quality. Complaints
are now coming in of your use of time. Most of your friends think
that you are using your supply somewhat lavishly, but the chief
complaint is in regard to the quality.

I have been appealed to in the mean time, and have concluded that it
is impossible to get the right kind of time from a blacking-box.

Therefore, I take the liberty of sending you herewith a machine that
will furnish only the best. Please use it with the kind wishes of
Yours truly,
H. H. ROGERS.

P. S.--Complaint has also been made in regard to the furrows you
make in your trousers in scratching matches. You will find a furrow
on the bottom of the article inclosed. Please use it. Compliments
of the season to the family.

He was a man too busy to write many letters, but when he did write (to
Clemens at least) they were always playful and unhurried. One reading
them would not find it easy to believe that the writer was a man on
whose shoulders lay the burdens of stupendous finance-burdens so heavy
that at last he was crushed beneath their weight.

CCLXXIX. AN EXTENSION OF COPYRIGHT

One of the pleasant things that came to Mark Twain that year was the
passage of a copyright bill, which added to the royalty period an
extension of fourteen years. Champ Clark had been largely instrumental
in the success of this measure, and had been fighting for it steadily
since Mark Twain's visit to Washington in 1906. Following that visit,
Clark wrote:

... It [the original bill] would never pass because the bill
had literature and music all mixed together. Being a Missourian of
course it would give me great pleasure to be of service to you.
What I want to say is this: you have prepared a simple bill relating
only to the copyright of books; send it to me and I will try to have
it passed.

Clemens replied that he might have something more to say on the
copyright question by and by--that he had in hand a dialogue--[Similar
to the "Open Letter to the Register of Copyrights," North American
Review, January, 1905.]--which would instruct Congress, but this he did
not complete. Meantime a simple bill was proposed and early in 1909 it
became a law. In June Clark wrote:

DR. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS,
Stormfield, Redding, Conn.

MY DEAR DOCTOR,--I am gradually becoming myself again, after a
period of exhaustion that