om the subject. I was afraid he would
offer me $500,000 for it. I should have been obliged to take it,
but I was born with a speculative instinct & I did not want that
temptation put in my way.

He wrote to Mr. Rogers about the great scheme, inviting the Standard Oil
to furnish the capital for it--but it appears not to have borne the test
of Mr. Rogers's scrutiny, and is heard of no more.

Szczepanik had invented the 'Fernseher', or Telelectroscope, the machine
by which one sees at a distance. Clemens would have invested heavily in
this, too, for he had implicit faith in its future, but the 'Fernseher'
was already controlled for the Paris Exposition; so he could only employ
Szczepanik as literary material, which he did in two instances: "The
Austrian Edison Keeping School Again" and "From the London Times of
1904"--magazine articles published in the Century later in the year. He
was fond of Szczepanik and Szczepanik's backer, Mr. Kleinburg. In one of
his note-book entries he says:

Szczepanik is not a Paige. He is a gentleman; his backer, Mr. Kleinburg,
is a gentleman, too, yet is not a Clemens--that is to say, he is not an
ass.

Clemens did not always consult his financial adviser, Rogers, any
more than he always consulted his spiritual adviser, Twichell, or his
literary adviser, Howells, when he intended to commit heresies in their
respective provinces. Somewhat later an opportunity came along to buy an
interest in a preparation of skimmed milk, an invalid food by which
the human race was going to be healed of most of its ills. When Clemens
heard that Virchow had recommended this new restorative, the name of
which was plasmon, he promptly provided MacAlister with five thousand
pounds to invest in a company then organizing in London. It should be
added that this particular investment was not an entire loss, for it
paid very good dividends for several years. We shall hear of it again.

For the most part Clemens was content to let Henry Rogers do his
financiering, and as the market was low with an upward incline, Rogers
put the various accumulations into this thing and that, and presently
had some fifty thousand dollars to Mark Twain's credit, a very
comfortable balance for a man who had been twice that amount in debt
only a few years before. It has been asserted most strenuously, by those
in a position to know least about the matter, that Henry Rogers lent,
and even gave, Mark Twain large sums, and poin