Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 4 (1886-1900) eBook

Hartford, March 31, ’90.  Dear Joe,—­If you were here, I should say, “Get you to Washington and beg Senator Jones to take the chances and put up about ten or “—­no, I wouldn’t.  The money would burn a hole in my pocket and get away from me if the furnisher of it were proceeding upon merely your judgment and mine and without other evidence.  It is too much of a responsibility.

But I am in as close a place to-day as ever I was; $3,000 due for the last month’s machine-expenses, and the purse empty.  I notified Mr. Arnot a month ago that I should want $5,000 to-day, and his check arrived last night; but I sent it back to him, because when he bought of me on the 9th of December I said that I would not draw upon him for 3 months, and that before that date Senator Jones would have examined the machine and approved, or done the other thing.  If Jones should arrive here a week or ten days from now (as he expects to do,) and should not approve, and shouldn’t buy any royalties, my deal with Arnot would not be symmetrically square, and then how could I refund?  The surest way was to return his check.

I have talked with the madam, and here is the result.  I will go down to the factory and notify Paige that I will scrape together $6,000 to meet the March and April expenses, and will retire on the 30th of April and return the assignment to him if in the meantime I have not found financial relief.

It is very rough; for the machine does at last seem perfect, and just a bird to go!  I think she’s going to be good for 8,000 ems an hour in the hands of a good ordinary man after a solid year’s practice.  I may be in error, but I most solidly believe it.

There’s an improved Mergenthaler in New York; Paige and Davis and I
watched it two whole afternoons. 
                         With the love of us all,
          
                                        mark.

Arnot wrote Clemens urging him to accept the check for five thousand dollars in this moment of need.  Clemens was probably as sorely tempted to compromise with his conscience as he had ever been in his life, but his resolution field firm.

To M. H. Arnot, in Elmira, N. Y.: 

MR. M. H. ARNOT

Dear sir,—­No—­no, I could not think of taking it, with you unsatisfied; and you ought not to be satisfied until you have made personal examination of the machine and had a consensus of testimony of disinterested people, besides.  My own perfect knowledge of what is required of such a machine, and my perfect knowledge of the fact that this is the only machine that can meet that requirement, make it difficult for me to realize that a doubt is possible to less well-posted men; and so I would have taken your money without thinking, and thus would have done a great wrong to you and a great one to myself.  And now that I go back over the ground, I remember