Autobiography of Mark Twain (25 page)

But I must explain these strange contradictions above listed, or the man will be misunderstood and wronged. His business thrift is remarkable, and it is also of a peculiar cut. He has worked at his expensive machine for more than twenty years, but always at somebody else’s cost. He spent hundreds and thousands of other folk’s money, yet always kept his machine and its possible patents in his own possession, unencumbered by an embarrassing lien of any kind—except once, which will be referred to by and by. He could never be beguiled into putting a penny of his own into his work. Once he had a brilliant idea in the way of a wonderfully valuable application of electricity. To test it, he said, would cost but $25. I was paying him a salary of nearly $600 a month and was spending $1,200 on the machine besides; yet he asked me to risk the $25 and take half of the result. I declined, and he dropped the matter. Another time he was sure he was on the track of a splendid thing in electricity. It would cost only a trifle—possibly $200—to try some experiments; I was asked to furnish the money and take half of the result. I furnished money until the sum had grown to about $1,000, and everything was pronounced ready for the grand exposition. The electric current was turned on—the thing declined to go. Two years later the same thing was successfully worked out and patented by a
man in the State of New York and was at once sold for a huge sum of money and a royalty-reserve besides. The drawings in the electrical journal showing the stages by which that inventor had approached the consummation of his idea, proving his way step by step as he went, were almost the twins of Paige’s drawings of two years before. It was almost as if the same hand had drawn both sets. Paige said we had
had
it, and we should have
known
it if we had only tried an alternating current after failing with the direct current; said he had felt sure, at the time, that at cost of $100 he could apply the alternating test and come out triumphant. Then he added, in tones absolutely sodden with self-sacrifice, and just barely touched with reproach,

“
But you had already spent so much money on the thing that I hadn’t the heart to ask you to spend any more
.”

If I had asked him why he didn’t draw on his own pocket, he would not have understood me. He could not have grasped so strange an idea as that. He would have thought there was something the matter with my mind. I am speaking honestly; he could not have understood it. A cancer of old habit and long experience could as easily understand the suggestion that it board itself a while.

In drawing contracts he is always able to take care of himself; and in every instance he will work into the contracts injuries to the other party and advantages to himself which were never considered or mentioned in the preceding verbal agreement. In one contract he got me to assign to him several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of property for a certain valuable consideration—said valuable consideration being the
re-giving to me of another piece of property which was not his to give but already belonged to me!
See assignment, Aug. 12, 1890. I quite understand that I am confessing myself a fool; but that is no matter, the reader would find it out anyway, as I go along. Hamersley was our joint lawyer, and I had every confidence in his wisdom and cleanliness.

Once when I was lending money to Paige during a few months, I presently found that he was giving
receipts
to my representative instead of notes! But that man never lived who could catch Paige so nearly asleep as to palm off on
him
a piece of paper which apparently satisfied a debt when it ought to acknowledge a loan.

I must throw in a parenthesis here, or I shall do Hamersley an injustice. Here and there I have seemed to cast little reflections upon him. Pay no attention to them. I have no feeling about him, I have no harsh words to say about him. He is a great fat good-natured, kind-hearted, chicken-livered slave; with no more pride than a tramp, no more sand than a rabbit, no more moral sense than a wax figure, and no more sex than a tape-worm. He sincerely thinks he is honest, he sincerely thinks he is honorable. It is my daily prayer to God that he be permitted to live and die in those superstitions. I gave him a twentieth of my American holding, at Paige’s request; I gave him a twentieth of my foreign holding at his own supplication; I advanced near $40,000 in five years to keep these interests sound and valid for him. In return, he drafted every contract which I made with Paige in all that time—clear up to September, 1890—and pronounced it good and fair; and then I signed. These unique contracts will be found in the Appendix. May they be instructive to the struggling student of law.

Yes, it is as I have said: Paige is an extraordinary compound of business thrift and commercial insanity. Instances of his commercial insanity are simply innumerable. Here are some examples. When I took hold of the machine Feb. 6, 1886, its faults had been corrected and a setter and a
justifier could turn out about 3,500 ems an hour on it; possibly 4,000. There was no machine that could pretend rivalry to it. Business sanity would have said, put it on the market as it was, secure the field, and add improvements later. Paige’s business insanity said, add the improvements first, and risk losing the field. And that is what he set out to do. To add a justifying mechanism to that machine would take a few months and cost $9,000 by his estimate, or $12,000 by Pratt & Whitney’s. I agreed to add said justifier to
that
machine. There could be no sense in building a new machine. Yet in total violation of the agreement, Paige went immediately to work to build a new machine, although aware, by recent experience, that the cost could not fall below $150,000, and that the time consumed would be years instead of months. Well, when four years had been spent and the new machine was able to exhibit a marvelous capacity, we appointed the 12th of January for Senator Jones of Nevada to come and make an inspection. He was not promised a perfect machine, but a machine which could be perfected. He had agreed to invest one or two hundred thousand dollars in its fortunes; and had also said that if the exhibition was particularly favorable, he might take entire charge of the elephant. At the last moment Paige concluded to add an air-blast, (afterwards found to be unnecessary); wherefore, Jones had to be turned back from New York to wait a couple of months and lose his interest in the thing. A year ago, Paige made what he regarded as a vast and magnanimous concession: Hamersley and I might sell the English patent for $10,000,000! A little later a man came along who thought he could bring some Englishmen who would buy that patent, and he was sent off to fetch them. He was gone so long that Paige’s confidence began to diminish, and with it his price. He finally got down to what he said was his very last and bottom price for that patent—$50,000! This was the only time in five years that I ever saw Paige in his right mind. I could furnish other examples of Paige’s business insanity—enough of them to fill six or eight volumes, perhaps, but I am not writing his history, I am merely sketching his portrait.

