I will try to write for the paper occasionally, but I fear my
letters will be very uninteresting, for this incessant night work
dulls one's ideas amazingly.... I believe I am the only person in
the Inquirer office that does not drink. One young fellow makes $18
for a few weeks, and gets on a grand “bender” and spends every cent
of it.
How do you like “free soil”?—I would like amazingly to see a good
old-fashioned negro. My love to all.
Truly your brother, SAM
In the letter to Pamela he is clearly homesick.
“I only want to return to avoid night work, which is injuring my eyes,” is the excuse, but in the next sentence he complains of the scarcity of letters from home and those “not written as they should be.” “One only has to leave home to learn how to write interesting letters to an absent friend,” he says, and in conclusion, “I don't like our present prospect for cold weather at all.”
He had been gone half a year, and the first attack of home-longing, for a boy of his age, was due. The novelty of things had worn off; it was coming on winter; changes had taken place among his home people and friends; the life he had known best and longest was going on and he had no part in it. Leaning over his case, he sometimes hummed:
“An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain.”
He weathered the attack and stuck it out for more than half a year longer. In January, when the days were dark and he grew depressed, he made a trip to Washington to see the sights of the capital. His stay was comparatively brief, and he did not work there. He returned to Philadelphia, working for a time on the Ledger and North American. Finally he went back to New York. There are no letters of this period. His second experience in New York appears not to have been recorded, and in later years was only vaguely remembered. It was late in the summer of 1854 when he finally set out on his return to the West. His 'Wanderjahr' had lasted nearly fifteen months.
He went directly to St. Louis, sitting up three days and nights in a smoking-car to make the journey. He was worn out when he arrived, but stopped there only a few hours to see Pamela. It was his mother he was anxious for. He took the Keokuk Packet that night, and, flinging himself on his berth, slept the clock three times around, scarcely rousing or turning over, only waking at last at Muscatine. For a long time that missing day confused his calculations.
When he reached Orion's house the family sat at breakfast. He came in carrying a gun. They had not been expecting him, and there was a general outcry, and a rush in his direction. He warded them off, holding the butt of the gun in front of him.
“You wouldn't let me buy a gun,” he said, “so I bought one myself, and I am going to use it, now, in self-defense.”
“You, Sam! You, Sam!” cried Jane Clemens. “Behave yourself,” for she was wary of a gun.