Promising as our beginning was (1793), there came a sad period soon enough for the art, for me, and also for Herr Gleissner. We had ordered a new press as soon as our income permitted. I expected to produce a masterpiece with the first impression. Instead of that, there appeared the very opposite, a dirty and smeared imprint. We suspected that we had made some mistake in method. The second attempt, however, was worse than the first, if possible. To be brief, of twenty trials, made with the greatest industry and toil, we obtained only two or three that were even average. As long as I live I shall be unable to understand how we could have been so blind at that time. We sought the cause of failure in everything except the true thing,--an alteration that made the new press different from the old one, which unfortunately had been already destroyed. Later, after I had invented the so-called lever or gallows press, the thing was clear to me at once. But by that time it had cost me and Herr Gleissner two years full of toil, worry, and sorrow. In the contract with the Countess von Herting the date of completion of the work had been stipulated, because she wished to surprise Herr Cannabich with it on his birthday. We had barely four weeks left and not a single sheet had been finished. With press alterations, trial impressions, and so forth, we had wasted money and time, and paper by the ream. Our loss amounted to more than one hundred and fifty gulden, and still there was no prospect of final success. Pressed for results by the Countess, our entire reputation and the honor of my invention were at stake. Added to this came many other annoyances, especially the complaints of Frau Gleissner, who charged that I had destroyed the original, perfectly satisfactory press against her will. These tested my courage sadly. The cause of all this trouble was so petty that I really must have been half-stupefied by the fear of not keeping our pledges, otherwise I must have perceived it at once.