“Let us consider that in the countries covered by this patent, an aggregate of $1,500,000,000 of capital is employed in factories requiring No. 2.

“The saving (as above) is $75,000,000 a year.  The Company holding in its grip all these patents would collar $50,000,000 of that, as its share.  Possibly more.

“Competition would be at an end in the Jacquard business, on this planet.  Price-cutting would end.  Fluctuations in values would cease.  The business would be the safest and surest in the world; commercial panics could not seriously affect it; its stock would be as choice an investment as Government bonds.  When the patents died the Company would be so powerful that it could still keep the whole business in its hands.  Would you like to grant me the privilege of placing the whole jacquard business of the world in the grip of a single Company?  And don’t you think that the business would grow-grow like a weed?”

“Ach, America—­it is the country of the big!  Let me get my breath—­then we will talk.”

So then we talked—­talked till pretty late.  Would Germany and England join the combination?  I said the Company would know how to persuade them.

Then I asked for a Supplementary Option, to cover the world, and we parted.

I am taking all precautions to keep my name out of print in connection with this matter.  And we will now keep the invention itself out of print as well as we can.  Descriptions of it have been granted to the “Dry Goods Economist” (New York) and to a syndicate of American papers.  I have asked Mr. Kleinberg to suppress these, and he feels pretty sure he can do it. 
               With love,
                              S. L. C.

If this splendid enthusiasm had not cooled by the time a reply came from Mr. Rogers, it must have received a sudden chill from the letter which he inclosed—­the brief and concise report from a carpet-machine expert, who said:  “I do not feel that it would be of any value to us in our mills, and the number of jacquard looms in America is so limited that I am of the opinion that there is no field for a company to develop the invention here.  A cursory examination of the pamphlet leads me to place no very high value upon the invention, from a practical standpoint.”

With the receipt of this letter carpet-pattern projects would seem to have suddenly ceased to be a factor in Mark Twain’s calculations.  Such a letter in the early days of the type-machine would have saved him a great sum in money and years of disappointment.  But perhaps he would not have heeded it then.

The year 1898 brought the Spanish-American War.  Clemens was
constitutionally against all wars, but writing to Twichell, whose
son had enlisted, we gather that this one was an exception.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: