is
interest. He would have been willing to remain shut away from visitors,
to have been released altogether from social obligations; and he did
avoid most of them. Not all, for he could not always escape, and perhaps
did not always really wish to. Florence and its suburbs were full of
delightful people--some of them his old friends. There were luncheons,
dinners, teas, dances, concerts, operas always in progress somewhere, and
not all of these were to be resisted even by an absorbed author who was
no longer himself, but sad old Sieur de Conte, following again the banner
of the Maid of Orleans, marshaling her twilight armies across his
illumined page.

CLXXXIV

NEW HOPE IN THE MACHINE

If all human events had not been ordered in the first act of the primal
atom, and so become inevitable, it would seem a pity now that he must
abandon his work half-way, and make another hard, distracting trip to
America.

But it was necessary for him to go. Even Hall was no longer optimistic.
His letters provided only the barest shreds of hope. Times were hard and
there was every reason to believe they would be worse. The World's Fair
year promised to be what it speedily became--one of the hardest financial
periods this country has ever seen. Chicago could hardly have selected a
more profitless time for her great exposition. Clemens wrote urging Hall
to sell out all, or a portion, of the business--to do anything, indeed,
that would avoid the necessity of further liability and increased dread.
Every payment that could be spared from the sales of his manuscript was
left in Hall's hands, and such moneys as still came to Mrs. Clemens from
her Elmira interests were flung into the general fund. The latter were
no longer large, for Langdon & Co. were suffering heavily in the general
depression, barely hoping to weather the financial storm.

It is interesting to note that age and misfortune and illness had a
tempering influence on Mark Twain's nature. Instead of becoming harsh
and severe and bitter, he had become more gentle, more kindly. He wrote
often to Hall, always considerately, even tenderly. Once, when something
in Hall's letter suggested that he had perhaps been severe, he wrote:

Mrs. Clemens is deeply distressed, for she thinks I have been
blaming you or finding fault with you about something. But most
assuredly that cannot be. I tell her that although I am prone to
write hasty and regrettable things to other