A few days before Christmas ten bales of hay arrived and several bushelsof carrots. instead ofdiminishing, until, by the beginning of 1890, Clemens was finding italmost impossible to raise funds to continue the work. No student ofBrowning ever more devoutly persisted in trying to compass a master'sintent--in such poems as Sordello, for instance--than Mark Twain. It was a fine achievement for a manin later life and Clemens admired it immensely.
It must be hard times for that turbulent spirit. The book trade was dull;his book royalties were insufficient even to the demands of thehousehold. When callers werereported by the butler, I went down and got rid of them. journeys which in our time would be the equivalent of circumnavigating the globe five times over.
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