls.”

Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens, in St. Louis: 

(Date not given, but Sept, or Oct., 1861.) My dear mother,—­I hope you will all come out here someday.  But I shan’t consent to invite you, until we can receive you in style.  But I guess we shall be able to do that, one of these days.  I intend that Pamela shall live on Lake Bigler until she can knock a bull down with her fist—­say, about three months.

“Tell everything as it is—­no better, and no worse.”