Page:Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu/93

THE LONG WAY TO THE AMAZON a hoss than a meetin'-house. If I was goin' to describe the animule, I'd say it looked like—well, it looked like—blamed if I know what it looked like, snorting fire and brimstone out of his nostrils, and puffin' out black smoke all 'round, and pantin', and heavin', and swellin', and chawin' up red-hot coals like they was good. A feller stood in a little house like, feedin' him all the time; but the more he got, the more he wanted and the more he blowed and snorted. After a spell the feller ketched him by the tail, and great Jericho! he set up a yell that split the ground for more'n a mile and a half, and the next minit I felt my legs a-waggin', and found myself at t'other end of the string o' vehickles. I wasn't skeered, but I had three chills and a stroke of palsy in less than five minits, and my face had a cur'us brownish-yaller-green-bluish color in it, which was perfectly unaccountable. "Well," say I, "comment is super-flu-ous."

How Samuel Clemens could have written that, and worse, at twenty-one, and a little more than ten years later have written The Innocents Abroad, is one of the mysteries of literature. The letters were signed "Snodgrass," and there are but two of them. Snodgrass seems to have found them hard work, for it is said he raised on the price, which, fortunately, brought the series to a close. Their value to-day lies in the fact that they are the earliest of Mark Twain's newspaper contributions that have been preserved—the first for which he received a cash return.

Sam remained in Cincinnati until April of the following year, 1857, working for Wrightson & Co., general printers, lodging in a cheap boarding-house, saving every possible penny for his great adventure. 67