ngs with certain relatives and
friends of mine because they were unlucky people. All my life I have
stumbled upon lucky chances of large size, and whenever they were wasted
it was because of my own stupidity and carelessness. And so I have felt
entirely certain that that machine would turn up trumps eventually. It
disappointed me lots of times, but I couldn't shake off the confidence
of a life-time in my luck.

Well, whatever I get out of the wreckage will be due to good luck--the
good luck of getting you into the scheme--for, but for that, there
wouldn't be any wreckage; it would be total loss.

I wish you had been in at the beginning. Then we should have had the
good luck to step promptly ashore.

Miss Harrison has had a dream which promises me a large bank account,
and I want her to go ahead and dream it twice more, so as to make the
prediction sure to be fulfilled.

I've got a first rate subject for a book. It kept me awake all night,
and I began it and completed it in my mind. The minute I finish Joan I
will take it up.

Love and Happy New Year to you all.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

This was about the end of the machine interests so far as Clemens
was concerned. Paige succeeded in getting some new people
interested, but nothing important happened, or that in any way
affected Mark Twain. Characteristically he put the whole matter
behind him and plunged into his work, facing comparative poverty and
a burden of debts with a stout heart. The beginning of the new year
found him really poorer in purse than he had ever been in his life,
but certainly not crushed, or even discouraged--at least, not
permanently--and never more industrious or capable.

*****

To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:

169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
PARIS, Jan. 23, '95.

DEAR MR. ROGERS,--After I wrote you, two or three days ago I thought
I would make a holiday of the rest of the day--the second deliberate
holiday since I had the gout. On the first holiday I wrote a tale of
about 6,000 words, which was 3 days' work in one; and this time I did
8,000 before midnight. I got nothing out of that first holiday but the
recreation of it, for I condemned the work after careful reading and
some revision; but this time I fared better--I fi