October 18 Wednesday – In New York on Players Club letterhead, Sam wrote a long letter to Livy. The last two days had been so busy he hadn’t had the time to write. The sale of LAL was finalized and the transfer would be made the following day. Sam called it a “give-away,” yet it removed a great burden from Sam and Webster & Co. [MTP] Paine writes,

“Rogers had suggested to his son-in-law, William Evarts Benjamin also a subscription publisher, that he buy from the Webster company The Library of American Literature for fifty thousand dollars, a sum which provided for the more insistent creditors. There was hope that the worst was over. Clemens did in reality give up walking the floor, and for the time, at least, found happier diversions” [MTB 971]. (Editorial emphasis.)

Note: Benjamin (1859-1940) was a prominent Boston publisher who married Anne Engle Rogers, eldest daughter of H.H. Rogers.

Sam also wrote of a plan of the Cosmopolitan’s Walker and Hardy to go into a partnership with Hall and himself to publish books. In order to get “this scheme into shape” Sam would need weeks more in New York. The rest of the letter dealt with the old tangle of the Paige typesetter, and Sam’s new financial “angel.”

Meantime I have got the best & wisest man in the whole Standard Oil group of multi-millionaires a good deal interested in looking into the type-setter (this is private, don’t mention it.) He has been searching into that thing for three weeks , & yesterday he said to me, “I find the machine to be all you represented it — I have here exhaustive reports from my own experts, & I know every detail of its capacity, its immense value, its construction, cost, history, & all about its inventor’s character. I know that the New York Co & the Chicago Co are both stupid, & that they are unbusinesslike people, destitute of money and in a hopeless boggle.”

Then he told me the scheme he had planned, then said: “If I can arrange with those people on this basis — it will take several weeks to find out — I will see to it that they get the money they need. Then the thing will move right along & your royalties will cease to be waste paper. I will post you the minute my scheme fails or succeeds. In the meantime, you stop walking the floor. Go off to the country & try to be gay. You may have to go to walking again, but don’t begin till I tell you my scheme has failed.” And he added: “Keep me posted always as to where you are — for if I need you & can use you I want to know where to put my hand on you.”

If I should even divulge the fact that the Standard oil is merely talking remotely about going into the type-setter, it would send my royalties up [MTP].

Frederick J. Hall wrote to Sam that he did not “see any room for a hitch now” in the sale of the LAL for $50,000 to William Evarts Benjamin, which would “insure our safety for several months to come” [MTHHR 11;MTP]. Note: The sale provided for payments by Benjamin over time.