I can perceive the condition of the business at a glance, then, and that
will be sufficient.
Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come
anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you
have been buffeting your way through--only the man who is in it can do
that--but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly. I
have been wrought and unsettled in mind by apprehensions, and that is
a thing that is not helpable when one is in a strange land and sees
his resources melt down to a two months' supply and can't see any sure
daylight beyond. The bloody machine offered but a doubtful outlook--and
will still offer nothing much better for a long time to come; for when
Davis's “three weeks” is up there's three months' tinkering to follow I
guess. That is unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the
toughest one on prophets, when it is in an incomplete state, that has
ever seen the light. Neither Davis nor any other man can foretell with
any considerable approach to certainty when it will be ready to get down
to actual work in a printing office.
[No signature.]
Three days after the foregoing letter was written he wrote, briefly:
“Great Scott but it's a long year-for you and me! I never knew the
almanac to drag so. At least since I was finishing that other
machine.
“I watch for your letters hungrily--just as I used to watch for the
cablegram saying the machine's finished; but when 'next week
certainly' swelled into 'three weeks sure' I recognized the old
familiar tune I used to hear so much. Ward don't know what
sick-heartedness is--but he is in a way to find out.”
Always the quaint form of his humor, no matter how dark the way.
We may picture him walking the floor, planning, scheming, and
smoking--always smoking--trying to find a way out. It was not the
kind of scheming that many men have done under the circumstances;
not scheming to avoid payment of debts, but to pay them.
*****
To Fred J. Hall, in New York: