The McClellan and Sheridan books were issued, and, in due time, the Life of Pope Leo XIII.—­published simultaneously in six languages—­issued from the press.  A large advance sale had been guaranteed by the general canvassing agents—­a fortunate thing, as it proved.  For, strange as it may seem, the book did not prove a great success.  It is hard to explain just why.  Perhaps Catholics felt that there had been so many popes that the life of any particular one was no great matter.  The book paid, but not largely.  The McClellan and Sheridan books, likewise, were only partially successful.  Perhaps the public was getting tired of war memoirs.  Webster & Co. undertook books of a general sort—­travel, fiction, poetry.  Many of them did not pay.  Their business from a march of triumph had become a battle.  They undertook a “Library of American Literature,” a work of many volumes, costly to make and even more so to sell.  To float this venture they were obliged to borrow large sums.

It seems unfortunate that Mark Twain should have been disturbed by these distracting things during what should have been his literary high-tide.  As it was, his business interests and cares absorbed the energy that might otherwise have gone into books.  He was not entirely idle.  He did an occasional magazine article or story, and he began a book which he worked at from time to time the story of a Connecticut Yankee who suddenly finds himself back in the days of King Arthur’s reign.  Webster was eager to publish another book by his great literary partner, but the work on it went slowly.  Then Webster broke down from two years of overwork, and the business management fell into other hands.  Though still recognized as a great publishing-house, those within the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. knew that its prospects were not bright.

Furthermore, Mark Twain had finally invested in another patent, the type-setting machine mentioned in a former chapter, and the demands for cash to promote this venture were heavy.  To his sister Pamela, about the end of 1887, he wrote:  “The type-setter goes on forever at $3,000 a month....  We’ll be through with it in three or four months, I reckon” —­a false hope, for the three or four months would lengthen into as many years.

But if there were clouds gathering in the business sky, they were not often allowed to cast a shadow in Mark Twain’s home.  The beautiful house in Hartford was a place of welcome and merriment, of many guests and of happy children.  Especially of happy children:  during these years—­the latter half of the ’eighties—­when Mark Twain’s fortunes were on the decline, his children were at the age to have a good time, and certainly they had it.  The dramatic stage which had been first set up at George Warner’s for the Christmas “Prince and Pauper” performance was brought over and set up in the Clemens schoolroom, and every Saturday there were plays or rehearsals, and every little while there would be a grand general performance in the great library downstairs, which would accommodate just eighty-four chairs, filled by parents of the performers and invited guests.  In notes dictated many years later, Mark Twain said: