THE BOYS' LIFE OF MARK TWAIN
Europe again, Mark Twain wrote F. D. Hall, his business manager in New York:
I am terribly tired of business. I am by nature and disposition unfit for it, and I want to get out of it. I am standing on a volcano. Get me out of business.
Tantalizing letters continued to come, holding out hope in the business—the machine—in any straw that promised a little support through the financial storm. Again he wrote Hall:
Great Scott, but it's a long year for you and me! I never knew the almanac to drag so. . . . I watch for your letters hungrily—just as I used to watch for the telegram saying the machine was finished—but when "next week certainly" suddenly swelled into "three weeks sure," I recognized the old familiar tune I used to hear so much. W——— don't know what sickheartedness is, but he is in a fair way to find out.
They closed Viviani in June and returned to Germany. By the end of August Clemens could stand no longer the strain of his American affairs, and, leaving the family at some German baths, he once more sailed for New York.
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