tters
were full of her home-longing; her three years of absence seemed like an
eternity.

In its way, the Pomroy house was the best substitute for home they had
found. Its belongings were of the kind she loved. Susy had better
health, and her husband was happy in his work. They had much delightful
and distinguished company. Her letters tell of these attractive things,
and of their economies to make their income reach.

It was near the end of the year that the other great interest--the
machine--came finally to a conclusion. Reports from the test had been
hopeful during the summer. Early in October Clemens, receiving a copy of
the Times-Herald, partly set by the machine, wrote: "The Herald has just
arrived, and that column is healing for sore eyes. It affects me like
Columbus sighting land." And again on the 28th:

It seems to me that things couldn't well be going better at Chicago
than they are. There's no other machine that can set type eight
hours with only seventeen minutes' stoppage through cussedness. The
others do rather more stopping than working. By and by our machines
will be perfect; then they won't stop at all.

But that was about the end of the good news. The stoppages became worse
and worse. The type began to break--the machine had its old trouble: it
was too delicately adjusted--too complicated.

"Great guns, what is the matter with it?" wrote Clemens in November when
he received a detailed account of its misconduct.

Mr. Rogers and his son-in-law, Mr. Broughton, went out to Chicago to
investigate. They went to the Times-Herald office to watch the
type-setter in action. Mr. Rogers once told of this visit to the writer
of these chapters. He said:

"Certainly it was a marvelous invention. It was the nearest approach to
a human being in the wonderful things it could do of any machine I have
ever known. But that was just the trouble; it was too much of a human
being and not enough of a machine. It had all the complications of the
human mechanism, all the liability of getting out of repair, and it could
not be replaced with the ease and immediateness of the human being. It
was too costly; too difficult of construction; too hard to set up. I
took out my watch and timed its work and counted its mistakes. We
watched it a long time, for it was most interesting, most fascinating,
but it was not practical--that to me was clear."

It had failed to stand the test. The Times-Herald would have