save it. There was new hope in the old
type-setting machine, but his faith in the resurrection was not strong.
The strain of his affairs was telling on him. The business owed a great
sum, with no prospect of relief. Back in Europe again, Mark Twain wrote
F. D. Hall, his business manager in New York:

"I am terribly tired of business. I am by nature and disposition
unfit for it, and I want to get out of it. I am standing on a
volcano. Get me out of business."

Tantalizing letters continued to come, holding out hope in the business
--the machine--in any straw that promised a little support through the
financial storm. Again he wrote Hall:

"Great Scott, but it's a long year for you and me! I never knew the
almanac to drag so. . . I watch for your letters hungrily--just
as I used to watch for the telegram saying the machine was finished
--but when "next week certainly" suddenly swelled into 'three weeks
sure,' I recognized the old familiar tune I used to hear so much.
W. don't know what sick-heartedness is, but he is in a fair way to
find out."

They closed Viviani in June and returned to Germany. By the end of
August Clemens could stand no longer the strain of his American affairs,
and, leaving the family at some German baths, he once more sailed for New
York.

[11] At Mark Twain's death his various literary effects passed into the
hands of his biographer and literary executor, the present writer.

LI.

THE FAILURE OF WEBSTER & CO. AROUND THE WORLD. SORROW

In a room at the Players Club--"a cheap room," he wrote home, "at $1.50
per day"--Mark Twain spent the winter, hoping against hope to weather the
financial storm. His fortunes were at a lower ebb than ever before;
lower even than during those bleak mining days among the Esmeralda hills.
Then there had been no one but himself, and he was young. Now, at
fifty-eight, he had precious lives dependent upon him, and he was weighed
down by debt. The liabilities of his firm were fully two hundred thousand
dollars--sixty thousand of which were owing to Mrs. Clemens for money
advanced--but the large remaining sum was due to banks, printers,
binders, and the manufacturers of paper. A panic was on the land and
there was no business. What he was to do Clemens did not know. He spent
most of his days in his room, trying to write, and succeeded in finishing
several magazine articles. Outwardly cheerful, he hid the bitterness of
his situatio