SAM.


On the whole, matters were going well with him. His next letter is
full of his success--overflowing with the boyish radiance which he
never quite outgrew.


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

HARTFORD, CONN. Jan. 24-68.
DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--This is a good week for me. I stopped in the
Herald office as I came through New York, to see the boys on the staff,
and young James Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week,
impersonally, for the Herald, and said if I would I might have full
swing, and (write) about anybody and everybody I wanted to. I said I
must have the very fullest possible swing, and he said "all right."
I said "It's a contract--" and that settled that matter.

I'll make it a point to write one letter a week, any-how.

But the best thing that has happened was here. This great American
Publishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book till I
thought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a talk. I met Rev.
Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled way of
dropping his own work to give other people a lift when he gets a chance,
he said, "Now, here, you are one of the talented men of the age--nobody
is going to deny that---but in matters of business, I don't suppose you
know more than enough to came in when it rains. I'll tell you what to
do, and how to do it." And he did.