April 23rd 1874.

Mr P. T. Lomax

Dear Sir—

Mr Sam L. Clemens is about to help us buy a place somewhere, and for several reasons we have thought of Pa’s property near Keokuk.

We would like to get you to see if the title is clear of every encumberance excepting a mortgage held by Mrs E. A. Riffley for four hundred and fifty dollars ($450.) which I understand from Pa’s letter, can run until June 21. 1876.

We pay William Stotts down $200. and one hundred dollars quarterly until the sum of two thousand dollars ($2.000) in all is paid to him.

No interest to be paid until May 1st 1875, when interest at the rate of eight percent, is to commence running on the ballance of the two thousand dollars then remaining unpaid.

We to assume in addition to the two thousand dollars, a mortgage on the four acres, given by William Stotts to Mrs A. E. Riffley, for four hundred and fifty dollars, bearing ten percent interest, on which we agree to pay the interest, forty five dollars, due the 21st of June next, and as it falls due thereafter.

Dear Ma—I dont know what to write. I am indeed sorry you wrote to Sam not to help us get a place; it is likely the whole thing will be knocked in the head—and—well I may be a rag picker next.

If we could stand it to go back to Keokuk I dont know why you should object. We commenced to lose money there, and I feel confident that I now see where & how we could make and regain all we have lost.

Mother would say to me “My child do what you believe to be right, and whatever seems for the best, & it will be as much as can be expected of you.”

There is a beautiful place, with apple, peach, cherry, trees, grapes currents, raspberies, goose beries, all started and bearing; besides there are six houses on the place; some can be rented & others exactly do for chickens. The whole property is exactly what we want. I dont know what you wrote to Sam, but if he buyes the place, it will be in his name, and it will be his, and he is very likely to get his money back—and all the improvements we make, every dollar that is put on it will be his. Then if we are successful and can buy it, it will be ours, not before. This will at least be a little better than to live off of his charity as pensioners, and it seems to me a little better than taking in dress making here, or being a sales woman in a shop.

Dear Sam

Yours of the 23rd is just received. Orion is not here, but I opened it & read it.

Dear Sam you are a noble, generous glorious man—and all of your actions toward us manifests christian charity.

I regret exceedingly that Ma has written to you in opposition to our going West. She is quite mistaken in thinking I would not want to go to the old place again. . . .

I utterly hate myself for having been so meek, & wavering, so afraid so cowardly about taking responsibility, all my life. I seem to have had no moral courage.

Here lately I have been trying to overcome this weakness, and I shall overcome it all, with the help of the Almighty One. I know it is not Christian to be weak and I shall be strong.

I had on that weakness in a measure while in Hartford and did not go into any kind of enthusiasm; but I foolishly attributed it to being so fatigued by my twenty miles ride on Saturday: then too Sam I thought it was too bad to ask you to spend so much money for us, when you had no assurance in the world that you would ever get it all back. I wanted the property bought in your name, and any improvements we might add would be yours if we never paid for it; and took it off your hands.

I have in my heart believed we could meet the payments of the interest, and pay you interest, after the second year at the furthest. But I only had my hope to go upon, and therefore kept up the idea that you were to have the deed to you, and if you had the deed, then you pay all for it, and us pay you interest as soon as we could; or rent, whichever it might be called. . . .

Your words were truth & wisdom when you said one could not afford to use up their lifes blood for no more than Orion is doing or getting now, no matter how agreeable it may be at the present.

It is not strange that Orion should fear for you to take such a risk for us, when every thing he undertakes fails: and he lives the most dreadful life of fear; when he has a situation at any thing, he is in that everlasting state of fear fear FEAR. Of course with the same interests at stake I have more or less of the fear too. Last night as we talked about getting into the country what work we would do in the day time what books read at night, and had plenty of pleasant anticipations I said “then you will not be afraid of losing that situation will you.” He said no it would be like a new existance to him.

Another letter came from Ma yesterday just full of the nice times we would have in a country home. But she still thought I would not want to go back to the old place.

I take it that your offer is made in great kindness, and hope you will accept my refusal in the same spirit.

Not a single kindness, from you & dear sweet Livy, but is remembered & treasured, with all the gratitude I can feel, but never express; but while God gives me health & strength, and what reason I have, I cannot accept any assistance from you, that I have not the utmost faith, that you will at least receive dollar for dollar; and in the way you offer there is not even a shadow of hope for you to get it back.

We sent yesterday, letters about the Iowa property. You will have decided about that, before this reaches you. I wish you would look to your own interest a little, in whatever you decide upon in the matter.

