To that kind of letters we all write answers which we do not send,
fearing to hurt where we have no desire to hurt; I have done it many
a time, and this is doubtless a case of the sort.
THE LETTER
X------, California, JUNE 3, 1879.
Mr. S. L. Clemens, HARTFORD, CONN.:
Dear Sir,--You will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed
to write and ask a favor of you. Let your memory go back to your days
in the Humboldt mines--'62-'63. You will remember, you and Clagett
and Oliver and the old blacksmith Tillou lived in a lean-to which was
half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp
--strung pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth at the
desert to where the last claim was, at the divide. The lean-to
you lived in was the one with a canvas roof that the cow fell down
through one night, as told about by you in ROUGHING IT--my uncle
Simmons remembers it very well. He lived in the principal cabin,
half-way up the divide, along with Dixon and Parker and Smith.
It had two rooms, one for kitchen and the other for bunks,
and was the only one that had. You and your party were there on
the great night, the time they had dried-apple-pie, Uncle Simmons
often speaks of it. It seems curious that dried-apple-pie should
have seemed such a great thing, but it was, and it shows how far
Humboldt was out of the world and difficult to get to, and how slim
the regular bill of fare was.
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