Affectionately
SAM


To Orion Clemens, in St, Louis:

BUF. Sept. 9th, 1870.
MY DEAR BRO,--O here! I don't want to be consulted at all about Tenn.
I don't want it even mentioned to me. When I make a suggestion it is for
you to act upon it or throw it aside, but I beseech you never to ask my
advice, opinion or consent about that hated property. If it was because
I felt the slightest personal interest in the infernal land that I ever
made a suggestion, the suggestion would never be made.

Do exactly as you please with the land--always remember this--that so
trivial a percentage as ten per cent will never sell it.

It is only a bid for a somnambulist.

I have no time to turn round, a young lady visitor (schoolmate of Livy's)
is dying in the house of typhoid fever (parents are in South Carolina)
and the premises are full of nurses and doctors and we are all fagged
out.
Yrs.
SAM.


Miss Nye, who had come to cheer her old schoolmate, had been
prostrated with the deadly fever soon after her arrival. Another
period of anxiety and nursing followed. Mrs. Clemens, in spite of