I am so sorry we are such a trouble to you—but; help us get a farm—my faith is strong, and I would go into it, with earnestness and love, and a determination to give it a fair five years trial, at the least.

Of course pa praises his place, the location, the fruit and improvements. I yearn for indipendance.

Affectionately

M. E. C.

My Dear Brother:—

I gratefully thank you for the kind offer in your letter received to-day; but it is too generous for me to accept.

As you desire me to write freely, I will say that several days ago I took two pages of the manuscript I sent you yesterday to a bookseller publisher, to see if he would want anything on that plan. He was out of the city, and would not return till to-day or Monday or Tuesday, when he was to go away again for three or four weeks. As it is now, I shall not probably revisit him sooner than the expiration of the latter period, if at all. If I had seen him then and he had encouraged me to proceed, my preference of preferences would have been to work on at the Post, as I am now doing, from 9:30 till 2:10, for three or six months or a year, if a full the exploration of the vast subject should necessitate so long a time, using my leisure afternoons and evenings in visiting the Astor and Cooper Institute free libraries, or reading books at home from the Mercantile library, searching through geology, ranging through books of travel, raking with a fine tooth comb through and any other books I could find with facts bearing on my theories, making rough notes and writing them up formally, in mornings, &c., as rapidly and as well as practicable—swinging a pen brandishing as free a quill as ever any goose struck a horse’s heels with: this would be my idea of elysium, if I felt that the work I was doing was not going to be still-born. Now you can judge whether a book continued in the strain I sent you is likely to be a waste of time. If you think time so devoted would not be thrown away,—

However, I suppose it is not worth while to talk any more about that. My next preference would be the Keokuk place, if we could get through the first year. My plan would be to work on the garden and chicken business during the day and refresh my memory in law at night, so that in two or three years, by the time we got the garden and poultry arrangement so it would pay to hire work done, I could be well enough up in the law to take an office in town, and go down mornings and return evenings. I could not become at this late time of life a distinguished lawyer, but I might make a comfortable living with it and the garden and the poultry and the house free of rent.

Mollie requests me to say that she has not thought of failure in the enterprising farming enterprise. She has, I may add on my own motion, been sanguine and elated with the prospect of independence, and a beautiful home by the Mississippi, the canal and the railroad, and with the hope of getting me out of the printing office.

The combined law, garden and poultry project could be tried in and near New York or Hartford as well as in and near Keokuk; or it might be that editorial work could be substituted on an evening paper for law.

I am very sorry, indeed, to have taken up so much of your thought, which might be better employed on higher, or at least less depressing and worrying subjects.

Your Brother,

Orion.

P. S. Going to Keokuk would be a sort of gloomy exile for me; but Mollie would be happy there; and she is right in saying I do not support her; and that she had rather do the managing there, and I can do the work, and [the letter breaks off here, with one-third page left blank]

My Dear Brother:—

I talked to you as I did I suppose from sheer habit of gloomy foreboding. I was afraid we would get out there without a dollar to work with, and I would have to go to St. Louis and go into a printing office, and leave Mollie to run the farm by herself, and perhaps I could not even get work, while here I was already getting ten dollars per week. So I was ready to decline going for the same reason I left Hannibal—because I was afraid I could not stay. But Mollie has inspired me with her faith and hope. It begins to creep into my mind that your desire to rid me of some of my discontents weighs more with you than the consideration of the money needed. The offer to devote perpetually the interest on eight thousand dollars, where it would be likely never to return, if we were abject enough to accept, satisfies me that you will not feel it a heavy cross to part with the needed funds for the Keokuk place, even if it was never to go back to you. But Mollie feels sanguine that we can pay you principal and interest all you advance in five years. I shall go intending to work faithfully, and believing I shall be more cheerful with out-door employment. We do not think that we shall need from you the first year more than the fifteen hundred dollars you told me you thought you could spare. The property will be in your name, and with our improvements will doubtless be worth all that and the remaining sums of principal and interest as set down in the account we sent you. It is true this sums up, (as spread over five years), near four thousand dollars, but I am the more emboldened to think this will not frighten you, from the fact that you were willing to buy for us a place near Hartford to cost without other expenses, four thousand three hundred dollars. I have but one preference for that—it would be a home near you. I gave weight to that when I left to go to Rutland; but not enough. Yet who can see where a path through the future would have led, only from seeing the beginning? Before I left, the cloudy obscurity was beginning to draw over my mind that drove me from Rutland, that has neutralized my forces so often, that seems so independent of circumstances, and that yet, I hope, will not come again to haunt me in the open air. So, if it please you, we will go to Keokuk. Love to all.

Your brother,

Orion.