The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete


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In the same mail with your letter, arrived the enclosed from Orme the  
motor man. You will observe that he has an office. I will explain that  
this is a law office and I think it probably does him as much good to  
have a law office without anything to do in it, as it would another  
man to have one with an active business attached. You see he is on the  
electric light lay now. Going to light the city and allow me to take all  
the stock if I want to. And he will manage it free of charge. It never  
would occur to this simple soul how much less costly it would be to me,  
to hire him on a good salary not to manage it. Do you observe the same  
old eagerness, the same old hurry, springing from the fear that if he  
does not move with the utmost swiftness, that colossal opportunity  
will escape him? Now just fancy this same frantic plunging after vast  
opportunities, going on week after week with this same man, during fifty  
entire years, and he has not yet learned, in the slightest degree, that  
there isn't any occasion to hurry; that his vast opportunity will always  
wait; and that whether it waits or flies, he certainly will never catch  
it. This immortal hopefulness, fortified by its immortal and unteachable  
misjudgment, is the immortal feature of this character, for a play;  
and we will write that play. We should be fools else. That staccato  
postscript reads as if some new and mighty business were imminent, for  
it is slung on the paper telegraphically, all the small words left  
out. I am afraid something newer and bigger than the electric light is  
swinging across his orbit. Save this letter for an inspiration. I have  
got a hundred more.  
614  


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