Henry Rogers, meanwhile, was “looking into things.”  He had reasonable faith in the type-machine, and advanced a large sum on the chance of its proving a success.  This, of course, lifted Mark Twain quite into the clouds.  Daily he wrote and cabled all sorts of glowing hopes to his family, then in Paris.  Once he wrote: 

“The ship is in sight now ....  When the anchor is down, then I shall say:  Farewell—­a long farewell—­to business!  I will never touch it again!  I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it; I will swim in ink!”

Once he cabled, “Expect good news in ten days”; and a little later, “Look out for good news”; and in a few days, “Nearing success.”

Those Sellers-like messages could not but appeal, Mrs. Clemens’s sense of humor, even in those dark days.  To her sister she wrote, “They make me laugh, for they are so like my beloved Colonel.”

The affairs of Webster & Co.  Mr. Rogers found a bad way.  When, at last, in April, 1894, the crisis came—­a demand by the chief creditors for payment—­he advised immediate assignment as the only course.

So the firm of Webster & Co. closed its doors.  The business which less than ten years before had begun so prosperously had ended in failure.  Mark Twain, nearing fifty-nine, was bankrupt.  When all the firm’s effects had been sold and applied on the counts, he was still more than seventy thousand dollars in debt.  Friends stepped in and offered to lend him money, but he declined these offers.  Through Mr. Rogers a basis of settlement at fifty cents on the dollar was arranged, and Mark Twain said, “Give me time, and I will pay the other fifty.”

No one but his wife and Mr. Rogers, however, believed that at his age he would be able to make good the promise.  Many advised him not to attempt it, but to settle once and for all on the legal basis as arranged.  Sometimes, in moments of despondency, he almost surrendered.  Once he said: 

“I need not dream of paying it.  I never could manage it.”

But these were only the hard moments.  For the most part he kept up good heart and confidence.  It is true that he now believed again in the future of the type-setter, and that returns from it would pay him out of bankruptcy.  But later in the year this final hope was taken away.  Mr. Rogers wrote to him that in the final test the machine had failed to prove itself practical and that the whole project had been finally and permanently abandoned.  The shock of disappointment was heavy for the moment, but then it was over—­completely over—­for that old mechanical demon, that vampire of invention that had sapped his fortune so long, was laid at last.  The worst had happened; there was nothing more to dread.  Within a week Mark Twain (he was now back in Paris with the family) had settled down to work once more on the “Recollections of Joan,” and all mention and memory of the type-setter was forever put away.  The machine stands to-day in the Sibley College of Engineering, where it is exhibited as the costliest piece of mechanism for its size ever constructed.  Mark Twain once received a letter from an author who had written a book to assist inventors and patentees, asking for his indorsement.  He replied: