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his troubles. He was by this time one-third owner in the business of
Charles L. Webster & Co., as well as its general manager. The business
had been drained of its capital one way and another-partly by the
publication of unprofitable books; partly by the earlier demands of
the typesetter, but more than all by the manufacturing cost and agents'
commissions demanded by L. A. L.; that is to say, the eleven large
volumes constituting the Library of American Literature, which Webster
had undertaken to place in a million American homes. There was plenty
of sale for it--indeed, that was just the trouble; for it was sold on
payments--small monthly payments--while the cost of manufacture and
the liberal agents' commissions were cash items, and it would require a
considerable period before the dribble of collections would swell into
a tide large enough to satisfy the steady outflow of expense. A sale
of twenty-five sets a day meant prosperity on paper, but unless capital
could be raised from some other source to make and market those books
through a period of months, perhaps even years, to come, it meant
bankruptcy in reality. It was Hall's job, with Clemens to back him, to
keep their ship afloat on these steadily ebbing financial waters. It
was also Hall's affair to keep Mark Twain cheerful, to look pleasant
himself, and to show how they were steadily getting rich because orders
were pouring in, though a cloud that resembled bankruptcy loomed always
a little higher upon the horizon. If Hall had not been young and an
optimist, he would have been frightened out of his boots early in the
game. As it was, he made a brave steady fight, kept as cheerful and
stiff an upper lip as possible, always hoping that something would
happen--some grand sale of his other books, some unexpected inflow from
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