ere 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 people I am not a bit
likely to write such things to you. I can't believe I have done
anything so ungrateful. If I have, pile coals of fire upon my head
for I deserve it. You have done magnificently with the business, &
we must raise the money somehow to enable you to reap a reward for
all that labor.

He was fond of Hall. He realized how honest and resolute and industrious
he had been. In another letter he wrote him that it was wonderful he had
been able to "keep the ship afloat in the storm that has seen fleets and
fleets go down"; and he added: "Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to
send us any money for a month or two, so that you may be afforded what
little relief is in our power."

The type-setter situation seemed to promise something. In fact, the
machine once more had become the principal hope of financial salvation.
The new company seemed really to begetting ahead in spite of the money
stringency, and was said to have fifty machines well under way: About
the middle of March Clemens packed up two of his shorter manuscripts
which he had written at odd times and forwarded them to Hall, in the
hope that they would be disposed of and the money waiting him on his
arrival; and a week later, March 22, 1893, he sailed from Genoa on the
Kaiser Wilhelm II, a fine, new boat. One of the manuscripts was 'The
Californian's Tale' and the other was 'Adam's Diary'.--[It seems
curious that neither of these tales should have found welcome with
the magazines. "The Californian's Tale" was published in the Liber
Scriptorum, an Authors' Club book, edited by Arthur Stedman. The 'Diary'
was disposed of to the Niagara Book, a souvenir of Ni