December 22 Saturday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, shocked by the final failure of the typesetter:

I seemed to be entirely expecting your letter [not extant, but probably explaining the failure of the machine] and also prepared and resigned; but Lord, it shows how little we know ourselves and how easily we can deceive ourselves. It hit me like a thunderclap. It knocked every rag of sense out of my head, and I went flying here and there and yonder, not knowing what I was doing, and only one clearly-defined thought standing up visible and substantial out of the crazy storm-drift — that my dream of ten years was in desperate peril, and out of 60,000 or 70,000 projects for its rescue came flocking through my skull, not one would hold still long enough for me to examine it and size it up. Have you ever been like that? Not so much so, I reckon.

Sam had slept six hours and his “pond had clarified,” and he found “the sediment of my 70,000 projects” to be of the character he then listed. Most of the rest of his letter contains specifics of the machine, of using a different kind of type, even of consulting Thomas A. Edison about it, and of strategies to gain some interest in the Mergenthaler Co. But it was too late for that.

Don’t say I’m wild. For really I’m sane again this morning.

Note from MTHHR 111,n2: “The number of parenthetical phrases, phrases written in margins, parentheses within parentheses, and shifts in direction, as well as the pleading tone of much of this letter, all testify to Clemens’s extreme agitation while writing it.”

Sam asked Rogers to cable him if he thought he could “be of the least use.” He could work on JA on board ship without losing time. He ended with a word about a meeting planned by the Paige Compositor Co.:

If the meeting SHOULD decide to quit business Jan. 4, I’d like to have [Bram] Stoker stopped from paying in any more money, if Miss Harrison don’t mind that disagreeable job. And I’ll have to write them, too, of course.

Meantime I want Harry to save some of the next soup for his Uncle Sammy, who would do as much for him. / With love and kisses, / SL Clemens [MTHHR 108-11].

Sam put the rest of the day until 7 p.m. writing “a long chapter” of his book; “then went to a masked ball blacked up as Uncle Remus, taking Clara along; & we had a good time” [Dec. 27 to Rogers].

––––

French army officer Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason. The conviction caused a European controversy known as the Dreyfus Affair, one in which Sam would take great interest.