November 15 Thursday – In the morning at the Brighton Hotel in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers of being laid up since Nov. 12 with the gout and of the doctor’s treatments on Nov. 13. He expected to go to the new house this day.

I can bear my foot on the floor this morning. However, I am not kept back by the gout; the gout is of no consequence; the doctor says so himself; neither is hell, to a person who doesn’t live there; but my cough was of consequence; in the doctor’s opinion; but the bronchial end of it passed away yesterday, and only the laryngeal end remains; and so he will say, this morning, that we can leave this hotel today, I think: and I shall be glad.

P.S. No, he says to-morrow, Nov. 16. Meantime the letters are come; you are gone West, and Miss Harrison has sent me Mr. Broughton’s detailed account of the machine’s misconduct. Great guns, what is the matter with it! [MTHHR 95-6].

Note: After some promising production for a month, the newest Paige typesetter began to break down repeatedly. Rogers had gone to Chicago to investigate. The end would soon come.