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.
Sixteen years ago--it is a long time. I was a little
girl then, only fourteen. I never saw you, I lived
in Washoe. But Uncle Simmons ran across you
every now and then, all during those weeks that you
and party were there working your claim which was

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