And with it I wish to print the answer which I wrote at the time but probably did not send.

If it went--which is not likely--it went in the form of a copy, for I find the original still here, pigeonholed with the said letter.

To that kind of letters we all write answers which we do not send, fearing to hurt where we have no desire to hurt; I have done it many a time, and this is doubtless a case of the sort.
THE LETTER 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.