ed.

But what is the use of remembering all these bitter details? The steady
expense went on through another year, apparently increasing instead of
diminishing, until, by the beginning of 1890, Clemens was finding
it almost impossible to raise funds to continue the work. Still he
struggled on. It was the old mining fascination--"a foot farther into
the ledge and we shall strike the vein of gold."

He sent for Joe Goodman to come and help him organize a capital-stock
company, in which Senator Jones and John Mackay, old Comstock friends,
were to be represented. He never for a moment lost faith in the final
outcome, and he believed that if they could build their own factory
the delays and imperfections of construction would be avoided. Pratt &
Whitney had been obliged to make all the parts by hand. With their own
factory the new company would have vast and perfect machinery dedicated
entirely to the production of type-setters.

Nothing short of two million dollars capitalization was considered,
and Goodman made at least three trips from California to the East and
labored with Jones and Mackay all that winter and at intervals during
the following year, through which that "cunning devil," the machine,
consumed its monthly four thousand dollars--money that was the final
gleanings and sweepings of every nook and corner of the strong-box and
bank-account and savings of the Clemens family resources. With all of
Mark Twain's fame and honors his life at this period was far from an
enviable one. It was, in fact, a fevered delirium, often a veritable
nightmare.

Reporters who approached him for interviews, little guessing what he was
passing through, reported that Mark Twain's success in life had made him
crusty and sour.

Goodman remembers that when they were in Washington, conferring with
Jones, and had rooms at the Arlington, opening together, often in the
night he would awaken to see a light burning in the next room and to
hear Mark Twain's voice calling:

"Joe, are you awake?"

"Yes, Mark, what is it?"

"Oh, nothing, only I can't sleep. Won't you talk awhile? I know it's
wrong to disturb you, but I am so d--d miserable that I can't help it."

Whereupon he would get up and talk and talk, and pace the floor and
curse the delays until he had refreshed himself, and then perhaps wallow
in millions until breakfast-time.

Jones and Mackay, deeply interested, were willing to put up a reasonable
amount of money, but they we