from my own experts, and I know every detail of
its capacity, its immense construction, its cost, its history, and
all about its inventor's character. I know that the New York
company and the Chicago company are both stupid, and that they are
unbusinesslike people, destitute of money and in a hopeless boggle."

Then he told me the scheme he had planned and said:

"If I can arrange with these people on this basis--it will take
several weeks to find out--I will see to it that they get the money
they need. In the mean time you 'stop walking the floor'."

Of course, with this encouragement, Clemens was in the clouds again.
Furthermore, Rogers had suggested to his son-in-law, William Evarts
Benjamin, also a subscription publisher, that he buy from the 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 str