CHAPTER XIX

Turbulent Years

FROM an entry made August 20, 1885, we find
that to date Mark Twain has paid to Paige, the
inventor of the typesetter-machine, $13,000, Most
of his notes now concern The Machine. Just as
humanity was going to be saved a year or two
earlier by the history game, now the world's sal-
vation lies in the typesetter. Xor was he so far
wrong. He begins to estimate the returns on
machines by the hundred and the thousand. Like
his own Col. Sellers, he saw "millions in it." And
rightly enough, if—his had only been the right
machine.

JEAN (aged five) requests me to tell a story to be based
on a kind of business copartnership between a "bawgun
stricter and a burglar."

Caesar's Commentaries (on the Gallic War and the
Civil War) are the only books that take rank with this
(Grant's). Like this they are noted for their simplicity,
naturalness and purity of style.

Wit and Humor—if any difference it is in duration—
lightning and electric light. Same material, apparently;
but one is vivid, brief, and can do damage—the other
fools along and enjoys elaboration.

The machine will not diminish the number of printers
but increase composition and make it much lighter work
for both body and mind.

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