We have been stopping in Munich for awhile, but we shall make a break for some country resort in a few days now.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. C.
July 8
P. S. No, I suppose I am wrong in suggesting that you wait a moment before discharging your L. A. L. agents—in fact I didn't mean that. I judge your only hope of salvation is in discharging them all at once, since it is their commissions that threaten to swamp us. It is they who have eaten up the $14,000 I left with you in such a brief time, no doubt.
I feel panicky.
I think the sale might be made with better advantage, however, now, than later when the agents have got out of the purchaser's reach.
S. L. C.
P. S. No monthly report for many months.
Those who are old enough to remember the summer of 1893 may recall
it as a black financial season. Banks were denying credit,
businesses were forced to the wall. It was a poor time to float any
costly enterprise. The Chicago company who was trying to build the
machines made little progress. The book business everywhere was
bad. In a brief note following the foregoing letters Clemens wrote
Hall:
“It is now past the middle of July and no cablegram to say the
machine is finished. We are afraid you are having miserable days
and worried nights, and we sincerely wish we could relieve you, but
it is all black with us and we don't know any helpful thing to say
or do.”
He inclosed some kind of manuscript proposition for John Brisben
Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, with the comment: “It is my ingenious
scheme to protect the family against the alms-house for one more
year—and after that—well, goodness knows! I have never felt so
desperate in my life—and good reason, for I haven't got a penny to
my name, and Mrs. Clemens hasn't enough laid up with Langdon to keep
us two months.”
It was like Mark Twain, in the midst of all this turmoil, to project
an entirely new enterprise; his busy mind was always visioning
success in unusual undertakings, regardless of immediate conditions
and the steps necessary to achievement.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York: