creditors. At the time of his failure he had
given himself five years to achieve this result. But he had needed less
than four. A report from Mr. Rogers showed that a balance of thirteen
thousand dollars would remain to his credit after the last accounts were
wiped away.

Clemens had tried to keep his money affairs out of the newspapers, but
the payment of the final claims could not be concealed, and the press
made the most of it. Head-lines shouted it. Editorials heralded Mark
Twain as a second Walter Scott, because Scott, too, had labored to lift a
great burden of debt. Never had Mark Twain been so beloved by his
fellow-men.

One might suppose now that he had had enough of invention and commercial
enterprises of every sort--that is, one who did not know Mark Twain might
suppose this--but it would not be true. Within a month after his debts
were paid he was negotiating with the Austrian inventor Szczepanik for
the American rights in a wonderful carpet-pattern machine, and,
Sellers-like, was planning to organize a company with a capital of fifteen
hundred million dollars to control the carpet-weaving industries of the
world. He wrote to Mr. Rogers about the great scheme, inviting the
Standard Oil to "come in"; but the plan failed to bear the test of Mr.
Rogers's investigation and was heard of no more.

Samuel Clemens's obligation to Henry Rogers was very great, but it was
not quite the obligation that many supposed it to be. It was often
asserted that the financier lent, even gave, the humorist large sums, and
pointed out opportunities for speculation. No part of this statement is
true. Mr. Rogers neither lent nor gave Mark Twain money, and never
allowed him to speculate when he could prevent it. He sometimes invested
Mark Twain's own funds for him, but he never bought for him a share of
stock without money in hand to pay for it in full--money belonging to,
and earned by, Clemens himself.

What Henry Rogers did give to Mark Twain was his priceless counsel and
time--gifts more precious than any mere sum of money--favors that Mark
Twain could accept without humiliation. He did accept them, and never
ceased to be grateful. He rarely wrote without expressing his gratitude,
and we get the size of Mark Twain's obligation when in one letter we
read:

"I have abundant peace of mind again--no sense of burden. Work is
become a pleasure--it is not labor any longer."

He wrote much and well, mainly magazine articles, i