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 almost approximated prostration.  After a long lecture tour last summer I went immediately into a hard campaign; as soon as the election was over, and I had recovered my disposition, I came here and went into those tariff hearings, which began shortly after breakfast each day, and sometimes lasted until midnight.  Listening patiently and meekly, withal, to the lying of tariff barons for many days and nights was followed by the work of the long session; that was followed by a hot campaign to take Uncle Joe’s rules away from him; on the heels of that “Campaign that Failed” came the tariff fight in the House.  I am now getting time to breathe regularly and I am writing to ask you if the copyright law is acceptable to you.  If it is not acceptable to you I want to