n the "Pennsylvania" blew up and the telegraph
reported my brother as fatally injured (with 60 others) but made
no mention of me, my uncle said to my mother "It means that Sam was
somewhere else, after being on that boat a year and a half--he was born
lucky." Yes, I was somewhere else. I am so superstitious that I have
always been afraid to have business dealings 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