"three weeks sure" I recognized the
old familiar tune I used to hear so much. W----don't know what
sick-heartedness is--but he is in a way to find out.

And finally, on the 4th:

I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able to see any
daylight ahead. To me none is visible. I strongly advise that
every penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts. I
may be in error about this, but it seems to me that we have no other
course open. We can pay a part of the debts owing to outsiders
--none to Clemenses. In very prosperous times we might regard our
stock & copyrights as assets sufficient, with the money owing to us,
to square up & quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for such
luck in the present condition of things.

What I am mainly hoping for is to save my book royalties. If they
come into danger I hope you will cable me so that I can come over &
try to save them, for if they go I am a beggar.

I would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family &
help them through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors.

A few days later he could stand it no longer, and on August 29 (1893)
sailed, the second time that year, for New York.

CLXXXV. AN INTRODUCTION TO H. H. ROGERS

Clemens took a room at The Players--"a cheap room," he wrote, "at $1.50
per day." It was now the end of September, the beginning of a long
half-year, during which Mark Twain's fortunes were at a lower ebb than
ever before; lower, even, than during those mining days among the bleak
Esmeralda hills. Then he had no one but him self and was young. Now,
at fifty-eight, he had precious lives dependent upon him, and he was
weighed down with a vast burden of debt. The liabilities of Charles L.
Webster & Co. were fully two hundred thousand dollars. Something like
sixty thousand dollars of this was money supplied by Mrs. Clemens, but
the vast remaining sum was due to banks, to printers, to binders, and to
dealers in various publishing materials. Somehow it must be paid. As for
their assets, they looked ample enough on paper, but in reality, at a
time like this, they were problematical. In fact, their value was very
doubtful indeed. What he was to do Clemens did not know. He could not
even send cheerful reports to Europe. There was no longer anything to
promise concerning the type-setter. The fifty machines which the company
had started to build had dwi