there are men willing to
victimize him. The man who believes in himself as an investor will
uphold that faith against all disaster so long as he draws breath and has
money to back his judgments.

CXXXIX

FINANCIAL AND LITERARY

By a statement made on the 1st of January, 1882, of Mark Twain's
disbursements for the preceding year, it is shown that considerably more
than one hundred thousand dollars had been expended during that twelve
months. It is a large sum for an author to pay out in one year. It
would cramp most authors to do it, and it was not the best financing,
even for Mark Twain. It required all that the books could earn, all the
income from the various securities, and a fair sum from their principal.
There is a good deal of biography in the statement. Of the amount
expended forty-six thousand dollars represented investments; but of this
comfortable sum less than five thousand dollars would cover the
legitimate purchases; the rest had gone in the "ventures" from whose
bourne no dollar would ever return. Also, a large sum had been spent for
the additional land and for improvements on the home--somewhat more than
thirty thousand dollars altogether--while the home life had become more
lavish, the establishment had grown each year to a larger scale, the
guests and entertainments had become more and, more numerous, until the
actual household expenditure required about as much as the books and
securities could earn.

It was with the increased scale of living that Clemens had become
especially eager for some source of commercial profit; something that
would yield a return, not in paltry thousands, but hundreds of thousands.
Like Colonel Sellers, he must have something with "millions in it."
Almost any proposition that seemed to offer these possible millions
appealed to him, and in his imagination he saw the golden freshet pouring
in.

His natural taste was for a simple, inexpensive life; yet in his large
hospitality, and in a certain boyish love of grandeur, he gloried in the
splendor of his entertainment, the admiration and delight of his guests.
There were always guests; they were coming and going constantly. Clemens
used to say that he proposed to establish a bus line between their house
and the station for the accommodation of his company. He had the
Southern hospitality. Much company appealed to a very large element in
his strangely compounded nature. For the better portion of the year he
was willing