December 27 Thursday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers. Evidently another letter had arrived from Rogers (not extant) for Sam answered:

Notwithstanding your heart is “old & hard,” you make a body choke up, I know you “mean every word you say,” & I do take it “in the same spirit in which you tender it.” I shall keep your regard while we two live — that I know; for I shall always remember what you have done for me, and that will insure me against ever doing anything that could forfeit it or impair it. I am 59 years old; yet I never had a friend before who put out a hand and tried to pull me ashore when he found me in deep waters.

Sam jumped at Rogers’ offer to write his “business brothers,” who had invested in the machine at his urgings: Bram Stoker, Henry Irving, and Dr. Clarence Rice. He offered advice and suggestions on each, and with respect to John Brusnahan, swore he “was not going to die until I have got him squared entirely up,” even if it meant doing a public reading for him. Sam talked about coming to Fairhaven and occupying the teen Harry Rogers’ room.

Pretty soon the house will be Kodakable — and when you Kodak it, I would like to have one.

We shall try to find a tenant for our Hartford house; not an easy matter, for it costs heavily to live in. We can never live in it again; though it would break the family’s hearts if they could believe it.

Nothing daunts Mrs. Clemens or makes the world look black to her — which is the reason I haven’t drowned myself. / SL Clemens /

P.S. I am almost robustly well again. Laffan is going to put in the improved “McMillan.”

P.S. Don’t you think I would be just the man to advertise to the world the unrivaled value of the Mergenthaler if I had a handsome interest in it? I would so much like to write about the Paige.

Note: Many accounts cite the death of Susy in 1896 as the reason for the Clemens family never living in the Farmington Ave. house again; interesting that Sam was convinced here, through the failure of the typesetter, that such would be the case. William Mackay Laffan planned to use the McMillan typesetter, a competitor of the Paige and the Mergenthaler, in the New York Sun office.

Sam then wrote to Bram Stoker in Chelsea, England relating the bad news regarding the typesetter. He enclosed a check for $100 which Stoker had paid and asked if he’d tell Henry Irving that he’d get his $500 back, “a dab at a time,” if necessary.

I’m not feeling as fine as I was when I saw you there in your home. Please remember me kindly to Mrs. Stoker. I gave up that London lecture-project entirely. Had to — there’s never been a chance since to find the time [MTP].

Andrew Chatto wrote to Sam that he was “despatching to you today a parcel of books (carriage paid) and hope that the selection I have made from our catalogue may prove a congenial one to your taste…” [MTP].