Webster
company The Library of American Literature for fifty thousand dollars, a
sum which provided for the more insistent creditors. There was hope that
the worst was over. Clemens did in reality give up walking the floor,
and for the time, at least, found happier diversions. He must not return
to Europe as yet, for the type-setter matter was still far from
conclusion. On the 11th of November he was gorgeously entertained by the
Lotos Club in its new building. Introducing him, President Frank
Lawrence said:

"What name is there in literature that can be likened to his? Perhaps
some of the distinguished gentlemen about this table can tell us, but I
know of none. Himself his only parallel, it seems to me. He is all our
own--a ripe and perfect product of the American soil."

CLXXXVI

"THE BELLE OF NEW YORK"

Those were feverish weeks of waiting, with days of alternate depression
and exaltation as the pendulum swung to and fro between hope and despair.
By daylight Clemens tried to keep himself strenuously busy; evenings and
nights he plunged into social activities--dinners, amusements, suppers,
balls, and the like. He was besieged with invitations, sought for by
the gayest and the greatest; "Jamie" Dodge conferred upon him the
appropriate title: of "The Belle of New York." In his letters home he
describes in detail many of the festivities and the wildness with which
he has flung himself into them, dilating on his splendid renewal of
health, his absolute immunity from fatigue. He attributes this to his
indifference to diet and regularities of meals and sleep; but we may
guess that it was due to a reaction from having shifted his burden to
stronger financial shoulders. Henry Rogers had taken his load upon him.

"It rests me," Rogers said, "to experiment with the affairs of a friend
when I am tired of my own. You enjoy yourself. Let me work at the
puzzle a little."

And Clemens, though his conscience pricked him, obeyed, as was his habit
at such times. To Mrs. Clemens (in Paris now, at the Hotel Brighton) he
wrote:

He is not common clay, but fine-fine & delicate. I did hate to
burden his good heart & overworked head, but he took hold with
avidity & said it was no burden to work for his friends, but a
pleasure. When I arrived in September, Lord! how black the prospect
was & how desperate, how incurably desperate! Webster & Co. had to
have a small sum of money or go under at once. I flew