Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 4 (1886-1900)Twain, Mark
General
Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 4 (1886-1900)
Twain, Mark
Authors, American -- 19th century -- Correspondence; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 -- Correspondence
Meantime I have got the best and wisest man in the whole Standard Oil
group of mufti-millionaires a good deal interested in looking into the
type-setter (this is private, don't mention it.) He has been searching
into that thing for three weeks, and yesterday he said to me, “I find
the machine to be all you represented it--I have here exhaustive reports
from my own experts, and I know every detail of its capacity, its
immense value, its construction, cost, history, and all about its
inventor's character. I know that the New York Co. and the Chicago Co.
are both stupid, and that they are unbusinesslike people, destitute of
money and in a hopeless boggle.”
Then he told me the scheme he had planned, then said: “If I can arrange
with these people on this basis--it will take several weeks to find
out--I will see to it that they get the money they need. Then the thing
will move right along and your royalties will cease to be waste paper.
I will post you the minute my scheme fails or succeeds. In the meantime,
you stop walking the floor. Go off to the country and try to be gay.
You may have to go to walking again, but don't begin till I tell you my
scheme has failed.” And he added: “Keep me posted always as to where you
are--for if I need you and can use you--I want to know where to put my
hand on you.”
If I should even divulge the fact that the Standard Oil is merely
talking remotely about going into the type-setter, it would send my
royalties up.
With worlds and worlds of love and kisses to you all,
SAML.
With so great a burden of care shifted to the broad financial shoulders
of H. H. Rogers, Mark Twain's spirits went ballooning, soaring toward
the stars. He awoke, too, to some of the social gaieties about him, and
found pleasure in the things that in the hour of his gloom had seemed
mainly mockery. We find him going to a Sunday evening at Howells's, to
John Mackay's, and elsewhere.
*****
To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
Dec. 2, '93.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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