I’ve got 16 working-days left yet, and in that time I will add another 120,000 words to my book if I have luck.

In his memoranda of this time he says: 

    There was never a throne which did not represent a crime.  There is
    no throne to-day which does not represent a crime ....

Show me a lord and I will show you a man whom you couldn’t tell from a journeyman shoemaker if he were stripped, and who, in all that is worth being, is the shoemaker’s inferior; and in the shoemaker I will show you a dull animal, a poor-spirited insect; for there are enough of him to rise and chuck the lords and royalties into the sea where they belong, and he doesn’t do it.

But his violence waned, maybe, for he did not finish the Yankee in the sixteen days as planned.  He brought the manuscript back to Hartford, but found it hard work there, owing to many interruptions.  He went over to Twichell’s and asked for a room where he might work in seclusion.  They gave him a big upper chamber, but some repairs were going on below.  From a letter written to Theodore Crane we gather that it was not altogether quiet.

Friday, October 5, 1888.

Dear Theo, I am here in Twichell’s house at work, with the noise of the children and an army of carpenters to help:  Of course they don’t help, but neither do they hinder.  It’s like a boiler factory for racket, and in nailing a wooden ceiling on to the room under me the hammering tickles my feet amazingly sometimes and jars my table a good deal, but I never am conscious of the racket at all, and I move my feet into positions of relief without knowing when I do it.  I began here Monday morning, and have done eighty pages since.  I was so tired last night that I thought I would lie abed and rest to-day; but I couldn’t resist.  I mean to try to knock off tomorrow, but it’s doubtful if I do.  I want to finish the day the machine finishes, and a week ago the closest calculations for that indicated Oct. 22—­but experience teaches me that the calculations will miss fire as usual.

The other day the children were projecting a purchase, Livy and I to furnish the money—­a dollar and a half.  Jean discouraged the idea.  She said, “We haven’t got any money.  Children, if you would think, you would remember the machine isn’t done.”

    It’s billiards to-night.  I wish you were here.

    With love to you both, S. L. C.

P. S. I got it all wrong.  It wasn’t the children, it was Marie.  She wanted a box of blacking for the children’s shoes.  Jean reproved her and said, “Why, Marie, you mustn’t ask for things now.  The machine isn’t done.”

Neither the Yankee nor the machine was completed that fall, though returns from both were beginning to be badly needed.  The financial pinch was not yet severe, but it was noticeable, and it did not relax.