or in print, and if I
don't look at him I can tell it now.

In 1893, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which
I was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you will
remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could
not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back;
my books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my
copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, "Your books
have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support
you again," and that was a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights,
and saved me from financial ruin. He it was who arranged with my
creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and
persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end
of four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made;
otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a
borrowed one at that.

You see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is
always trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These
are only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without
exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known.

THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER

ADDRESS AT THE TYPOTHETAE DINNER GIVEN AT DELMONICO'S,
JANUARY 18, 1886, COMMEMORATING THE BIRTHDAY OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Mr. Clemens responded to the toast "The Compositor."

The chairman's historical reminiscences of Gutenberg have caused me to
fall into reminiscences, for I myself am something of an antiquity. All
things change in the procession of years, and it may be that I am among
strangers. It may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer of
thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger to him. I knew him well. I
built his fire for him in the winter mornings; I brought his water from
the village pump; I swept out his office; I picked up his type from
under his stand; and, if he were there to see, I put the good type in
his case and the broken ones among the "hell matter"; and if he wasn't
there to see, I dumped it all with the "pi" on the imposing-stone--for
that was the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a cub. I wetted down
the paper Saturdays, I turned it Sundays--for this was a country weekly;
I rolled, I washed the rollers, I washed the forms, I folded the papers,
I carried