One Christmas, when he presented Mark Twain with a watch and a match-case, he wrote:
MY DEAR CLEMENS,—For many years your friends have been complaining
of your use of tobacco, both as to quantity and quality. Complaints
are now coming in of your use of time. Most of your friends think
that you are using your supply somewhat lavishly, but the chief
complaint is in regard to the quality.
I have been appealed to in the mean time, and have concluded that it
is impossible to get the right kind of time from a blacking-box.
Therefore, I take the liberty of sending you herewith a machine that
will furnish only the best. Please use it with the kind wishes of
Yours truly,
H. H. ROGERS.
P. S.—Complaint has also been made in regard to the furrows you
make in your trousers in scratching matches. You will find a furrow
on the bottom of the article inclosed. Please use it. Compliments
of the season to the family.
He was a man too busy to write many letters, but when he did write (to Clemens at least) they were always playful and unhurried. One reading them would not find it easy to believe that the writer was a man on whose shoulders lay the burdens of stupendous finance-burdens so heavy that at last he was crushed beneath their weight.
CCLXXIX. AN EXTENSION OF COPYRIGHT
One of the pleasant things that came to Mark Twain that year was the passage of a copyright bill, which added to the royalty period an extension of fourteen years. Champ Clark had been largely instrumental in the success of this measure, and had been fighting for it steadily since Mark Twain's visit to Washington in 1906. Following that visit, Clark wrote:
... It [the original bill] would never pass because the bill
had literature and music all mixed together. Being a Missourian of
course it would give me great pleasure to be of service to you.
What I want to say is this: you have prepared a simple bill relating
only to the copyright of books; send it to me and I will try to have
it passed.
Clemens replied that he might have something more to say on the copyright question by and by—that he had in hand a dialogue—[Similar to the “Open Letter to the Register of Copyrights,” North American Review, January, 1905.]—which would instruct Congress, but this he did not complete. Meantime a simple bill was proposed and early in 1909 it became a law. In June Clark wrote:
DR. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS,
Stormfield, Redding, Conn.
MY DEAR DOCTOR,—I am gradually becoming myself again, after a
period of exhaustion that almost approximated prostration. After a
long lecture tour last summer I went immediately into a hard
campaign; as soon as the election was over, and I had recovered my
disposition, I came here and went into those tariff hearings, which
began shortly after breakfast each day, and sometimes lasted until
midnight. Listening patiently and meekly, withal, to the lying of
tariff barons for many days and nights was followed by the work of
the long session; that was followed by a hot campaign to take Uncle
Joe's rules away from him; on the heels of that “Campaign that
Failed” came the tariff fight in the House. I am now getting time
to breathe regularly and I am writing to ask you if the copyright
law is acceptable to you. If it is not acceptable to you I want to
ask you to write and tell me how it should be changed and I will
give my best endeavors to the work. I believe that your ideas and
wishes in the matter constitute the best guide we have as to what
should be done in the case.
Your friend,
CHAMP CLARK.
To this Clemens replied: