The liabilities of his firm were fully two hundred thousand dollars--sixty thousand of which were owing to Mrs. Clemens for money advanced--but the large remaining sum was due to banks, printers, binders, and the manufacturers of paper. A panic was on the land and there was no business. What he was to do Clemens did not know. He spent most of his days in his room, trying to write, and succeeded in finishing several magazine articles. Outwardly cheerful, he hid the bitterness of his situation.
A few, however, knew the true state of his affairs. One of these one night introduced him to Henry H. Rogers, the Standard Oil millionaire.
"Mr. Clemens," said Mr. Rogers, "I was one of your early admirers. I heard you lecture a long time ago, on the Sandwich Islands."
They sat down at a table, and Mark Twain told amusing stories. Rogers was in a perpetual gale of laughter. They became friends from that evening, and in due time the author had confessed to the financier all his business worries.
"You had better let me look into things a little," Rogers said, and he advised Clemens to "stop walking the floor."
It was characteristic of Mark Twain to be willing to unload his affairs upon any one that he thought able to bear the burden. He became a new man overnight. With Henry Rogers in charge, life was once more worth while. He accepted invitations from the Rogers family and from many others, and was presently so gay, so widely sought, and seen in so many places that one of his acquaintances, "Jamie" Dodge, dubbed him the "Belle of New York."
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.