3° 



MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that 

 Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth ; that my friend never knew such a personage ; and that he only 

 conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous yim 

 Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of 

 him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design; it succeeded. 



I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the dilapidated tavern in the 

 decayed mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an 

 expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up, 

 and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries 

 about a cherished ^^^^^ ^ Companion of his 



impressive earnest- nt^r^v-iumtn^Y-^ ^^^^ ^^^ sincerity, 



which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or 

 funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as- 

 men of transcendent genius in finesse. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him 

 once. 



"Rev. Leonidas W. H'm, Reverend Le — well, there was a feller here once by the name oiyim 

 Smiley, in the winter of '49 — or may be it was the spring of '50 — I don't recollect exactly, some- 

 how, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flumfr 