Greatest of all mistakes that things warn’t arranged so as to have four persons in the Trinity. But even then Paige wouldn’t stir a peg unless he could have the boss-ship.

End of 1885
.

Paige arrives at my house unheralded. [I was a small stockholder in the Farnham Co., but had seen little or nothing of Paige for a year or two.] He said “What’ll you complete the machine for?”

“What will it cost?”

“$20,000—certainly not over $30,000.”

“What will you give?”

“I’ll give you half.”

“I’ll do it—but the
limit
must be $30,000.”

“Hamersley’s a good fellow and will be invaluable to us—we can’t get along without him as our lawyer. Shan’t we give him a slice?”

“Yes. How much?”

“Shall we say a tenth?”

“All right—yes.”

The contract, (signed Feb. 6, 1886) was drawn by Hamersley. It is an excruciatingly absurd piece of paper. It bound me to requirements which had not been talked about, but they looked easy and I accepted them. But it was not till months afterward that upon trying to sell a part of my interest to raise money for the machine I found I hadn’t any ownership of any kind. My 9/20 interest had become a purely
conditional
one. Failing the conditions, I would have nothing back but my $30,000 and 6 per cent interest.

Hamersley was my trusted old friend, and as
I
thought, my lawyer also. I was spending $30,000 to build his tenth of the machine. Yet he drew that contract and was present at the signing of it, and found nothing unrighteous about it.

II

The $30,000 lasted about a year, I should say. My contract was fulfilled, but Paige had fallen far short of finishing the machine—though
he
said he could finish it for $4,000; and could finish it and give it a big exhibition in New York for $10,000. After an interval, during which I did not see him, he applied for a loan of this money and offered to pay back double some day.

I sent word that I would furnish the $4,000, but would take nothing but 6 per cent. (Witness, F. G. Whitmore.)

When the $4,000 was gone, he said a little more would do. I furnished a little more and a little more, taking 6 per cent notes until at last the machine
was
finished but not absolutely perfected. It could not have stood a lengthy test-exhibition. The notes then aggregated (with interest) about $53,000 or $55,000. I was out of pocket more than $80,000, with nothing to show for it but the original idiotic contract.

I then struck the idea of asking for royalties to raise money on. I asked for five hundred. Paige said—

“You can have as many as you want. I’ll give you a thousand.”

I said no, I would take only five hundred.

The royalty deed was made and signed. We were all feeling fine. Paige asked me to give him back his notes. I made Whitmore do it, though he strenuously objected.

I went on finishing the machine at the rate of $4,000 and upwards a month. I had no fears or doubts. [But I found royalties not very salable, and stopped trying to sell them.]

Hamersley was in a sweat to get a new contract out of Paige allowing a company to organize in the ordinary way and manufacture the machine. Presently Paige consented—and contract No. 2 was the result. It recognized my share. A rough one on me, but anything seemed better than the old contract—which was a mistake.

A few months later contract No. 3 (the May contract?) was made. It recognized my share.

These were not promising contracts for a company to take hold of.

Then came the “June” contract—a good and rational one. All this time these various contracts merely recognized my American rights. My foreign 9/20 were conditioned upon my paying the patent-expenses as they accrued (which I did) and the ultimate expenses of starting
work in the foreign countries—a condition which has not yet arrived. Now none of the previous contracts actually gave me an ownership, but this June one gave me the machine and everything, bag and baggage.

However, John P. Jones thought the foreign rights should be put into this contract, and I wrote to Paige to
interline
this addition. He sent for my copy of the June contract and Whitmore brought it and left it with him—which was a mistake.

We couldn’t get it from him any more. He said it wasn’t a real contract, because it had a blank in it (for his salary.)

I came down from Onteora to see what the trouble was, and Whitmore urged me to stand out for the restoration of that stolen contract; but Paige insisted that a new one which he had been drawing up was much better. I signed it, and also assigned my foreign rights back to Paige, who now owned the entire thing (Hamersley’s shares, too) if this contract failed to materialize. It had but six months to run.