see the hotel again until midnight—­or after.  I am going to the Dickens mighty fast.  I know a regular village of families here in the house, but I never have time to call on them.  Thunder! we’ll know a little more about this town, before we leave, than some of the people who live in it.  We take trips across the Bay to Oakland, and down to San Leandro, and Alameda, and those places; and we go out to the Willows, and Hayes Park, and Fort Point, and up to Benicia; and yesterday we were invited out on a yachting excursion, and had a sail in the fastest yacht on the Pacific Coast.  Rice says:  “Oh, no—­we are not having any fun, Mark—­Oh, no, I reckon not—­it’s somebody else—­it’s probably the ’gentleman in the wagon’!” (popular slang phrase.) When I invite Rice to the Lick House to dinner, the proprietors send us champagne and claret, and then we do put on the most disgusting airs.  Rice says our calibre is too light—­we can’t stand it to be noticed!

I rode down with a gentleman to the Ocean House, the other day, to see the sea horses, and also to listen to the roar of the surf, and watch the ships drifting about, here, and there, and far away at sea.  When I stood on the beach and let the surf wet my feet, I recollected doing the same thing on the shores of the Atlantic—­and then I had a proper appreciation of the vastness of this country—­for I had traveled from ocean to ocean across it. 
                         (Remainder missing.)

Not far from Virginia City there are some warm springs that constantly send up jets of steam through fissures in the mountainside.  The place was a health resort, and Clemens, always subject to bronchial colds, now and again retired there for a cure.

A letter written in the late summer—­a gay, youthful document
—­belongs to one of these periods of convalescence.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: 

No. 12—­$20 enclosed. 
                              Steamboat springs, August 19, ’63. 
My Dear mother and sister,—­Ma, you have given my vanity a deadly thrust.  Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest reputation, as a local editor, of any man on the Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward and tell me “if I work hard and attend closely to my business, I may aspire to a place on a big San Francisco daily, some day.”  There’s a comment on human vanity for you!  Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I could get such a situation as that any time I asked for it.  But I don’t want it.  No paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my place on the “Enterprise” is worth.  If I were not naturally a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay me $20,000 a year.  But I don’t suppose I shall ever be any account.  I lead an easy life, though, and I don’t care a cent whether school keeps or not.  Everybody knows me, and I fare like a prince wherever I go, be it on this side of the mountains or the other.  And I am proud to say I am the most conceited ass in the Territory.