MARK TWAIN

Some of the notes are made in German—for
no particular reason except that he was very
much interested in the language about this time.
A German class used to assemble at his house
and it was during this period that he wrote the
Meisterschaft sketch for the Century Magazine.

Printers are peculiarly well instructed men. They all
know the history of the great labor-saving and speed-
enhancing inventions, and they know that no hostility in
the world can stop such a machine from coming into use,
or even notably delay it.

He realized that his interest in his various
enterprises took the form of a hobby, perhaps,
for just here he makes this note:

A person should always have a hobby. Observe how a
sweetheart fills every waking moment to the brim and
makes life a jubilation. Observe the miser and the suc-
cessful stock speculator and proprietor of vast money-
making industries. Observe the student in his specialty—
in bees, ants, bugs, fossils—any specialty that is absorb-
ing. But the hobby must not be the result—no, only the
pleasure of working for the result, and the final trial of
accomplishing it.

Oct. 3, 1885. I think I have struck a good idea. It is to
reduce a series of big maps to mere photographic fly-
specks and sell them together with a microscope of one
quarter to one inch focal distance.

Extravagant as this idea may have seemed at
the moment, it came into practical use, approxi-
mately, during the World War. Maps were re-
duced photographically to proportions so small
188